Sam Bowie will forever be remembered for being drafted before Jordan and spending more time on the injured list than on the court. Greg Oden taken before Kevin Durant looks to be following the same path as Bowie.
You should know by now that Oden is out for the rest of the year. This is his 2nd serious injury in 3 years so as of right now, it is looking very bleak that he will ever play again much less play up to his high draft pick status.
Wow..sometimes it's almost better not to have the #1 pick..What if they have taken Kevin because of Oden's injuries and he stays healthy for 10 years and becomes the next great center..Portland would have gone down in history as the team that passed on him. Talk about being in a quandary. I read a story he fractured his patella but he didn't hit or anything...just collapsed in a heap with it fractured? That doesn't sound right..
But that didn't happen, so now they will go down in history as the team that passed on Durant. HOOK 'EM, Texdoc
From the vid, it looks like the force of jumping off the floor did it, though he has a strange step to gather himself for the jump. The Link
This has to be utterly devastating for Oden. Portland was clearly a better team when he was healthy and on the court for a stretch of the season last winter/spring. He put in serious work in the offseason, dropped weight, was smiling again, and was poised to take his game to the next level this year. While I don't think he has acromegaly, his body features/proportions don't seem entirely normal. I can't put my finger on it regarding his appearance, but I think he will always be injury prone if he exerts his body at a pro-level of demand. In a related way, I remember coach Jimmy Johnson describing paying close attention to football players' proportions as a clue to their durability. In particular, he was on the lookout for huge muscled guys with little feet by proportion. It could be a sign of steroid use, which is something Johnson rightfully believed was an increased liability for muscle/tendon/ligament injuries. Steroid use can be a form of human induced hormone imbalance. I just wonder if Oden also had a hormone imbalance, albeit a natural one, that ended up being both a gift and a curse.
On a related note, I was flipping channels and one of the ESPN channels had Colin Cowherd and some woman talking about this, and Cowherd went on about how it was clear that if Oden comes back, great, but he's not the future of the program, and they're not going to be building the team around him. I found this amusing, and equally amusing that he didn't mention how he went ON AND ON during that draft about how Oden was the only choice - and it wasn't even close - how Durant couldn't bench press, and how big men win championships and how there's no way you could ever justify taking Durant over Oden because Durants come along all the time, but you only see a Greg Oden once in a generation.
