Dorks And Losers

Once and for all, hope­fully this whole draft deba­cle with Greg Oden ends the NBA’s recent obses­sion with big men. There will always be tall men play­ing in the league, but look­ing for the next Dirk Now­itzki is a lost cause.

Despite all of the warn­ing signs against draft­ing Greg Oden, the Port­land Trail Blaz­ers went ahead on June 28, 2007 and picked him any­way. Why? Appar­ently, his being a cen­ter proved too valu­able too pass up.

I don’t know a sin­gle per­son who doesn’t sali­vate when­ever the seven-foot “Blonde Bomber” (Dirk Now­itzki) swishes a three-pointer, but you’ve got real­ize that he’s as rare as they come. Tak­ing away bas­ket­ball god Tim Dun­can out of the equa­tion since he’s a mix­ture of cen­ter and power for­ward good­ness, the last dom­i­nant cen­ter of the last fif­teen years is Shaquille O’Neal.

NBA exec­u­tives have got­ten spoiled after Shaq was drafted in 1992 and sub­se­quently dom­i­nated the paint. Shaq is that rare breed that has rein­vented what a cen­ter should be: an over­pow­er­ing dunk machine. Look­ing at the last few drafts, the only player that has found suc­cess as a true cen­ter is Yao Ming with his career points and rebounds per game aver­ages of 18.5 and 8.9. I’m not even look­ing at Phoenix Suns star Amare Stoudemire since he mixes posi­tions a la Dun­can, and we’ll sweep the Detroit Darko exper­i­ment under the rug.

The real­ity is the game has sped up, and point guards and play­mak­ers like Steve Nash and Jason Kidd have much more impacts on their teams than a tall guy con­stantly shift­ing in and out of the paint. Look at what LeBron James has done for the Cleve­land Cav­a­liers or Dwyane Wade for the Miami Heat (espe­cially when Shaq retires) or Carmelo Anthony for the Den­ver Nuggets. What has 2005 first over­all pick Andrew Bogut done for the Mil­wau­kee Bucks? How long has it taken the Los Ange­les Clip­pers to recover from draft­ing Michael Olowokandi?

In win­ning six titles for the Chicago Bulls, Michael Jor­dan should have proved that a dom­i­nant cen­ter wasn’t needed so much as an ade­quate one. Could any other team win a title with the likes of Will Per­due, Luc Lon­g­ley, or Bill Wen­ning­ton as their start­ing cen­ters? Hav­ing Scot­tie Pip­pen by your side doesn’t hurt either, and I bet Shaq liked hav­ing Kobe Bryant by side all those years with the Lak­ers. But the fact remains Jor­dan was the Bulls and made every­one around him so much better.

Every­thing would be a moot point, how­ever, if Kevin Durant dis­ap­points for the Seat­tle Super­son­ics with either poor play or — god-forbid — an injury. The only per­son who would find solace in the com­bi­na­tion of Oden’s injury and Durant’s uncer­tain rookie sea­son is Danny Ainge. Who­ever saw the tele­cast of the recent draft could see the moment that Ainge’s heart stopped when NBA com­mis­sioner David Stern read the Boston Celtics for the fifth over­all pick. If the Celtics do find suc­cess sans Oden or Durant it would in spite of los­ing its sta­tis­ti­cally dom­i­nant top two picks to long odds and very bad luck.

If any­thing, that bad hand forced Ainge to make tough deci­sions to get the 2007–2008 sea­son to mean some­thing other than lots of drink­ing. With all of those past draft and trade mis­takes, Ainge had a man­date for change, like New York Mets GM Omar Minaya had the sea­son after he idi­ot­i­cally traded away Scott Kazmir for walk-specialist Vic­tor Zam­brano and traded FOR Kris Ben­son in 2004. When New York­ers made their feel­ings shown, Minaya swiftly signed Pedro Mar­tinez and Car­los Bel­tran in 2005, and in 2006 got Car­los Del­gado and reached game seven of the National League Cham­pi­onship Series.

Ainge made pow­er­ful trades too. His golden star was get­ting the best player avail­able in Kevin Gar­nett to strengthen his already solid Paul Pierce-Ray Allen (whom he traded for ear­lier that year) duo. KG is tall, but a cen­ter he is not because of his mobil­ity and ver­sa­til­ity. Hav­ing a start­ing line-up of three all-stars can sure make you smile, but will he smile with his team in the playoffs?

Another moot point would be if Oden suc­cess­fully recov­ers from the dreaded microfrac­ture surgery. Stoudemire did it. Hell, John Stock­ton did it at age 35. Many oth­ers were able to recover from it, although poor Penny Hard­away was never the same after hav­ing it on both knees.

Two things work in Oden’s favor when he finally plays an NBA game. One, he’s still only 19 with his youth being able to heal every­thing short of miss­ing limbs. Two, he hasn’t played an NBA game so expec­ta­tions would have to be scaled back dra­mat­i­cally and every ana­lyst would call him a suc­cess if he gets more than a 10.0 PPG/5 RPG aver­age that first year after the surgery.

While Sam Bowie com­par­isons might be pre­ma­ture, it helps my argu­ment as to why you never draft a cen­ter over a play­maker. Also I’m choos­ing to ignore the fact that the Hous­ton Rock­ets drafted Hakeem Ola­ju­won ahead of Bowie and Jor­dan because the team needed a cen­ter that year and “The Dream” was uni­ver­sally lauded as the best cen­ter of the draft. Plus, he led the team to back-to-back titles in 1994 and 1995. Either way, all eyes will be on Oden for the 2008–2009 sea­son, and hope­fully (for the team’s sake) not another Oden moment will be repeated. Although from a non-Blazer fan view­point, it’s a lit­tle com­i­cal to see the karma. With only a 5.3% chance at land­ing the first over­all pick, Port­land snatched it from both the Mem­phis Griz­zles (25%) and the Celtics (19.9%) and has so far landed a dud. Ouch.

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