[FoxSports] Latest injury will derail Oden for good

Rosen sounds like such an ignorant dick. Contrary to his looks.... Oden's still ONLY 21 years old and he can still have a great future ahead of him. This is a tough set-back no doubt but to say his future is behind him is ridiculous. The part that sucks most is he was developing well this season and looked like he finally started to "get it". He's had a rough start but it's hard not to like the guy and I'll pull for a successful/speedy recovery and rehab. Knowing Oden's work ethic and demeanor I'm confident his career is NOT over and that he'll come back to be an impact player.

 

*agreed* if 24 points was known to be his career high 3 years in, no doubt portland would've picked durant then.

so far he's a draft bust

 

yes yes - if you think Brendan Haywood is 'fantastic'....

barely a struck match between those 2 'superstars' this season!!!

Of course Haywood gets the edge for his uncanny ability not to foul on every 4th posession....

If the 'hype' was that Oden would be a marginally better version of Przybilla, then it's been met and he's fantastic!

Otherwise I'll take Brook Lopez as the 'up and coming center' everyday!

 

the oden hype was downright crazy I think i remember seeing articles about him when he was in 10th grade.

i feel bad for the kid its not his fault that people place unreasonable expectations on him



but man Pritchard really may have sealed his legacy as a GM for picking Oden over Durant.

 

Imagine if portland had drafted durant instead of oden..they would be a top team in the west.

 

Maybe. Depends on if Roy and Durant would have meshed. I'd love to have that problem on my hands, but 2 superstar guards who both need the ball in the final seconds could be a recipe for disaster.

 

Despite playing only 24 minutes per game, He is a top 20 roto player.


That is RIDICULOUS...

 

No way is he a top 20 roto player.

Health is the most important aspect of fantasy basketball. The fantasy GMs that are choosing Oden will fall behind due to missed games. It's like the guys that choose Yao in the top 20 every year.

Injured players should be drafted later, because there are still other good players within the top 20.

 

You're delusional if you believe this.

 

How ironic is this whole situation?

In the 80's the Blazers had Drexler and could have drafted Jordan to pair with him but instead took the fragile Sam Bowie and what could have been many championships over the years became years of "What If's"

A couple of decades later and the same scenario is playing out again. Blazers have Roy so instead of drafting Durant to team with him they draft the fragile Greg Oden.

Imagine Brandon Roy at the 2 spot, Kevin Durant at the 3 and LaMarcus Aldridge at the 4. Portland will never know.

 

That didn't stop everyone from calling him the "next Shaq" long before he graduated high school.

I don't know, it baffles me. It was so blindingly obvious to me then that Portland was making a huge mistake drafting this guy #1, and to this day it still surprises me when people still say "but he was a consensus top pick!" How could you have watched this guy play at Ohio State and thought to yourself, "For real, this guy is worthy of a #1 overall pick"?

 

It's not that bad.

Without the benefit of hindsight, who do you think is a better combo Brandon Roy, LaMarcus Aldridge, plus a guy who was like a bigger taller Ben Wallace (that's a better comparison than Shaq) - or Brandon Roy, LaMarcus Aldridge, Kevin Durant. Durant is sort of like an amalgamation of Roy and Aldridge. Obviously choosing a redundant player can be sometimes good, and sometimes bad. It all just depends.

 

It's not that I thought he was a bad player. I did expect him to become a pretty decent, even good center in the NBA. It's just that he wasn't #1 pick material -- he never was. It was irrational hype that led to him becoming #1 overall. First rounder for sure, but definitely not #1 overall. And when you have the #1 overall pick, you don't draft for need, you take the best player available, and that was clearly Durant. Even if he seemed a little redundant, you take him and let his value pay dividends for you later. They would have had the opportunity to either trade Durant for a big who fit their needs better, or today trot out an enviable "Big 3" of Roy, Durant and Aldridge to rival Boston's.

It seems to me to me like Kevin Pritchard was getting too cocksure of himself back then with his annual good fortunes in the draft (Aldridge, then getting Roy).

 

Being 7 feet tall and having a pulse makes you #1 pick material if past history is any guide. I don't know if there's enough basketballs on the court at once for a Roy-Durant-Aldridge lineup however.

 

I guess it then boils down to the larger debate of the inherent flaws of draft ranking and the seeming widespread inability of sports teams to evaluate players objectively while faced with media hype. It doesn't seem to me like scouting and evaluating players should be THIS difficult, yet practically every year you end up with someone like Oden getting drafted unduly high and someone like Budinger dropping to the 2nd round for no defensible reason.

Football seems to have the same problem too, albeit to a lesser extent.

 

That is what he was ranked before he went out.

Fact.

Yao was a BEAST in fantasy basketball last year. 5-6 best player overall I believe...

 

When you jump straight up in the air and your knee cap breaks in half without a mobster whacking it - your career is pretty much over.

 

Maybe Grover can fix him up.

 

Definitely, you gotta feel for those teenage millionaires....

Even if he doesn't get (back to elite status) where he was before his injuries, he's a 7 footer, those are hard to come by and at the least he can become a backup C. If anything.