It was hours before the Portland Trail Blazers’ game in Los Angeles on Nov. 7 when Greg Oden walked off the court and received congratulations from Trail Blazers athletic trainer Jay Jensen. The center’s rehabilitated left knee, it appeared to everyone who had just watched Oden’s pregame workout, looked great…. “It may look great,” Oden said as he walked off the court. “But it doesn’t feel good.”…. On Wednesday, the Blazers and Oden found out why. A ligament in Oden’s left knee is damaged, to the point where it will require season-ending microfracture surgery.
If you’re a basketball fan, you’re no doubt by now aware of the latest setback in the ongoing soap opera that is Greg Oden’s health. Here in Portland, the Blazers are the only (major league) game in town, and fans have a tendency to invest a wee bit too much emotionally in the fortunes of our Trailblazers. It’s as if every October presents another chance to recapture the magic of 1977’s NBA Championship team…and every April presents another chance to quash those dreams, when they lose in the first round of the playoffs. People here take this stuff seriously; after all, it’s not as if we have a hockey, baseball, or football team to whom we can shift allegiance when the seasons change. The Trailblazers are it. For a small market team, Portland is generally pretty competitive…if somewhat snake-bitten.
When Greg Oden was the #1 overall pick at the end of the Jailblazer era, people here were beyond excited. The reception at Pioneer Courthouse Square in downtown Portland was genuinely jubilant. Finally, a supremely talented player who could lead the Trailblazers…and their devoted fans…to the Promised Land- another NBA Championship. It seemed too good to be true…and it appears that it indeed WAS too good to be true.
Portland, after all, is the franchise that passed on drafting Michael Jordan to select Sam Bowie, a talented big man from Kentucky who turned out to be disturbingly fragile. Jordan went on to…well, we all know how that went, right? Bowie spent more time on the bench in street clothes and rehabbing a litany of injuries than he did in a Trailblazers uniform. In the end, he rode off into the sunset; the last I heard he was raising horses in Kentucky. It wasn’t Bowie’s fault; his body just wouldn’t cooperate, and Fate apparently just wasn’t in his corner.
Fast forward to the 2007 NBA Draft. Portland, after several miserable seasons during which players seems more interested in smoking pot than playing basketball, seemed to be on the upswing. The Trailblazers had the #1 pick in the draft. The choice seemed to be clear- Greg Oden, a mountain of a young man who’d been one-and-done at Ohio State, or Kevin Durant, a supremely gifted one-and-done player from the University of Texas. The debate here in Portland ran hot and heavy right up to draft day: Oden or Durant? Durant or Oden? Never far below the surface was the memory of the Bowie/Jordan debate…so fans in Portland knew only one thing: no matter what the choice was to be, the Trailblazers HAD TO GET IT RIGHT.
Uh, yeah….
[Oden’s] microfracture procedure in Colorado will be the third season-ending surgery Oden has experienced in his four years in Portland. In September of 2007, before he had even played an NBA game, Oden had microfracture on his right knee.
“It’s just really sad,” coach Nate McMillan said Wednesday night at a hastily called press conference at the Rose Garden. “Shocking news to hear.”
Oden, 22, was trying to come back from a broken left patella suffered in a game last December. Jensen said this injury is not related to the broken left patella.
Also, like his first microfracture surgery, this injury surfaced out of the blue, without an apparent incident.
All told, Oden has played in 82 games over four seasons — the equivalent of one NBA regular season. During that span, he will have been paid roughly $19.3 million by the Blazers.
When Oden has been able to play, he’s showed flashes of potential and occasional brilliance, enough that fans were buoyed by what felt like justifiable optimism. Surely, Oden was young and strong enough to heal and return to being the productive, dominant player Trailblazer fans dreamed of. That optimism is increasingly beginning to appear as if it may have been unwarranted.
Fans being fans, of course, the chatter runs the gamut from sympathy to blaming Oden…as if the fact that his body continues to break down is somehow his fault. I feel quite sorry for Oden. Imagine being all of 22 years old and having to deal with the reality that your body is failing you? For whatever reason, Greg Oden’s body just doesn’t seem built to withstand the rigors of an NBA season. That’s certainly not his fault, though it’s certainly endlessly frustrating to everyone- fans, players, and coaches. Oden was supposed to be the Missing Link, the piece of the puzzle that put the Trailblazers over the hump and into a position to compete evenly with the Lakers, Celtics, and other top-echelon NBA teams. Oden was supposed to be the piece that allowed Portland to bring home another NBA championship. Instead, he’s doing his Sam Bowie impression on the Trailblazers bench, and fans are left to wonder “What if…?”
I can sympathize with Oden to a small degree. I was a goalkeeper on my college’s soccer team. After seven concussions over a six-month period during my junior year, I faced a dilemma. I loved the game, and I wanted to continue to play. Still, I knew that another season like the previous one would likely leave me with the IQ of a cauliflower…and so I made the wrenching decision to give up the game. I watched what should have been my final season from the stands, helpless to do anything…but thankful I still had my wits about me. Of course, no one was paying me millions, but I’d had to face the reality that my body simply wasn’t going to cooperate with the idea of me chasing my athletic dream. It’s a tough thing for an athlete to have to come to grips with, but sometimes getting on with your life is the smartest move.
Greg Oden may yet be able to return to basketball, and he may turn out to be the dominant player everyone thought he could be. It seems unlikely, though…and Portland fans find themselves living through the second coming of Sam Bowie. Once bitten….
Oh, and that Durant kid? He seems to have a brilliant future in front of him- in Oklahoma City and as what appears to be the Second Coming of Michael Jordan. It’s like deja vu all over again….
