Durant vs Oden Reversed

by Dragonage on Feb 27, 2009 10:03 AM PST

First and formost I am 100% behind the pick Of Greg Oden over K. Durant. There has been alot of finger pointing and petty arguments over who the right pick was.

For one day lets take an opposite approach as to the player the Blazers picked and act like Durant was the Blazers pick. What would we be saying about Portlands future and what would Portland need to get themselves in the western conferance race.

I would be willing to bet that a center and point guard of the future would be in alot of trade discussions. Durant is good he put up 45 last night but why isnt Roy getting the ball more? We have to get better in the paint our rebounding is terrible. Whats up with the defense? I thought Nate was a defensive genious, Durant really needs to put some weight on our front line looks like tooth picks against other nba front lines. Durant needs to get his teammates more involved. The kid is going to take us to the promise land in a few more seasons. I hope KP gets a good lottery pick we really need to get the center of the future for this club. Why did we not make a trade for Chandler he would have been perfect for Portland.

These are just guess's as to what some of the comments would have been if the draft results would have been reversed.

Note: If your a Durant guy you need to reverse your thinking on the Durant vs Oden debate as well and become an Oden supporter and complain about why we did not take Oden.

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Comments

interesting thought experiment

by 50backflips on Feb 27, 2009 10:08 AM PST reply actions

Hmmmmm

Sorry, I can’t reverse my thinking or I might
tear some gears ! Good Idea though !

That reminds me of an old joke; Did you hear
about the new French tank with 6 gears ?

1 forward & 5 reverse !

At least it’s the reverse for Batuuuuuuum !

It's GO time !

by walkoff41 on Feb 27, 2009 10:11 AM PST reply actions

Durant on the Blazers= Portland 2nd best team in the WEst

Finishing 5:
BRoy
Rudy
Durant
LMA
Przybilla

The Blazers win 57 games at least. Obviously we give up a lot more points, but Durant is such an efficient scorer that the offense would be 2002 Sacrmento Kings-like.

I love GO, and I wish him the best, but in my mind, Durant was the better choice then, and the better choice now.

by John Park Williams on Feb 27, 2009 10:39 AM PST reply actions

Wrong

Durant would improve virtually nothing about the Blazers. He would be taking shots away from Roy, Aldridge, etc – guys that score just as efficiently and effectively as he does. So the Blazers’ offensive efficiency WOULD NOT IMPROVE. It’s already good (near tops in the league all year), and with KD, it would still be good.

The defense and rebounding would be MUCH, MUCH, MUCH worse. What many people don’t understand about how bad Durant is on D is that, amazingly, he’s really just not that good of an athlete. Amazing skill level for a guy that tall – but NOT amazing athletically. He tested out as one of the worst athletes of his draft class.

(Obviously, that’s relative to other NBA prospects, and doesn’t take into account his amazing hand-eye coordination for a guy his size. He’s a not an elite athlete from a speed/quickness/vertical standpoint – he is an elite athlete in other respects.)

Oden, even not playing well by some standards, is already one of the most valuable guys on the Blazers. People wonder why the Blazers are in a funk the past few days. Why the loss to the depleted Spurs? Why the loss in Houston?

Without Greg, the rebounding advantage goes out the window. Rebounding goes from a major strength to a major weakness. When you outrebound the other team, you can shoot a lower percentage than they do and still win. Lately, the Blazers are seeing the flipside of that.

That dynamic would be permanent with KD instead of GO.

Basically, just as they thought they would, the Blazers need Oden’s rebounding and defense much, much more than they need KD’s offense.

Q: Is Greg favoring his knee?
Frye: He favors dunking on your head, that's what he favors.

by KP Corleone on Feb 27, 2009 11:00 AM PST up reply actions

.....

He would be taking shots away from Roy, Aldridge, etc – guys that score just as efficiently and effectively as he does.

I nearly spat out my coffee when I read that. I’d like to refer you to these numbers. Look at the true shooting% or eFG% (those are the efficiency metrics) or look at the points per shot attempt (I’m old skool and I like that number myself).

And these are bad numbers for Durant. This includes his pretty terrible first month when he was still playing out of position at SG under Carlesimo’s reign of error. From the start of December, Durant is at 60.5% TS% in his last 39 games, averaging 28.1 ppg, 8 rebs, 3.5 assists. Ungodly good.

It is true that he wouldn’t help the defense much – he’d probably be a wash, since he’s a little worse than Batum but definitely better than Rudy and worlds better than Travis, who take up the other SF minutes. What he would do though is prevent Nate from going to his desperation all-offense worse-than-zero-defense lineups like Roy/Rudy/Travis/Frye/LMA lineup he went to in crunchtime in San Antone, which he goes to when Roy and LMA are having off nights.

by howlingfantods on Feb 27, 2009 11:39 AM PST up reply actions

I guess that's a long winded way

of saying I’d rather have KD + Thrilla on the court than Oden + Travis or Oden + Nic.

by howlingfantods on Feb 27, 2009 11:40 AM PST up reply actions

Or another way of thinking about it

is that Durant is considered to have had a really bad first season and first month of the second season offensively as a very inefficient shooter who took bad shots.

But his TS% his first season were pretty close to equal to LMA’s numbers this season, at 51.9% versus 52.6, and actually somewhat better the first month of this season, at 54 during the PJ era.

So Durant’s really really bad rookie efficiency stats playing out of position are equal to LMAs third season. This make you think any differently about KD or LMA?

by howlingfantods on Feb 27, 2009 12:20 PM PST up reply actions

uh...

Durant scores more efficiently than Roy and WAY more efficiently that Aldridge. His TS% is flat out off the charts for a 20 year old primary scorer. He’s extremely efficient. He’s not as good a player as Roy becuase he doesn’t Brandon’s high assist rate or low turnover rate, but as a scorer he’s already better than Brandon.

Rebounding would definitely drop for the Blazers— but it would be better than it is with GO on the sidelines— KD rebounds better than the Blazer SFs. It would no longer be a major strength, but it wouldn’t be a major weakness either.

I liked the Oden pick at the time, and it still may work out well for the Blazers, but with Durant’s efficient scoring, Portland’s offense would be off the charts.

Boomshakalaka

by jksnake99 on Feb 27, 2009 11:42 AM PST up reply actions

Oden is probaly the better choice in the long run, but Durant is killin it right now

Couldn't we just play the Timberwolves again instead? That's like being beheaded with a Nerf bat. -Dave with the Laker game preview

by JWise on Feb 27, 2009 11:01 AM PST reply actions

Father Time

will tell all… best of luck to both these young guys.

by Escrote on Feb 27, 2009 11:52 AM PST reply actions

I was in the durant camp the second before the big guy was selected...

but I don’t think it was a wrong pick…..

I do think that durant was/is the clear better player.
but when do you ever not select a big 7 footer who moved like oden did….

I don’t think there was a question about whether it was the wrong pick….I do think it’s a question of bad luck and misfourtuane

and then if ya go back 30 years…lol…and see what we did there, it’s just too easy to make them kinda comparisons…

but if durant breaks his tibula and needs micro fracture on his knees tommorow…

:) we picked the right guy……

but with durant killin it as he is…..it’s easy to scream that we did make the wrong pick….even though we/they didn’t.

I trust our GM when it comes to basket ball more than I do the mighty swath of Edgers….

so….

until the next 10 years go by…I’ll continue to take judgments like these with a grain of salt, and a whole lot of anti depressants.

The Faith don't panic, the faith freaks out burns out farms and torchs small villages in the name of The Faith.

by faith on Feb 27, 2009 12:38 PM PST reply actions

We did draft Durant

His name is Travis Outlaw and he did not work out like we hoped.

Karma

by Sabonis4Ever on Feb 27, 2009 1:00 PM PST reply actions 1 recs

That's brilliant.

I guess you could say that Brandon Roy and Damien Wilkens are identical players too right? I mean, they’re both combo guards roughly the same size. I mean, there’s no similarity in terms of actual production or efficiency, but we’ll call them the same because they’re superficially similar physically.

by howlingfantods on Feb 27, 2009 1:16 PM PST up reply actions

-1

Sorry, but that comparison is silly on its face.

There is no charge for awesomeness. Or attractiveness.

by EngineerScotty on Feb 27, 2009 1:41 PM PST up reply actions

wow

This is below you, S4E.

Boomshakalaka

by jksnake99 on Feb 27, 2009 1:43 PM PST up reply actions

You guys are great at detecting sarcasm.

(hint, it looks like this ^)

Karma

by Sabonis4Ever on Feb 27, 2009 1:48 PM PST reply actions

I'm with those guys

Pretty lame of you to compare Outlaw to a guy like Durant. We’re talking about a wholesome southern guy and a guy who cheats at H.O.R.S.E. For shame Sabons4Ever, for shame!

I da man!

by Dragline on Feb 27, 2009 1:53 PM PST up reply actions

G.E.I.C.O.

Karma

by Sabonis4Ever on Feb 27, 2009 1:55 PM PST up reply actions

hard to detect

since these were the same arguments you made two years ago why we shouldn’t draft durant.

by howlingfantods on Feb 27, 2009 2:39 PM PST up reply actions

Really? I'm surprised you remember that because I don't.

I was always a Oden supporter. Durant is a great scorer, but we have scorers.

Karma

by Sabonis4Ever on Feb 27, 2009 2:54 PM PST up reply actions

(not saying you are wrong, but I was being sarcastic up above)

Karma

by Sabonis4Ever on Feb 27, 2009 2:55 PM PST up reply actions

Pretty much.

I spent a little while reviewing the durant/oden posts from 2007 a couple of months ago.

I said some silly anti-oden things too; for some reason I seemed to have thought back at the time that it was really important to convince some folks around here of the rightness of the durant pick, so I was really firing off random reasons left and right pro-durant and anti-oden. (1) I don’t think I convinced anyone, and (2) I have no idea what difference it would’ve made.

by howlingfantods on Feb 27, 2009 3:02 PM PST up reply actions

I wanted to draft Oden for 100 reasons

Having Travis Outlaw on the roster was probably one of them. Durant is just what the Sonics needed, a franchise player. Oden is just what the Blazers need, a franchise center.

Karma

by Sabonis4Ever on Feb 27, 2009 3:10 PM PST up reply actions

shrug I'm not really interesting in hashing out these arguments again.

I felt pretty strongly starting exactly two years ago that Durant was the better #1 pick for any team no matter the situation, and I’ve not seen anything in these 24 months to change my mind. I’m a big draft the BPA, not for fit guy. But whatever, we made our bed, time to make the best of it.

I usually wander into these discussions nowadays not to ponder what might’ve been, but just to dispute wildly false factual assertions (like “durant is no more efficient than LMA or Roy”).

by howlingfantods on Feb 27, 2009 3:22 PM PST up reply actions

Remember this whole thread is make believe. I am finding it hard to make a scenario that doesnt include Oden in Portlands future, but for today.
Durant is the next combination of Nique and Jordan in one long skinny package. Durant would have already secured a playoff spot for Portland this season, he would be the scoring leader and Durant would undoubtedly be leading in the mvp race. Portland would have the best record in the league. Thank god we drafted him.

I try to help with everything," Fernandez said. "If the coach says go rebound, I go rebound. I work for the team.

""If I'm playing this game to get media and attention, I shouldn't be here," Aldridge said. "I'm here to play basketball, and do what I can do to help this team win."

by Dragonage on Feb 27, 2009 2:27 PM PST reply actions