I believe the title of this post is not an accurate description of the contents. It’s almost malicious and Trolllike. But when one reads your actual post , it’s a legit concern of yours that G.O. is not fitting in quite right w/ the starting unit.

Oden will be the starting center on this squad barring any major injuries (nearest log to knock on) but he isn’t quite there yet. Oden will develop and will learn to play with the “starting” squad , but things like this take time. The cohesion of the whole team is under strain. The 2nd unit is trying to play fast, the starters are a 1/2 court offensive team and the ten man rotation can throw some of our guys off but it’s ok these things will work out.

Oden isn’t “killing” anything . So relax on that, ok?

Sophia

starting….Don’t know…but it may not make any difference in his play….
     Continuing to force feed him gets us nowhere….He needs to learn to play off of his teammates and they off of him..but continuing to force his offense down the teams throat is what could be hurting them….
    Prz has been getting his buckets out of the flow of the offense and he’s not considered an offensive threat….they are forcing Oden into the offense too much and it’s never been his style of play….This is something he can develop along the way and doesn’t need to be so urgent, it takes them out of effective play…..
   His agility is still in question, but at the moment you got what you got, so don’t try to turn an apple into an orange….work towards getting a better apple (defense, rebounding) ……Once you get more pieces in sync it will be easier to get him the ball in better and more comfortable positions to do something…..

But getting Oden up to speed and acquainted with Roy and LMA is more important than anything we do this season (no hyperbole). He is what will make us a championship contender, and we gotta approach a lot of what we do with the priority being “what is best to make Oden become Oden”.

It ain’t really fair, and the growing pains are tough.

But, Oden has to play with the guys he is going to play with and get used to being a starter, because that is what he is. Anything less, and we’re just another good team.

The time spent right now with Oden will pay off big time.

Mortimer

See this fanshot: http://www.blazersedge.com/2008/11/25/670502/truehoop-what-happens-to-p
Basically he says the Blazers shooting percentage drops significantly once Oden is in the game although his own numbers are just fine. Because his teammates try to involve him too much? Because they just watch him work his way to the basket? Or a completely different reason? Nobody knows for sure.

As for +/- point differential, I said today before that it should really be a stat to use over a season (or at least a few weeks), to find the best combination/unit of players. It is pretty meaningless for one player and a small sample size such as just one game. If you would surround a sub-par player like me with 4 All-Stars and after that bring in 5 scrubs, I would likely have a positive number in that category.

But over a longer time frame it can be really useful to get an idea which two players, three players and five players are a good combo – or not.

Plus / minus is a misleading stat. Use at your own risk.

If you want to shoot, then go get the rebound. I remember Zach having many 16 reb. games his first couple of years. Oden can board. Just have him concentrate on that, and he can dominate on just put back rim rattling dunks. The offense will come.

With some very boneheaded play down the stretch, but still managed a +17
Brandon Roy himself was at -3 despite having one of his better games of the season

What am I getting at?

+/- may not mean much

Besides the fact, Oden NEEDS to be worked in. Killing team chemistry indicates a guy like Marbury or Zach Randolph that is in it only for himself. There is only evidence to the contrary concerning Greg, and the team needs to learn how to best play with the big guy, even if it hurts our mojo a little bit in the short run

The man is coming off microfracture surgery. Do you remember what Amare Stoudamire looked like when he got back? Not pretty, in fact he was awful at times. Or Jamal Mashburn? Trick question, ended his career (although the procedure/rehab has advanced since then). Oden is coming along fine, if anything I think he’s ahead of the curve based on what the history of this surgery is. Stoudamire, Kidd, CWebb, Alan Houston, Mashburn, etc., this is not an easy recovery process. Agree with the posters citing our focus on instant gratification, Oden will spend the majority (if not all) of this season getting back to his base level of athleticism, patience is a virtue here. Besides, even if GO’s ceiling is more Robert Parish than Wilt, that’s a championship caliber center worst case scenario (I’m still saying he’ll be a modern era Russell – although not with the insane rebound numbers), but it’s going to take time.

As to Lil Wayne, the day I start listening to the opinions of 5’2 pill poppers on post play is the day I cheer for the L*kers…12th of Never

Would the many of you that are complaining right now rather want that Portland was 5-9 like they were this day a year ago, instead of the 9-6 they are now?

Besides, the boxscore tells me that Przybilla has played more minutes than Oden has for four games straight.

Przybilla is getting more playing time the last four games, so what exactly is the problem? The only way Oden could be playing less minutes than he is the last few games, is that if he changed his name to Ike Diogu or Jerryd Bayless. We went through that last season, with all those DNPs he accumulated and all, and well, I think it’s time for him to just play some damn basketball.

Just saying.

if it meant getting Greg max minutes the rest of the year. He’ll only get better with time, and the offense will adjust to him being on the floor eventually.

I don’t see him doing great against the L*kers, slamming Kobe and sparking a huge run. Try to start fights with Shaq and then getting owned. At least Oden is going through a learning process. Lets not blow Joel’s place out of proportion. He is a good center, but he is no Greg Oden.

Joel’s scoring comes from wide open right under the hoop dunks. Oden gets those too… only when he’s on the floor his defender tries hard to keep him from getting the ball and gets double teamed often, sometimes before he even has the ball. So you see a lot less open looks for Greg. He will develop the skills he needs to function against double teams.

On defense, Joel is better right now. He should be. He’s a defensive center and a veteran. Oden still has things to learn in the NBA.

Did people forget that he missed an entire year of playing organized basketball? Some of you really underestimate the impact that can have on your skills and conditioning for the sport. It can take months to get back to where you were after you begin playing again. Fans are getting ridiculous these days. He is a ROOKIE and 20 years old, he has a ton of time and the coachability to improve in the next 5 years+. Back in the day it wasn’t weird to consider a 25 year old 3-4 year vet still a developing young talent. Now if you’re not an all-star at 20 you’re a bust.

+\- is never a good way to judge a player. The other guys need to stop forcing passes to Oden. There are more turnovers because the defenders can see the passes coming from a mile away, and they sometimes pass into Oden when he’s got 3 guys around him. It’s also their job to tell Oden when a guard is coming around his blind spot to steal the ball during his dribble.

It’s the rest of the team’s responsibility as much as his. They get into the habbit of forcing the offense through him when he’s on the floor. Joel gets easy looks because the offense is flowing naturally and that causes the D to play their man and help keep guards out of the paint.

You can’t expect rookies to come in and dominate all the time, especially big men. We aren’t even out of November of his first season yet and fans are giving up on him.

People who obviously know the NBA and the game of basketball inside out. Without that expertise, I wouldn’t have realized how mistaken I was to think that Greg Oden is doing pretty much what we all expected and hoped for.

I seem to recall that the general view here, when we first drafted Greg, was that a good benchmark for his play would have been that of Dwight Howard during his rookie season. Guess what folks – he’s pretty much doing that right now. His mpg are not yet at the level of Howard (20 vs 33), but that is to be expected, considering that Oden is coming off an injury. However, when you look at his point, rebound and block numbers and normalize on a per minute basis, Oden is performing at a higher level than Howard.

Granted, Greg’s numbers are based on a very small sample size so far – 9 games verses 82 for Howard’s rookie year. But that does not change the fact that Oden is producing at a level we all should be extremely satisfied with.

It’s getting to the point that I’m almost hoping to see more stupid trade proposals on BE, rather than all the bashing of players and the coach that goes on here. (That said, BE fans are still head and shoulders above most sports blog fans, as a quick perusal of other SB Nation sites will show.)