(Photos: DimeMag.com & Greg Oden’s YardBarker blog)
Huge draft flop. The next coming of Sam Bowie. McOlden. The Big Injury. Not-Durant.
Fans outside of Portland enjoy nothing more than to try and poke fun at the Blazers’ #1 draft pick of 2007 and the highest profile rookie since LeBron James. They point to his unfortunate injuries. They mock his apparently geriatric facial features. What they don’t realise is that ultimately the joke will be on them. Greg Oden is the real deal.
He might not be setting the world alight right now, but he never was going to. Only the media hype said he would. History would dictate otherwise.
Big men traditionally mature quite slowly. Only the absolute hall-of-fame greats are any different. Not every star in this league had a rookie season like Shaquille O’Neal or Tim Duncan. The slow road is not always the wrong road.
Oden has been fortunate enough to enter a team in the Blazers that already has a number of scoring options in Brandon Roy, LaMarcus Aldridge, Travis Outlaw and Rudy Fernandez. Not to mention the injured Martell Webster and the emerging Jerryd Bayless. The big fella just has to clog the middle, grab boards, block shots and dunk the ball when it’s handed to him. So far he has been very effective at all of those things — especially considering his lack of experience and poor run of injuries.
There is a top five MVP candidate operating over in Orlando by the name of Dwight Howard. The man is regarded as a beast, averaging 21.0ppg, 13.9rpg and 3.0bpg whilst dominating the plans of opposing teams on a nightly basis. However many are quick to forget that the man who has grabbed the mantle of Superman once was a raw manchild with more potential than polish.
In fact, the comparison of Oden and Dwight’s rookie numbers reveals a strikingly similar per 36 minute output:
|
|
Season |
FG% |
FT% |
Reb |
Ast |
Stl |
Blk |
Pts |
|
Dwight Howard |
2004-05 |
.520 |
.671 |
11.1 |
1.0 |
1.0 |
1.8 |
13.2 |
|
Greg Oden |
2008-09 |
.567 |
.634 |
11.5 |
1.0 |
0.8 |
1.9 |
14.2 |
The numbers speak for themselves. What is missing from this analysis is the fact that Howard played all 82 games as a rookie, averaging 10 more minutes per game than Oden. Without a doubt, lack of durability has been the big GO’s biggest weakness and has been a forerunner to all of his other deficiencies.
It’s hard to get a feel for your timing and understand the way referees are going to call games when you’ve just come back from serious injuries that kept you out for a whole season and then some. Flowing from that lack of conditioning comes foul trouble. That leads to less minutes which in turn further inhibits the youngster’s ability to get in the flow of things.
It has become clear that Oden is a confidence player. In the last few games he has gotten his groove back on and appears to have some of that old High School / College mojo back. Rolling to the basket and dunking without opposition capable of stopping him, challenging shots on defence and being able to quickly turn and grab the resulting rebound — these are the signs of what Portland has to come.
The Blazers don’t need Oden to become Dwight Howard. A premier rebounder and shot-blocker with 13-15 points per game would be sufficient to anchor the interior for this team. But if you squint your eyes a little and look at the comparison of their rookie seasons, it’s not hard to see down the track the same affable, laugh-a-minute big man in Portland as they now have in Orlando.
