Hell of a game in Portland tonight featuring a battle of former Texas titans. LA with 38 pts, 13 rebs, 5 asts, 2 stls, 0 turnovers and KD with 33 pts in Portland's 111-104 victory over OKC. Aldridge is quietly having an MVP type season for the Trailblazers and Durant is well, ...Durant.
Both are going off, but give credit to Aldridge. Not many experts saw this coming! Blazers are playing some ball!
Can you image Portland with Aldridge & Durant? Would be sick combo. Bet the Blazers are still regretting that Oden pick to this day.
A big part of that is the still-popular myth that a great big-man is more important than a great forward. There may have been times in the past when that was the case, but not today. The argument I remember over and over was "Look at guys like Kevin Garnet? How many titles has he won? That type of player won't pick a team up and carry them. Then look at guys like Shaq and Hakeem." Of course the problem with that logic was that those big men all had franchise players around them. Even assuming it was true, the first mistake was probably assuming that Greg Oden was a once-in-a-generation post player to begin with.
I can't recall Sam Bowie's injury issues in college if there were any of significance, or Oden's for that matter, but it is strange that they both end up in Portland with chronic career threatening issues. It seems like in this day and age they would have screening procedures to at least alert teams to potential conditions such as these.
