Oden Vs Durant I

if Durant is so amazing right now (I don’t remember hearing anything like this about Roy), then how come that doesn’t make up for the difference in the supporting casts.

are you arguing that he isn’t a good team player? it seems like you don’t really think he’s that great (“he ‘will’ be great”), and your argument is based on the fact that his team is worse than the Blazers were when Roy was a sophomore… are you arguing that Roy is better than Durant? I’m so confused…

Much much much worse. Have you watched them this season? It almost looks like Watson, Wilcox, Smith, and Mason are taking bribes to throw games, they’re killing their team.

but I still vividly recall Pritchard’s continuous, gushing public praise of Durant leading up to the draft.

At the time, some suggested it was all part of a “smokescreen.” But to what end? As the holders of the first overall pick, the Blazers were in total control of their selection. The “smokescreen” theory would have made a lot more sense if the Blazers were seated at #2 and they were trying to con the team ahead of them into selecting someone other than who they really coveted.

No, I think that Pritchard’s praise was 100% genuine. And we also know that his trusted “algorithm” scored Durant much higher than Oden. I still believe that, left to his own devices, he would have spent that #1 pick on Durant.

But had he done so, he also knew what the public relations fallout would have been. 2007, after all, was the year of the “Oden draft.” At least half a dozen Blazer fans who I worked with at the time semi-joked that they would storm One Center Court armed with hot tar and pitchforks if the Blazers selected Durant. As much as he loved Durant, Pritchard probably also realized that he didn’t have a compelling enough case to “sell” the pick to the public. And to Paul Allen.

Yes, Paul Allen. The notion that Allen simply hires GMs, steps aside and lets them do their thing has already been debunked. Recall the aborted trade with the Knicks in which Allen (thankfully) put the kibosh on a Nash-Isiah agreement that would have sent Ratliff and Darius to the Knicks for David Lee and Penny Hardaway’s expiring contract. At the time, Allen absolutely loved Darius and, as we all know, the Blazers are ultimately Allen’s plaything. If he feels like using them as his vehicle to engage in a real life game of fantasy basketball, that’s a prerogative that no GM could ever deny him – unless he had a rock solid case. But I think Allen was just as caught up in all the Oden hooplah as the rest of the hoops world and that nothing Pritchard would have said could have changed that.

Again, please don’t misread my intent here. None of this is to suggest that Portland made the wrong pick when they selected Oden. It’s waaaaaay too early in either man’s career to even have that discussion. My only point is that I think that in his heart of hearts, Pritchard believes it was the wrong pick. And that Durant’s recent ascension to the next level of basketball greatness probably makes him feel more than just a little bit queasy. Of course, he would never come out and publicly acknowledge as much. So, like the rest of the Blazer faithful, he can only sit silently by and hope that Oden’s recent flashes of brilliance soon come with the same consistency that Durant appears to have achieved.

is PJ would’ve tried to protect his frail body by making him the SF and making him be the guy who runs back to protect the bucket in transition instead of trying to get the offensive boards. He’d have been killed going up against much smaller quicker guys, and everyone would be talking about what a terrible defender he is.