If the Blazers drafted Durant, nobody would have said the next day that it was a foolish pick. Nobody said that about picking Oden, either.
Denny, I forgot to tell you last month I was down in SD! Poway and Imperial Beach! I asked around and nobody seemed to know who you were.
Furthermore, if picking Oden was the wrong pick, each GM who would've picked Oden had they had the #1 pick should've been fired. Why keep a GM who makes bad decisions? But that's not what happened.
I have not yet applied to become a professional sports GM, because I want to build a career first. I still err due to my youth. But even I would have drafted Durant. That alone may get me the job, but I must publish my opinion early to establish my credentials later, so I have registered on this message board to record such a history of correct choices and build a resume.
Your logic is flawed, you're assuming Jordan would make it to the Finals with Drexler and Co., but that isn't a certainty. Jordan never made a dent in the Playoffs until Pippen arrived. These are all hypothetical situations to begin with. I believe Buck was the missing piece to our team in the Late 80's/Early 90's, as well as Pippen was the perfect running mate for Jordan. Whose to say any of those pieces would fit together anywhere else? After all, Basketball is a team sport.
You're making it more complicated than it really is. Look at it from a logical argument standpoint. Original premise from the thread title: KP was fired because he picked Oden over Durant. Reason: GM picks player A over player B with knowledge he has as of that day. Knowledge as of that day: Player A had 19 of 20 firms/draft experts who spend 2080 hours a year to become the subject matter experts in this topic all ahead of player B. GM's can only use a couple hundred hours and info from these sources to make their decisions. History: In the history of tracking consensus #1 overall picks, the other times there have been 95% or higher consensus on a pick have been - Shaq, LeBron, Oden, Rose, Blake Griffin and John Wall. Conclusion: If a GM being fired is directly caused by picking the #1 overall pick that 95% or higher of the draft firms that rate these guys for a living had as the consensus #1 pick. And the scenario in the reply is that the other 29 GMs would have also had the #1 overall pick that year in 30 different scenarios. Then all 30 GMs would had to have been fired since they all would have made the same decision as all 95%+ higher consensus picks have been picked #1 by the picking GM in the history of the draft.
Think of this as well. Had Seattle won the lottery, and then picked Oden (which they would have done), Cho would not be our GM, and he may even be unemployed. Instead, dropping to #2 by luck made him a hot commodity.
At the expense of arguably the greatest player ever? No, I wouldn't call that a good "trade." In Portland's place, I'd rather toss back Bowie/Buck Williams/the Finals appearance for a chance to see what Jordan and Drexler could do.
My logic is sound. A) We won 0 championships with Buck. B) Jordan is better than Buck Williams Those are the two statements I made in my post. We may haven't won any titles with Jordan but we definitely won zero with Buck.
Just as long as you don't make the assumption that Portland would win championships with Jordan as if it were a foregone conclusion. Considering we are changing history with this hypothetical scenario (1.21 GIGAWATTS!), there's no way to know what the results would have been. Like I said, I don't see the point in being so concerned over something that is done and over with. Durant is NOT a Blazer, never will be. Oden was our pick, deal with it. Why spend so much time on the topic?
Please, could people watch football or baseball, or read a book, or go for a walk, or take up knitting, or learn to dance, or jerk off? Anything more productive than an endless argument based on total speculation? Is it worth reading after Page 1 (I didn't)? Qyntel Woods and Greg Oden? Someone has too much time on his/her/its hand.
