Wow. The more I read about the Blazers and Oden...

The more I see this whole situation as a microcosm of of the human condition. Humans you see, want to believe something -- something big. We want to believe something so big that it makes our lives somehow seem -- well, seem like they are more than they are. There are all sorts of examples when you think about it. Once I was listening to a show on NPR about why people who had the least to gain from a Bush presidency were willing to vote for him even if it meant voting against their own self interests. In the story there was this young couple, the wife didn't work, they had 3 kids all under the age of five, and the husband might have had a job at a McDonald's. These people were barely making ends meet. When the reporter asked the husband why he supported Bush the kid answered, "Because he's a self made man. Just like me."

Last week reporters asked the Blazers front office some pretty penetrating questions. Not questions that were in any sense derogatory, but questions that needed answers given the Oden situation. Here is what Kevin Pritchard, Blazers GM had to say.

"We picked the right player. Greg is a world-class human being. He is going to be a great basketball player."

But lets examine these 3 sentences one at a time. Pritchard says the Blazers picked the right player. That means the right player for the Number 1 pick of this year's draft is a player with one leg noticeably longer than the other, has bad knees, wrists, and ankles, has a bulging disk in his back, is 19 and has already had a tonsillectomy and wrist surgery to repair something similar to a torn ACL in his wrist (see my earlier posts) before he has played one single NBA game.

"Greg is a world-class human being." Well Ghandi and Mother Teresa and the Dali Llama are world class human beings too and no one is wasting a lottery pick on them.

"He is going to be a great basketball player." Dude. Every time I read that quote, I want to scream. I want to scream because I look at the list of medical concerns that were known about this kid, I think of the stuff I noticed about him just by watching him play and all I can do is just shake my head in utter disbelief. How bad do you have to want something to be something it isn't to overlook this stuff, then come out of a hospital and say into a bank of microphones, "He's going to be a great basketball player." ? Sigh. Apparently, the kid can't even walk. And how do you see Oden, watch him limp around the gym, then within days watch a healthy Kevin Durant practically glide by you like he's some sort of basketball supermodel and go out with your coveted number 1 pick and use it on Oden? How?

Pritchard also maintains that a "bank" of doctors looked at Oden's physicals, including his knee and they all came back clean. Like I said you see what you want to see. Just like when some folks really wanted to find WMD's in Iraq. All those people wanting something to be the way it had to be. Probably happened in Portland. No one wanted to be the odd man/woman out saying hey, "This intelligence on Oden just isn't adding up." Well when you pay for yes men, this is what you get -- a number 1 draft pick that can't walk without a limp.