I was thinking during the game..."geez, if Durant were a Blazer...they'd be right up there with the Lakers, Celtics, and Cavs." But as it is, they are a good team that could be elite or the best if it had a Kevin Durant playing there. Isn't this twice they messed up in a draft? First by picking Manute Bol over M.Jordan. And possibly now picking Oden over Durant.... With Durant, that team would have been sick!!! PF - Aldridge SF - Durant C - Pryzbilla SG - Roy PG - Blake Man that would be a sick looking lineup!!!! But, I guess there is still time of Greg Oden to show what he's got. Which I must say when he plays 30 + minutes he is getting like 15 points and 15 reb (somewhere in that neighborhood)
NO feelings for Portland at all Its tough to see Oden becoming a 20/10 post feeding player, whereas pryzbilla does a decent defensive job as well as rebounding.
The Blazers are second in the league in offense as is, and they're 18th in defense. Durant is a very good offensive player, but he duplicates a lot of what Brandon Roy and Travis Outlaw already give the Blazers. He'd have a marginal impact on what's already a very good offensive team, and zero impact on the defensive end. Just my opinion, but I don't think the Blazers would be much better. Not this season, anyways.
I've just heard a lot that people say that Durant and Lewis are two of the toughest players to guard. Durant shoots 48% from the field and 43% from the Three point line. Those number would put the Blazer on par with any team in the league. I'm thinking did Portland by pass on Durant because they already had Martell Webster. Did they pull a Detroit in bypassing, Anthony/Wade/Bosh because they already had players in those positions? My thinking was, this is good for the Rockets...because Portland is our competition right now.
There's already a thread here discussing a lot of the questions you bring up: http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=163210 And it was Sam Bowie that Portland picked ahead of Jordan.
Portland wanted Oden all along. At the time I'd guess that around 28 out of 30 GM's would've taken Oden number 1. They didn't not draft Durant because they already had Webster in place or Outlaw or any Blazer for that matter. That's laughable. Detroit made a mistake by passing on Anthony but I don't think anybody would've thought Bosh and Wade would've turned out as well as they did regardless of how high they were selected. Especially Wade.
Cut me some slack, it was the 80's... they both had names that started with "Bo..". After all that was Bo Jackson era, when he was the talk of the sports world. Because Bo knew everything.
i think the thunder have just a good a chance at being good as the blazers. if they get a good player out of the draft this year they will be reallly really good.
I'm pretty sure that if you go back 25 years, every team in the league has messed up in a draft at least twice.
I don't disagree, I doubt there'd be enough basketballs for him, Roy, Aldridge, Outlaw, and eventually the Blazers would lose 2 of the 4 for salary reasons. That said, I'm sure the Blazers would love to have him.
forget that, thank your lucky stars carmelo anthony was never a piston, that team would have never broken up......for all his scoring prowess, durant needs to do a better job distributing and making his team better.
I remember living in Portland that summer of the NBA draft. Everyone in that damn town was sold on Oden. It was pretty laughable actually. I kept telling those dumbasses that KD was the real deal, and they'd regret passing on him. He was by and large the best college player I've ever seen in person, with TJ Ford coming in 2nd.
Dude, we all knew KD was pretty much one and done from the day he set foot on campus. I tried to go to as many bball games as possible that year.
