I think he'd be heading down the road of a bust. You give him 3 more MPG and he averages 1 more point and .5 more rebounds? Yeah, that ain't good. Especially after an entire offseason of preparation. I think his ceiling would officially be lowered, significantly. I mean heck, Kwame Brown and Michael Olowokandi had seasons where they put up better numbers than that.
He's none of the above ... he's still pretty much an unknown quantity. If he stays healthy and can learn to cut the fouls down then I'd say he'll eventually be at least a 15/10/2 guy, which may never live up the ridiculous "next Bill Russell" hype, but plenty good enough for this team.
What's funny is that most people expected him to be a 15/10/2 player this season, including myself. Now we're just hoping he can get there someday. I think it's no big secret that he's been a disappointment, I just wish people would stop making excuses for him.
Yeah I remember reading people saying this in the off-season/pre-season and I thought it was pretty optimistic for a guy who hadn't played ball in a year and a half and was coming off of a major knee injury, I think my expectations were more like 12/9/1.5, but I also assumed he'd average closer to 28 minutes a game Am I making excuses? Maybe, but it is what it is, there's no point in sweating it, it's in the books, now we see what happens going forward.
It takes at least a year after microfracture to get your legs back. G.O. has shown the ability to be a pretty good defensive player for just his rookie season. He needs to work a lot on his offensive game this summer. Develop some type of go-to move that he is comfortable with. He needs to learn how to stay on the floor, and there's no reason to think IMO that he'll be a great player for us.
Nik said "at least," he didn't suggest that that's the best to hope for. Oden would have been a 15/10/2 player this season if he hadn't been so foul-prone. Is it his fault that he's foul-prone? Yes. But fouls being the only thing holding him back from the season people envisioned from him is hardly horrible or bust-like. And this is despite not being fully recovered from microfracture. There's a fairly large difference between "excuses" and actual factors that describe the reality of what happened. If he has another season like this one next year, when he's presumably recovered from the surgery and has had a season of experience and an off-season to train, then there's something to worry about.
Yes. Hell, I expected better numbers from him this year. Overall, this season has been a disappointment for GO. I don't see any tangible progress from the start of the year to now.
He actually looked A LOT better at the start of the year. The 20/15 game against Golden State and a few other double/doubles after that and then *bam* he reverts to a player that hurts the team more than he helps. He progressively got worse as the season went along.
Might have something to do with injuring his other knee and missing 15 games? Just throwing that out there
Considering he would start the game on the bench with either a heating pad or an icepack on his left knee (the one he chipped) I'd wager it's still been bothering him.
Oden saved his worst for last My God, just when we thought it couldn't get any worse . . . Oden commits 2 fouls in 2 minutes to start the game, loses the ball yet again while trying to back Yao down, fumbles away a good pass, misses a wide-open dunk, etc., etc. It's a comedy of errors with him every night. Somebody please tell me this kid learned a single thing this season, because I can't see it. Sure, he had a few good games, but in hindsight they seem more like luck than anything else. He has lousy footwork, lousy reaction time, lousy instincts, etc., etc. And he has the worst hands of any big man I have ever seen. The guy drops more passes and gets more balls knocked out of his hands than anybody I can remember. I hate to end this season on a negative note, but I just had to get this off my chest. Greg Oden is a PROJECT. Not a No. 1 pick, but a PROJECT. He has a long, long way to go, and I hope to God he starts getting there one of these days. Right now, it ain't lookin' too promising.
Re: Oden saved his worst for last Sorry, but it's the end of the year and I have to vent. I hope I regret this thread next year when Oden is tearing up the league. I really do.
Re: Oden saved his worst for last More like the entire team outside of Roy and LaMarcus saved their worst for last.
I'm going to take a wager and say that little chip is still floating around in his knee is going to be removed in the next few weeks and then everyone will freak out because of a minor surgery to remove floating debris. But that is just a wager. And it would explain some things.
