I was brooding gloomily over how many potentially great seasons of great center play the Blazers have been denied, from Oden, Walton, young Sabonis and even perhaps healthy Bowie, and I wondered what the best seasons we got were. I'm guessing Walton's season (cut short, natch) after the championship was pretty stellar. Can anyone work out maybe the top ten statistical seasons? Did Oden make it, PER-wise? (How'd Duck do? He was an All-Star one year, after all.)
I set the minimum number of games played to 50, and included C-F as selecting only C excluded Walton, but here ya go: Sorted by PER. Oden comes in at 14, Bowie at 24 and Duck at 36. Best Statistical Seasons by Blazers Centers
Not a surprise that Sabonis is the unquestioned best center of the Blazers' modern era by those statistics. He made some great contributions as a center in his early to mid 30's. And the center during the early '90s, when Sabas was in his prime, playing in Europe? Not very good "PER" years for the centers at the time - Kevin Duckworth and Chris Dudley.
I knew Sabas was awesome! Yao Ming crossed with Steve Nash. He's in my top 3 Blazers ever. Walton's amazing '77-8 season only beats his ROOKIE season by .1 PER. He had a +20 PER at age 38! Youngest: Greg, at 21. The youngest player to have a better PER was Walton at 23. Sigh.
