Greg Oden: Done

I’m sure you’ve all heard by now that Greg Oden will be undergoing microfracture knee surgery, meaning he will be out for his entire rookie season. If you’ll refer back to this post: http://erikgruber.blogspot.com/2007/06/nba-draft-thursday-june-28-7-pm-et.html, you’ll see that I was a Durant guy all along.

I felt from the outset that Durant had more, as Hubie Brown likes to call it, “Tremendous Upside Potential (or TUP for short).” After watching Durant’s success (and Oden’s ineptitude) in the summer league and, perhaps more tellingly, watching him light up proven stars in the Olympic tryouts, I think I’ve been justified. I’ve become self-satisfied in my keen scouting abilites. I could even be called smug.

But I never hoped, or imagined, that Oden would be subjected to microfracture knee surgery before the true battle for supremacy even began. Without Oden having an opportunity to compete, Durant’s successes are going to be in many ways diminished. Durant can’t prove himself to be the best basketball player ever (that’s on the record, remember it 20 years down the road) when the career of the other best player from his era is marred by injury.

“Microfracture knee surgery” have got to be the scariest words an athlete, team or fan can hear. It becomes necessary when there is a loss of cartilage in the knee, exposing bone and causing pain. The surgery consists of poking small holes into the bone. As a blood clot forms from the holes, new cartilage is created.

The problem lies in rehab. It takes time for the new cartilage to form, and when it does the new cartilage is weaker. Because this is a relatively new procedure, no one really knows what to do with rehab. For a few players (Amare Stoudemire, Jason Kidd) the procedure seems to have worked. For many others (Kenyon Martin, Chris Webber, Jamal Mashburn), the injury plagued them for the rest of their careers. Once the surgery is performed, an athlete becomes damaged goods. They may play again, but that injured knee will never be at full strength.

It’s a sad story for everyone involved. The Portland Trail Blazers are already known as the team that selected Sam Bowie over Micheal Jordan in 1984. Is it possible that they’ve done it again? Many are now saying (hindsight is 20-20) that they should have known Oden would be susceptible to injury. One of his legs is a full inch shorter than the other, he has a bulging disc in his back, and ESPN’s Bill Simmons claims he walks like a 50-year-old.

Oden would have been good for the NBA as well. He has a gregarious, gentle personality, always seems to be smiling, and seems to have a good head on his shoulders. At 19 he exhibits more maturity than most NBA players will ever attain. It’s a shame his status as superstar now hangs in the balance, resting on the success of a relatively mysterious medical procedure.

Let’s just hope he makes a full recovery. We all want to see Oden and Durant battling it out for years to come.

Thanks for reading.