None of the No. 1 picks mentioned above -- Olowokandi, LaRue Martin, Pervis Ellison, Bargnani, Kwame Brown -- were as highly rated coming out of college as Oden. In fact, it's not even close. Oden was hailed as the second coming of Bill Russell and other great big men--and every team in the league was dying to get him. Hence, his struggles were more surprising than those of the aforementioned picks. However, I will agree that anyone who declared Oden a "bust" was jumping the gun. I certainly never called him a bust, I only commented on how remarkably tentative and out-of-sync he looked. And I was certainly not the only one to comment on this.
Dude, did any of those other guys have microfracture surgery directly before their rookie year? Get it?
Aside from the fact that Brown and Bargnani didn't "come out of college," that was simply not what you said. Oden looked tentative and confused in his first 20 games, I would agree. But that's honestly not a surprise, considering he's still learning the NBA game. At the same time, I think it's easy to exaggerate how great Oden seems after the last five games. He's only faced a tough center once - Emeka Okafor - and he was playing the second night of a back-to-back, in which the first game went into double OT. I'll reserve judgment on whether Oden has truly broken through after I see another few weeks of games. Pulling for you, Greg.
So, that's not what you said originally. You said: You didn't mention expectations, hype, highly rated, etc. You only asked about No. 1 picks that struggled more than Oden and I gave several examples that did, including some very recent. If you change the question, of course the answer changes. Actually, you did. Again, in your own words: This is what I meant by a selective memory. BNM
Taking the whole season into account, he does have the highest PER of any rookie in the game. His rebounding rate is fantastic and his field goal percentage is excellent. On the non-numerical tip, his passing has looked excellent and his defense definitely seems to make a positive impact. Really, his only weakness has been fouls limiting his minutes. For a rookie center, he's been having a pretty great rookie season. That's just hard for some to see because his limited minutes keep his raw per-game averages down and the expectations were way too high, making him disappointing in a relative sense even if he's been objectively very good.
I wish we could find all the super cynical posts about Oden and have them on one thread...it would be pretty funny to check them all out
Here's what David Thorpe had to say about Oden on January 28th http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/columns/story?columnist=thorpe_david&page=Rookies-090128
The only reason he will not likely put up Dwight Howard-like offensive numbers (20+ ppg) is due to the offensive balance this team has. Put him on a shite team and make him the focal point, and he averages over 25 ppg/15 boards.
That doesn't exactly answer the question. Weren't you one of those that were worried that Oden was a bust?
Is he not allowed to change his mind with more evidence? Would you rather, like so many of us do on this board, continue holding an opinion no matter what happens in the real world? Or are you trying to goad him into stating that he was wrong and to throw himself on the mercy of the RC2 community? Ed O.
