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.

Top pick Oden out for season after knee surgery

Yep.

So let me say this now. I was going to write this blog this morning and didn't get to so I missed my chance to say Oden probably wouldn't play this season before the news came out. So, I'll just let my next prediction fly. Greg Oden will never play a full season in the NBA. If he plays a game, I'll be shocked. There I said it. That is my prediction. If you haven't seen the news here is a link.

You know the only way anyone with any real sense about basketball missed this is if they weren't paying attention. Everyone got so caught up in the hype they just threw out all the information about this kid staring them in the face. Like one of my friends, the one who called to let me know the news thus stealing my blog's thunder, said to me, "It's like they dated the hottest girl on campus -- the one with super grades, great parents, awesome in bed etcetera, and decided to ignore the fact she was HIV positive." This would describe not only the Portland Trailblazers, the NBA at large, but also everyone in the media and the whole sports universe. As the saying goes, "The emperor has no clothes and he's just flat out naked."

Oden to have arthroscopic knee surgery? WTF?

I really don't know how to say this. The man hasn't even played in a single NBA game and he has a week immune system and suspect knees already? Sigh... I don't know what the deal is here. But it is becoming real clear that something is amiss. How else do you explain this?

Anyway, the story so far is that Oden felt pain in his knee while working out. An MRI revealed some cartilage issues. No timetable for his return has been set as this will be determined after the surgery is completed.

It is the last thing that worries me. So far there is no timetable for Oden's return. That makes me think this could be more serious than they are reporting. I honestly hope Oden is going to be ok. But it does make me wonder about some things. Oden is still really young and already he has been under the knife twice in one year. Three times if you count the tonsillectomy. The wrist surgery was in June of 2006.

When he underwent surgery in 2006, there was also no timetable. Could this be because something was amiss back then? I wonder? Remember T.J. Ford? One of the reasons that played heavily in Ford's decision to turn pro early was his back. He got the contract first then dealt with the issue in the pros. I wonder if the same thing is happening here? Could it be there is something wrong with Oden's connective tissues that the wrist injury was a precursor for?

Even more intriguing is how they described Oden's wrist injury back then. "The coach compared the injury to a torn ACL in the knee and said the ligament in the wrist is what gives a player the ability to grip the basketball." If you want to see the whole story on this quote, here is a link.

Whatever happens, this is a story worth looking into more deeply.