Buckeye Fail
I was reading Bill Simmons, The Sports Guy, mail bag and came across him ripping Greg Oden. I figured my fellow mgobloggers would get a kick out of it.
Q: Your willingness to write off Greg Oden (birth date: 1988) goes against everything I like about your columns. We get it Simmons -- Portland should have taken Durant over Oden. Why does this have to mean that he's a bust? It's too early to tell and you know it.
--Mike B., Vancouver
SG: I have to apply The Darko Corollary here. You can trot out every tired excuse you want to explain why a "can't miss" prospect is missing -- and remember, Oden was a "can't miss" 22 months ago -- but at some point, we have to see something. Remember when Detroit fans kept making excuses for Darko as he toiled away on their bench and looked spazzy and overwhelmed during games, and the months kept passing, and he wasn't showing anything, and, eventually, all those games added up and we realized, "Wait, Darko doesn't have it"?
We're getting there with Oden. Look how well Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah played in the 2009 postseason. Look how much Rajon Rondo grew from Season 1 to Season 3. Look at some of the beauties Durant had this season; same for Kevin Love or Brook Lopez, or even Russell Westbrook. If you're headed toward greatness, or even goodness, you're going to show us flashes of your ultimate destiny in your embryonic years. That's just the law. You can't go from "I am doing nothing" to "I'm an All-Star!" unless you're Jamaal Magloire (who immediately went back to nothing). It's a series of baby steps. And through two seasons, Oden has shown nothing other than a remarkable ability to suffer bad luck with injuries and draw empathy from his fans. I don't know what else to say. If he's good, let's see it. We could always use more blue-chippers. But he hasn't even shown hints of flashes. It's been a full-fledged blackout for two seasons. When you're clumsy, you're clumsy. We should have seen something by now. Just remember the lessons of the Darko era. After a while, it stops being an accident.
(And by the way, after watching Melo in the 2009 playoffs, can we officially say that "Darko over Melo" was one of the worst NBA front-office decisions ever? Are we there yet? What else needs to happen? Remember, this was a crazy decision AT THE TIME. At least in my mind. See my 2003 Draft Diary and 2003 Season Preview for further evidence. Personally, I think Joe Dumars got robbed for 2009 Executive of the Year -- he did a better job turning the Nuggets into a contender than Mark Warkentien did.)
I'm actually rooting for Oden to have a solid career; he gives the appearance of being a pretty good guy, early-life knee injuries are shitty, and the NBA could use some more quality true centers.
And I don't read enough Simmons to have much of an opinion about him, but his reply here strikes me as incredibly stupid:
"...he hasn't even shown hints of flashes. It's been a full-fledged blackout for two seasons."
Apparently Simmons is counting an entire season rehabing from microfracture a "blackout", which seems kind of weird when assessing the arc of a player's progress. And this past year, having not played basketball in a year and having not played a full season since high school, Oden averaged 9 points and 7 boards in 21 minutes and had the second highest PER of all rookies. Granted he fouls at a ridiculous rate, he has a bunch of other stuff to work on, and he probably won't ever be as valuable a player as Durant, but I think his past year's performance safely counts as a "hint of a flash" of something.
Way too early to make grand pronouncements of Greg Oden's career. I have not seen Oden play very often, but he is big, can run the floor and is only 21. Plus Oden missed a year with a serious injury and is on a talented young team.
I looked back at some NBA big men who had similar 1st years statisticaly as Oden. Guys like Garnett, Parrish, Mchale, Laimbeer were quite mediocre their rookie seasons.
It will be interesting to see how much Oden improves his 2nd season. My biggest concern for Oden is that he goes the way of Sam Bowie and cannot stay healthy.
Yes, Durant would have been a better safer pick 2 years after the fact but Oden may still have a great career. I wish him the best.
I could be wrong, but isn't Oden in his second season...Unless you mean his second season injury free. If you do mean that then disregard this inquiry. In fact, why don't we just act like this never happened.
i guess the NBA cant draft people based on how old their faces looked, lebron who looked 30 worked out fine but oden looked 45 and was a bust
What has LeBron ever won? I am sure there are some fans out there who consider LeBron a bust.
Let's not forget, Darko has a title! Did Chuck Neavitt get one?
lebron a bust? he just won league mvp. he's 24. he's been to the finals, conf finals, and now is back in the conf finals and has a great chance to win it all. for every 1 person who may consider him a bust (i cant think of any) there are 20 who already think that he is going to be the best player of all-time.
I think he was being sarcastic.
if so, i suck.
My sarcasm meter needed a change of sarcasm fuses after that one...
this town is tired of F@#king up the draft and they know Oden is a role player at best. Talk is about trading him if they can this year. Not likely to happen with his large contract. My GF sold him an iPhone last year and he returned it a week later saying he couldn't figure it out. No shit, a week later sports talk radio out here was reporting how dumb he really is. I know grammar , f@#k off.
Is that the local abbreviation for Portland? Where does the X come from?
Often the airport abbreviation is used for the city. Don't ask me where the X comes from (or the D, for that matter).
The "X" that is occasionally used in the IATA's airport code refers to the fact that the airport is international; it "crosses" countries.
I was wondering about that--the other example I could think of was LAX.
Tired of fucking up the draft? Dude, you got at minimum 2 of the best 3 players on the board in 2006 (Aldridge and Roy, and I'd take either of them over the only other candidate, Rudy Gay). Bayless was a solid pick last year, and Martell Webster was no shittier than anyone else picked after 4th in 2005.
And by huge contract, do you mean Oden's rookie deal? You need to stop collecting basketball info from hipsters and/or talk radio.
*There actually were some good players taken later in 2005, like Andruw Bynum, Danny Granger, and David Lee, but who knew? And you'll note that Oden's first year stats compare extremely favorably to Bynum's and are actually remarkably similar to Bynum's 2nd year stats.
Brandon Roy, LaMarcus Aldridge = fucking up the draft?
Darko fucking sucked. It's even worse every time you watch a game and realize the Pistons could have drafted Carmello Anthony, Dwayne Wade(I know he spells his name like a fucktard but I don't care), Chris Bosh, or a dozen other players who actually play professional basketball at a high level for a living and are not considered a human victory cigar.
Oden sucks donkey balls right now. He still has a chance to become something greater than the laughing stock of sports blogs for the next few years. Part of me (The irrational side) hopes he tanks just so people make Oden jokes instead of Darko jokes.
Your post made me think they are the Jokes brothers, Oden & Darko.
ps hating on Greg Oden in a broader attempt to hate on tOSU is really pathetic. we're better than that. this reminds me a lot of what state or tOSU fans would do.
Im fine with most guys who leave OSU for professional sports. I don't really hold their university against them, and general indifference is normally my reaction. But some players I just cannot bring myself to like after years of disdaining them. Ex: Laurinaitis, Troy Smith. Chris Wells will always bear the mark of his years destroying Michigan. Should he make it to the pros, Terrell Pryor will remind me for years to come of spurned love, what could have been, and what an asshole he is.
Oden doesn't really bear any such scar. He was only around for a year, and they were a lot better than Michigan in 05-06 (NIT runner up vs. NCAA runner up). However, getting an OSU player on a team I root for can be challenging. As a Yankees fan I want to like Swisher a lot: hes been playing pretty well and is a great character guy, but his OSU heritage still holds me back a little.
In Oden's case, I hope he gets over the injury hump. He's now missed 103/162 games, and I wish that on no one. And yea he has been kinda of a bust. It's true its early enough that there remains a chance and time for him to redeem himself and succeed, but for now he stinks of Sam Bowie.
ok, i think we agree then. i specified Oden for a reason.. not troy smith or chris wells or Laurinaitis.
I'm not going to root for the demise of possibly the nicest guy to ever don a Buckeye uniform.
I agree with Simmons. You either show your value or you don't. Oden has yet to show a sparkle. Could he? Sure. But look at the names of those Bill mentions who were not as heralded as Oden and they have shown glimpses or proven their worth. Has Oden yet? It's one of those situations where Oden would have benefited by staying in college another year.
The bright side is Oden has his money and if he's smart with it, he'll be ok.
from getting his injury before signing an NBA contract? Obviously we don't know what would have happened if he had stayed in school, but when he started his NBA career off with a season-ending injury, I don't think we could know if he would have been better off. Not a big disagreement -- I'm just saying that if he really is injury prone, it was good to sign a big contract before people realized it.
It's one of those situations where Oden would have benefited by staying in college another year.
This makes zero sense. Oden was the #1 overall draft pick in 2007. He literally could not have raised his stock any higher by staying.
You may right, but one more year of college probably would have turned into 2 because of his injury.
i'm a chameleon!
This thread is stocked with by people with only a small, faint, glimmering hint of knowledge about the NBA:
1. Oden should not have stayed in school longer. He as drafted 1st over one of the most heralded prospects in history (Durant). He could have improved his stock no more. He wouldn't have been coached better - do you really think Matta is a better coach than Nate McMillan and an NBA staff? Ohio State fans don't even think that.
2. It's too early. He hasn't been a failure for two seasons. He's been extremely foul-prone for one. He missed a year due to injury. And he's not Darko. Darko played nothing but garbage time for 3 years, and had been a BACKUP for a lower division European team. Oden was the best player on the 2nd best team in college basketball. He had a track record of success, Darko didn't. Again: At this point Darko couldn't crack a rotation, Oden averaged 9 points and 7 boards in 21 minutes a game.
3. He had microfracture surgery LAST YEAR. Even the most successful cases, like Amare Stoudemire, take more than a full year to come back from it. Others, like Antonio McDyess, come back but aren't the same player. Others, like Gilbert Arenas, never come back.
You go boy, well stated
Well said. I never understood Simmons's somewhat irrational distaste for certain players and teams, such as Oden. Durant has proven to be a revelation, but at the same time he has toiled on some of the worst teams in the league, and the little I've seen of him in the pros reminds me a great deal about his time in college - a great offensive force with limited defensive intensity. I personally think that Durant will be a great scorer in this league, but I don't see him necessarily rising to an elite level unless he improves his size/strength and learns to be a better defender.
But getting back to Oden, the guy is injury prone, but at the same time he is still quite young (he's only 21) and showed during his one year in college that he can dominate games against good players. Once he recovers from the microfracture surgery, I think his mobility will return and the fouls will drop. Will he ever be a great scorer? Probably not. But he could certainly be a more offensively-gifted version of Ben Wallace, a player that I suspect Portland would accept in a heartbeat. To call Oden a bust this early in his career is foolish, and makes Simmons look rather childish and vindictive.
As for Darko, everyone in Detroit will admit that he was a bust, but it was not like Dumars went against the grain with that pick. Darko was going to go no later than #3, and with Prince Dertroit did not feel it needed another SF, so a young, athletic big man made the most sense. And with Melo, I am not sure that Pistons team beats LA or even gets past the Pacers/Nets logjam in the East. Larry Brown and Melo would have been a horrible match (remember the friction that existed between the two on the Olympic team), and those Pistons teams thrived when drama was kept to a minimum. At that stage in their respective careers, Brown would not have humored the strong-willed rookie, and Melo would never have taken to Brown's reliance on older players. Heck, Brown was notorious for working over Darko's confidence until it was pulp, and I'm fairly certain he would have done the same with Melo. I'm not saying that Darko was a great pick or a good player; but considering the pervailing wisdom at the time and the coaching situation, I'm not sure that Melo OR Darko would have been a good draft selection.
Yep. The consensus in the spring of 2003 was that Darko was the best Euro prospect EVER - better than Dirk or anyone else. It's not like he was this out-of-left-field reach that only Dumars believed in. A lot of his harshest critics now are people who were talking him up at the time.
Anyway, the Pistons ended up turning the Darko pick into Rodney Stuckey, who may not be at Wade/Melo's level, but he's a solid player all the same.
but, that SG stuff was freakin hilarious. I have no idea if it is accurate, and either way it has absolutely no impact on my tiny little life.
Remember when Detroit fans kept making excuses for Darko as he toiled away on their bench and looked spazzy and overwhelmed during games, and the months kept passing, and he wasn't showing anything, and, eventually, all those games added up and we realized, "Wait, Darko doesn't have it"?
spazzy!
Mama Mia!
Oden Smoden. This is a journalistic gold mine!
Happy Memorial Day everyone--Especially you vets!
Pinning down the logical elements of humor is probably beyond the scope of this post, but I think that almost all truly funny things are based around an accurate and perceptive insight into some kernel of reality. Bill Simmons' screed is not funny.