The Curious Case of Greg Oden

By Andrew Brown 

Greg Oden, the Benjamin Button of the NBA, is back in the league.

The big man came out of Ohio State in 2006 after a freshman year that put the Buckeyes in the national championship game (where they proceeded to get their asses stomped by Florida but hey, minor details).

Oden was going to be the next great NBA center. He was big, strong, and quick; he was the athletic specimen that Dwight Howard wished he could have been at the age of 19 combined with the defensive savvy of Tyson Chandler and the face of a present-day Bill Cosby.

He dominated on both ends of the court, starting his freshman campaign hampered by a right wrist injury, forcing him to play the first weeks of the season with only his off-hand at his disposal. He averaged a double-double anyway.

Oden was such a dominant animal that he was the consensus number 1 pick, AHEAD of Kevin Durant. Nearly every GM, looking on that particular draft, agreed that Oden was a sure-fire superstar. The next Hakeem, Shaq, Kareem, you name it.

And beyond Oden’s undeniable skill set, a skill set that ran as deep as his furrowed brow lines, Portland held claim over the first overall pick and the draft rights to either Oden or Durant.

Portland, the franchise that drafted then-budding superstar center Sam Bowie ahead of some athletic wing player named Michael Jordan, only to lose Bowie to injury, had a chance for redemption. Surely picking the next game-changing center couldn’t backfire twice, they undoubtedly assured themselves as David Stern echoed the pick that would once again define the franchise for the next decade.

Oden went to Portland, Durant to Seattle, and it was in the books.

Oden showed flashes early on but then, as though it was a preordained fact that the gods of basketball hate Portland, Oden suffered a major knee injury.

From then on Oden’s career was one rehab session after another, only to be followed by a second knee injury, thus forcing the jolly giant into early retirement.

The man that once was introduced to the world as an advertising chameleon couldn’t adapt, and for the second time in the history of the franchise, Portland was left dumbfounded; their hands empty and a once-in-a-generation talent staring at them while boasting the uniform of a team picking after the Blazers.

Now Oden is making a return, picking Miami (appropriate because if his career fails to catch fire then he will at least fit in with the other senior citizens in South Beach).

The gamble is a good one by the Heat: the franchise has already proven that it can win multiple titles without a good center so at his worst Oden will be a quality back-up big man with the experience of a battle weary veteran, but the youth of some of the league’s greatest talent.

At his best, however, Oden will give LeBron a monster inside that would could hang and bang with some of the best centers in the league, and if he looks like even half the player he projected to be then he will have no problem thrashing the majority of the centers in a league that has trended away from the dominant interior focus.

Additionally, Miami has four real competitors in the East: Indiana, Chicago, New York, and Brooklyn. All of these teams have centers that are shot blockers and excellent defenders that can cause trouble for the driving LeBron and Wade’s of the world. The inability to absorb the defensive attention of Roy Hibbert (Indiana), Joakim Noah (Chicago), Tyson Chandler (New York), and Kevin Garnett (Brooklyn) is the only real advantage these four teams have over Miami on the defensive end.

Oden solves that immediately.

And if Oden pans out into most of what he would have been (which thanks to modern rehab techniques and medicine is a real possibility) then Miami will have a big man of the future to fend off the only real way to stop LeBron.

Translation: LeBron James will be more unstoppable than he already is. What Miami has done is assure that James will stay in South Beach, rather than bolt for the bright lights of LA or nostalgia and the potential of a triumphant return as Cleveland’s prodigal son.

James’s future is likely in the hands (or… rather the knees) of Greg Oden. Talk about a good storyline for the season.

Move over Johnny Football, real things are happening.