One of the more interesting stories during the NBA offseason this year – managing to get basketball fans going “wait, what?” even in a summer where Dwight Howard finally committed to a team1 and where major free agents went all over the place, sometimes in unexpected ways2 and where Toronto finally traded Andrea Bargnani and got a better return than a pile of ’57 Chevy parts in a box labeled “Betty” – was that a minor bidding war erupted for the services of Greg Oden.
Greg Oden, for those of you who are not basketball fans,3 is the rare person who can say despite having received millions of dollars to play sports that he still got a raw deal. See, Greg Oden was Portland’s #1 pick in the NBA Draft back in 20074 after being a ridiculously dominant center at Ohio State, the sort of epic-level big man who is increasingly rare in the NBA these days (because, well, it’s better to have a truly great 6’8″ player than an okayish 7’2″ one) and then promptly blew out his knee with microfracture surgery. He didn’t play until the 2008-09 season and spent the season plagued by injuries to his knees, which just kept getting worse and worse – but despite that you could see the flashes were still there. Multiple 20+point games. Twenty rebounds in a single game. “If Greg Oden were healthy” was everybody’s favorite what-if game.
And then this happened:
That’s Greg Oden’s knee blowing out on what was really fairly routine mid-air contact. That ended his 2009 season. He barely played the next year.
And of course eventually it looked like Oden was done – people basically gave up on him after the third set of microfracture surgeries on his knees – and people mostly forgot about him except as a what-coulda-been story, a modern-day Len Bias but slightly less tragic because Greg Oden at least didn’t die, and that’s something, right? He said in 2012 he was “going to sit out” the season to focus on rehabbing himself, which everybody mostly thought was just a graceful way to prepare for an exit from pro basketball because you can’t play the game without knees.
But he really did work on it. Knee microfractures are extremely difficult to rehab for an athlete but it’s not impossible. And this past summer, he let teams come see him work out (because nobody was gonna buy on Greg Oden without seeing him work out). And almost instantly he had teams expressing interest, and not bottom-feeders either: contenders like the Spurs and the Heat, up-and-comers like New Orleans and Cleveland. Mostly they wanted him as a backup centre, someone who could give five or ten minutes tops when needed.
Eventually Oden signed with Miami, because Oden’s not stupid: you can’t have less pressure on you than playing on a team with LeBron James on it because everybody’s looking at LeBron, not you. This of course left basketball fans perturbed, because everybody wants Oden to come back and have a good career, but on the other hand, fuck the Miami Heat, they’re the worst, they’re nearly as bad as the Lakers (by the way: fuck the fucking Lakers) and Miami Heat fans are some of the most appalling people in sports ever.
Anyway. I mention all of this because last night, in a pre-season game against the Pelicans, Greg Oden played proper basketball for the first time since 2009. He only played four minutes (two rebounds and a dunk), but the basketball internet all lit up because HOLY SHIT EVERYBODY GREG ODEN IS PLAYING ACTUAL BASKETBALL:
It’s visually incongruous seeing that seven-foot giant looking absolutely terrified to go onto the court, but he most certainly is that. You know he’s thinking about things most players don’t have to consider (or at least can easily suppress), including that the last time he was on a basketball court his knee exploded for reasons that seem impossible. But he goes out anyway, because that is what is great about goddamn sports: the desire to never stop competing, never stop trying to be the best you can be, and yes, never stop playing games and having fun, even if you are getting paid money to do so. It’s silly and illogical in all sorts of ways, but that’s mostly what makes us all human anyway, even when you’re seven feet tall. And that’s pretty good to be. Human, I mean, not seven feet tall. Seven feet tall would be kind of inconvenient, really.
Related Articles
11 users responded in this post
A whole post on NBA comebacks and no mention of Derrick Rose, the guy who won an MVP and missed all of last year creating a backlash amongst fans and media members?
Also, I take issue with the ridiculously dominant tag given to Oden’s one season in college. He averaged 15.6 pts and 9.5 rebounds per game. He was a 2nd-team All-American. Great, yes, but not dominant.
That said, even though the Heat can die in a fiery pit of misery (pun half-intended), it’s good to see Oden actually playing basketball again. Kudos to him for overcoming a series of medical issues that would’ve forced most players to call it quits.
Oden’s teams in high school and college never lost a home game, and it was later revealed that he was playing through microfracture pain even then. If you want to quibble with “dominant” that’s a battle of semantics, but his performance was nothing short of amazing on many levels.
oh c’mon outside of the postseason flopping that Wade and Bron subject us too, The Heat come across as a pretty fun and UNITED bunch of guys.
In fact that’s always been one of the biggest reasons why i’m a Lebron fan; ive never heard a single bad thing about him from teammates and coaches and his teams always have a fun loving atmosphere.
You can respect and even love LeBron while hating the Heat. Mostly because of Wade.
That’s two times* you’ve dissed football recently: do you think you could do a column about your problems with it?
(*The other time was in the fantasy basketball announcement, where you claimed fantasy football is much more intensive than fantasy basketball, which is a bit weird since fantasy football only requires you to update your team once a week.)
And…didn’t Oden play his one college season with a broken hand or something? I seem to remember him having to learn to shoot free throws left handed. Dude’s amazing.
Please. It was obvious at the time to the casual fan that Kevin Durant was the next Michael Jordan and Oden was the next Sam Bowie. Every damn day ESPN was showing their highlights right next to one another in anticipation of both of them declaring for the NBA draft after the season was done. Oden was already having knee and back problems. Kevin Durant looked unstoppable on a daily basis. And Portland picked Sam Bowie. Again. The definition of insanity is performing the same actions over again and expecting different results.
I don’t have anything against Oden, but if he makes it through the season without injury, I’ll be amazed. Nice guy. Very talented. Very injury prone.
A player looking unstoppable in college isn’t necessarily an indicator of NBA success. A great example of that is Michael Beasley, who the Heat also signed this offseason. His college numbers are nearly identical to Durant’s. In the NBA, Beasley doesn’t really fit well at either the 3 or 4 (see also: Derrick Williams) and relies too much on long range two pointers. Also he makes some pretty dumb decisions off the court. Still, I couldn’t help but like him when he played for the Wolves, and I hope he succeeds in Miami.
In Greg Oden’s situation, I can’t help but wonder how much is Portland’s fault. Not so much in that they made a bad pick, but that their medical staff has a long history of being dangerously incompetent. Their mistreatment of Bill Walton is well documented, and even Sam Bowie was relatively healthy and productive after being traded away (a bad draft pick regardless, but still). More recently with players like Oden and Roy, Portland’s medical staff has been criticized for its handling of player rehab from injuries as well as ignoring the advice of specialists brought in to analyze their players. Some of this might have just been injury prone players and bad luck, but at the same time as Roy and Oden’s injuries, the Blazers staff was lying about the health of players they were trading away. I’m not really inclined to give Portland’s doctors the benefit of the doubt.
Of course, there’s always the possibility that Paul Allen angered some minor deity. Can’t rule that one out.
I know very little about American sports but this was a great story – thanks very much for sharing it!
I absolutely will not disagree with you about Portland’s doctors (or staff). I don’t disagree about his talent level. I don’t disagree about college skills not necessarily translating to the pro level. It happens. That’s not what Oden’s issues are. He has immense talent. When he has been healthy, he’s a pretty good player at the NBA level (though I would argue, not a patch on Durant’s impact on a given game). My point was that Oden was showing signs of chronic back and knee problems during his season at Ohio State. He’s one of those guys that grew so damn fast that his bones never had a chance to catch up. His failure to live up to the promise that he showed was not unprecedented, but was predictable. Your point about the incompetence of the Portland medical staff does not fall on deaf ears.
I hope he is able to overcome his injuries, I really do. He seems to be a good man and a class act with a huge drive to succeed and help his team win. But if he stays off the injury list this year, I’ll be shocked.
“AND WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU I BET YOU WATCH BORING FOOTBALL INSTEAD”
Actually, I’m in the camp of “don’t give a damn about any overpaid primadonnas playing any professional sport”–but, y’know, that’s just me.