Hey, remember when Greg Oden was the fun-loving, big-hearted savior of the Blazers who would push them over the top?
Yeah, those were fun days.
Blazers Edge posted an interview 95.5FM in Portland did with the young behemoth prior to Game 6 versus the Suns, and instead of the usual chipperness and easy to swallow answers, well…things were pretty weird.
For starters, Oden hasn’t been around the team. At all. He’s been at home, resting at his mom’s house.Okay, no big deal. Understandable, dude needs to concentrate on rehabbing and no place better to recuperate than Momma’s. Besides, they say that sitting on the bench is hard on his knee.
But he’s probably been on the phone, talking with the team, encouraging them, telling them what he sees, right? From BE:
“I haven’t really talked to anybody. But, you know, I can kind of guess.
They’re trying to figure out what’s going on. We’re playing good one
day and play bad the next day. I just think they’re going to try to
worry about that and figure that out.”
Oooookay. Well, hey, he’s a young guy. And there are some new guys on the team. Well, one new guy. What’s he going to say, really? That’s understandable, I guess. The good news is, he’s at least been off long enough that he’s starting to feel the knee respond, right?
“I don’t have no discomfort or soreness, I don’t even see that much
swelling actually. So the big thing now is just worrying about
everything around it and getting me to trust my knee again. Sometimes I
still go up the stairs one-legged. I just gotta trust it and get the
other parts of my leg stronger and it will be feeling a lot better.”
So, you don’t trust the leg. That you walk on. That you need, to play basketball. In five months. Right. Dwight Jaynes mentions how odd all of this is on his blog.
Blazer fans in the comments are predictably defensive of the big guy. He’s had a hard time, and really, they need, NEED him to pan out. Because while Oden is eating cheerios at his mom’s house, the guy they could have picked is pushing the Lakers as far as a young team like the Thunder can, and shouldering much of the load. The long-term is what you’ll hear the Blazers and their fans talk about with Oden. The only problem is we’re now three years into the Oden Era and he’s played 82 games. The long-term is rapidly approaching.
Let’s all hope all the reasons to doubt Oden end up being nothing more than scares and not foreboding signs.
