To paraphrase James Joyce, "The Oden era is a nightmare from which I am still trying to awake." Maybe now we can all finally wake up and start putting the past behind us . . .
http://kfxx.stats.com/nba/story.asp?i=20120316141443665605208 Oden has expressed interest in playing for the Pacers. That would be one team I wouldn't mind seeing him play for.
Personally I don't think we should have waived him. There is still too much potential there for a relatively low cost.
I agree with tlong. I feel that he owes it to the city of Portland, the state of Oregon, if he's gonna attempt an NBA comeback (makes me laugh because that implies he actually played), it better happen here. Forget the team, the franchise...he owes it to Oregon. That lottery day was one of the greatest days of my life.
I wouldn't have waived him if I was the GM. I'd have left the option open for him to stay as a near minimum level free agent even if the chance was virtually zero. But I don't fault Oden at all if he's planning on playing for a different team. He wants to be close to home. He is still on crutches and will be rehabbing for the next year. Then if there are zero setbacks your talking about getting used to playing over the course of a full year after that. Nobody has ever came back from the surgeries he's had. With minimal complications he’s looking at finally returning to full strength for the 2015 playoffs. He's already given up half his life to a foreign region of the country he had no input on going to. These have been the darkest years of his life and he wants to return to home. I have no ill will towards him if he just wants to rehab closer to home and closer to his loved ones. I think some fans have unrealistic expectations for athletes they are fans of. He's a person and needs to select whatever path in life brings him the most happiness.
he is an unrestricted free agent. waiving him now does not prevent us from signing him to the exact same low cost contract you envision if we hadn't have waived him.
Yeah I actually just started thjinking of this after posting, I suppose it's true and you're right. The only advantage we lost is he would have had a ~$2mil cap hold so if we wanted to pay him MORE then that we could have used additionaly cap space first...... but I don't think there was any chance of that; we wouldn't have paid him more then his cap hold. So yeah cutting him shouldn't actually restrict us from signing him if he and the team wanted such a scenario... I'd expect he wants to stay close to home next season but if he would rather play for Paul Allen and we first exhaust all cap space I'd love to sign him back as the 15th man. I know he's spoken before about how bad he feels for having so much of Paul Allen's money and not providing any productivity, so it's not necessarly an impossible scenario. Gives me a little bit of a fools hope.
KP had nothing to do with Nate being coach, and LMA is still on the Blazers. Roy retired, and if Oden were healthy, he wouldn't be getting waived. Plus, Wallace was a Cho trade. So, the KP 'stench' is alive and well with LMA. Or are you advocating trading him for a draft pick, too?
