A long but entertaining article from Willamette Week. Not sure where the writer gets that this is Oden's 3rd mf surgery but he does get in a few good swipes at Quick, fans on forums, Mike & Mike and the reporters covering the Blazers in general. Enjoy! It was a dark and stormy night. The Bulls were beating the Spurs on ESPN. I’m not attached to either team (I preferred the Tyrus and Kirk Bulls, thanks—I like my basketball teams like I like my women: With issues), but my head was in the game, largely because Derrick Rose is a funny kind of point guard. I like him because he plays an emotional game but he’s not a particularly emotional guy; It’s as if his sole means of self-expression comes from dribbling, passing and cutting to the hoop. The game went to commercial, and I was talking to my girlfriend about a tense interaction between our cat, Phineas Maple Jarman, and the kitten we naively adopted from the Humane Society to be his new best friend, whom we have tentatively named “Sir Arthur Duckworth.” In mid-stupid-sentence, I saw Oden’s face on a SportsCenter update. It took a second to register, but the words “miss the season” and “microfracture surgery” registered somehow. Why are they reporting that again? Did the tapes get mixed up? I went to my email inbox and there it was. “TRAIL BLAZERS CENTER GREG ODEN TO UNDERGO MICROFRACTURE SURGERY FRIDAY.” My first thought was “that poor bastard.” My second thought was “it’s really over, isn’t it?” My third thought was “Oh, fuck, I really don’t want to walk or ride my bike to this press conference in the rain.” http://blogs.wweek.com/news/2010/11/18/god-and-greg-oden-an-almost-live-special-report/
Now we know why I don't get my sports fix from the Willamette Week. I mean, I like the somewhat earthy way they write, but their holier than thou attitude is pretty silly.
"Hard to accept the knee-jerk reaction that it's all the medical staff's fault" is what I took from it.
I'm glad I read that ... my level of trust in Greg's body is as low as ever, but it does shame me a little that at times I've been pretty quick to heap scorn on Greg's head from time to time for his fragility and suffering. It's hard to remember that most everybody in the organization is pretty well intentioned and wants to do right by the fans and themselves and that these are real people, not just objects and machinery in a sports franchise.
Thanks for posting this SPD. It was almost cathartic to read about how those in the inner circle are devastated too... or... it was assuring to know my empathy for Greg has company with those that matter. I'll be checking out more of this guy's stuff STOMP
So I finally had time to read this (it's long, I had it in a tab for later reading) and it is very good. A very warm account, the type you rarely see in sports journalism. Humanizing.
