Simmons... on "what if blazers picked durant"

Its painful...so reader beware


What if Portland had taken Kevin Durant over Greg Oden?
Here's what we knew about Oden heading into the 2007 Draft: owned Ewing-like potential as a rebounder and shotblocker … struggled with a broken wrist during his freshman year at Ohio State … only played one "Wow!" game (the '07 NCAA Championship: 25 points, 12 rebounds, 4 blocks in defeat against Florida's Joakim Noah and Al Horford) … his right leg was one inch longer than his left leg (a red flag for potential knee/feet/back issues) … openly admitted that he didn't love basketball and once wanted to become a dentist … frightened everyone in Portland with a jittery pre-draft workout … looked and walked like a thirty-six-year-old man.

Meanwhile, Durant lived and breathed basketball, became a national phenomenon during his only Texas season, crushed his Portland workout and had no conceivable offensive ceiling. Throw in Portland's tortured history with fragile centers and, as the years pass, it's becoming harder to fathom that the Blazers willingly decided, "Screw the sure thing, let's take the big guy with uneven legs who played one great college game." But that's what they did. Because we love revising history over time, owner Paul Allen and then-general manager Kevin Pritchard have been protected by the "Come on, anyone would have taken Oden, you always take a franchise center, it's not their fault he keeps getting injured" defense. That presumes Oden was considered a sure thing -- like Kareem, Ewing or Hakeem -- and ignores those six months everyone spent wondering about him before the 2007 Draft. Like me, Boston GM Danny Ainge liked Durant as the top pick for one reason: Durant was the sure thing, not Oden. If you followed Durant in college (and Ainge fell head over heels for him, as did I), you knew about his work ethic, leadership, character and scoring DNA. I thought Durant was a genetic freak: like Tracy McGrady crossed with Plastic Man, someone God created to make baskets and get to the line. Oden left you hoping he stayed healthy, hoping basketball would become more important to him, hoping his spotty college year wasn't an aberration, hoping he developed a low-post game and a killer instinct … for a sure thing, you sure were doing a lot of hoping. How was that any different than the Bowie/Jordan dilemma 23 years earlier? When Durant became the youngest scoring champ ever and placed second in the 2010 MVP balloting -- as Oden recovered from his second season-ending knee injury, no less -- Portland's decision barreled into the "What If" chapter six years earlier than expected.

So what if the Blazers picked Durant instead of Oden? They become the fledgling Western Conference juggernaut of the 2010s (not Oklahoma City); Portland becomes a legitimate 2010 destination for LeBron; any successfully unconventional decision would be called "a Pritchard"; and everyone in Portland would be so perpetually happy that it would never rain there again. Instead, we have to start bracing for the 2029 or 2030 Draft, when Portland wins another lottery and finds itself stressing between Sure Thing Potential Superstar Scorer X over Possibly Fragile Franchise Center X as everyone else wonders, "Wait a second, we're doing this again?" One of these generations, the Blazers will get it right.

 

yawn. whomever had the #1 pick would have done the same, so I don't sweat it.

 

+2.

 

I love it when people use the "Blazers had bad luck in the past with centers" as a reason to pass on Oden. Everybody knows that Walton's bad feet have an impact on a player's knees 30 years later.

 

My wife hates "all-time" stats between teams for this very reason. "I don't care what the Blazers are all-time versus Phoenix! It doesn't actually matter!" To be fair, she does statistical analysis for a living, so she see it very differently than a fan would.

 

Thanks Bill, for rubbing salt in the wound. What a Dick.

 

That draft should have taught the NBA front offices a very valuable lesson:

Stay the FUCK away from prospects with serious red flags on their pre-draft physicals.

Lesson learned. We get it, Bill.

 

Down, Not Out.

It's all good, our time horizon has been stretched waay out now that we gotta figure out how to use B-Roy.

 

I wonder just how serious Oden's health concerns were during the pre-draft process

 

Yet most of our fan base wanted to pick Blair.

 

Is there a link to an article Simmons wrote before the draft, advocating Durant over Oden? Or did he not say that.

 

"but we already had paul pierce, so naturally I would have still drafted durant. derrrrrrr"

 

An infinite asymptote.

 

Here is a mock draft prior to the 2007 draft that shows Simmons' preference.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=nbamockdraft/070627

 

Is this going to be an annual thing?

Simmons should pitch this to ESPN. Every Christmas he'll have the "Bill Simmons Christmas Special" where he'll sit in a rocking chair with a bunch of little kids and a crackling fire.

"Gather round boys and girls, for I am going to tell you the story of Greg Oden and the Portland Trail Blazers..."

 

So THAT'S why he keeps crowing. He's reminding us he picked Durant. I think the comedian in him was just trying to be different. Fanball had the same motive--of the 15 biggest mock drafts, only they chose Durant. Yes, 14 of 15 chose Oden.

http://www.nba.com/features/draft2007_consensus.html

In this mock, Chad Ford picked in a different order from the mock he did with Simmons.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/lottery07/mockdraft

Others: http://www.nbadraft.net/mocks/2007_nba_mock_draft.html

http://www.mynbadraft.com/2007-NBA-Mock-Draft

So, there are 18 more mocks. I found only one choosing Durant--Fanball. Of course, trolls can respond that GMs don't follow mock drafts, so it's irrelevant.

 

Do you have notarized video of this hearsay?

 

Hindsight = Looking up your ass.