Greg needs to play, play, play as much as possible. I’d like to see Nic, Jerryd and Greg play in the summer league.

Some of his fouls are because of our porous perimeter defense others are just basics he will learn, like keeping his arms straight up.

Hopefully this summer he sheds a few pounds and works on his footwork and post moves. Next season, if trained properly in the offseason he should come out beasting.

He also looked incredibly awkward and uncoordinated at times, to the point that It was hard to believe he was a #1 pick. That was discouraging. I still think he can be a heck of a player. This is a huge summer for him— he needs to put in a ton of work conditioning and developing his skills.

One thing I try to keep in mind is this: We always talk about how we want our players to work their butts off in the off-season to gain a little bit of an edge over the rest of the NBA. Some players don’t do much in the off-season, and those players usually start out the season quite slowly, not really hitting their stride till December or January even.

Oden didn’t just not work out in the summer. He missed an entire year of basketball. No competitive playing whatsoever. When you go an entire year, at that elite level, without playing ball, you can’t expect to step back in and be the same man. Otherwise, no one would work out in the off season.

You have to work hard just to maintain at that level. Greg sitting out a year set him back quite a bit.

Add to this the tough jump from college to the NBA, and it’s not hard to see why he had the season he did.

I’m just happy he is still showing his athleticism. It seems (thank goodness) that surgery hasn’t messed with that. You can teach a guy not to foul, but you can’t teach a knee to recover from surgery.

Bottom line: I didn’t expect G.O. to do any more than he did this year. What matters is next season, especially as we get towards playoff months. By then, he’ll have played in 80+ games, and it shouldn’t be unreasonable to expect him to be putting up his double double on a nightly basis.

Seriously now…

I’ve also wondered why he doesn’t seem to be getting it when it comes to avoiding fouls. I’m guessing there are three reasons for that:

• A loss of mobility and explosiveness stemming from his knee surgery.
• A loss of quickness due to weight gain.
• Playing against far quicker, stronger, older, and smarter players than he ever faced in high school and college.

He keeps making the same kinds of fouls because he knows what he was able to do in college and he keeps thinking he can get back to that level. If so, I hope he’s right.

Prescription for Greg this summer: lose weight, work-out, learn some new skills. If he does that, I predict fatty will fall in love with him again.

is, it seem like a lot of people WANT him to fail (not in here of course). They hang on every foul and turn over, then write about each mistake he made. The guy is under a huge microscope, and I feel bad for him. I guess that’s the pressure of being a number 1 pick. Look at how many people LOVE how bad Quame Brown, or Olowakandi have turned out. If Greg were picked at number eight, or ten, you would not hear a fraction of all the negative stuff out there.

I too, am very interested to see what Oden becomes. I watched every game at Ohio State, and I really thought he would be an impact player as soon as he hit the court.

We all know this to be not true after his first year. The problems Oden faces are multifaceted. Here is what I see.

a) THE FOUL PROBLEMS. This is the most serious problem he faces. If he cant stay on the court, then he will never become anything. And the fouls are keeping him on the bench. The fouls come from Oden having bad position, trying to make plays that he shouldnt, and not understanding what the Refs are looking for. He needs to get this figured out ASAP, or he will have a hard time doing anything in this league.

b) His body. Oden has a frame tailor made for a dominant Center in the NBA, but it doesnt look like he knows how to use it. It appears that the injuries are still bothering him and his “feel” for the game doesnt look like it is there. To me, it looks like Oden needs to go to a Quickness & Coordination camp. He needs to get his explosion back, take some weight off, and work on strengthening his legs. He just looks a lot more clutsy out there than he should. Look at Ohio State tape and see the difference.

c) Post moves and overall game. I love coach Lucas, but we dont need a guy known for being a brawler to coach Oden. We need Olajuwon or some other Center with real post moves to start teaching this kid. His hook shot should not be coming off of his shoulder, and NOT FROM THE BASELINE. He needs to work on ball control, getting to the center of the paint QUICKLY (with one quick jump-hop, or one power dribble) and get off a shot that has a chance to bounce in (unlike the baseline variety). His footwork needs tons of work too.

Watch Dwight Howard play. Aside from his physical gifts, the guy can get to his spots on the court and effectively control the paint. The big difference between him and Oden is the body control and ball control.

Oden has great upside, and I think he can be a high quality Center for many years. But he needs a lot of teaching and work to realize that potential.

Go Blazers

I remember Shaq at LSU, his freshman year. He looked good, he was slim, quick, and agile. I knew he’d be a player, though he was raw at the time.

Oden is completing his first pro season, after coming off surgery that kept him off his feet and made him miss an entire season, and is still, right now, at the same point as Shaq was when he made the decision to declare for the draft.

In term of development, he has played one less season than Shaq had at this point because of the injury. He has a long way to go, but with the proper training and conditioning, he will surely get there.

Greg is reportedly a hard-worker with a strong desire to improve. Now that his knee is sound, all that he will need is good coaching. If Luke’s health rules him out, then I hope the Blazers bring in someone top notch. I suspect they will.

I’d love to see GO add a 12-foot jumper to his repertoire. I know he can develop a consistent shot from that distance, and that would be huge for the Blazers. Yao was able to camp out in the lane because GO and Przy had no way of drawing him out of there. If GO (and Przy for that matter) were to develop the little jumper that most other centers in the league have, the middle would open up for Roy, LMA, and—yes—even Trout.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz5CkALMlNM

The plays that jump out at me:

- The summer league jam right off the bat. Look where he takes off from. Haven’t seen that this year.
- The block 35 seconds in. Look at that recovery. This year’s Oden probably would have fouled.
- The block at 1:05. He wasn’t the amazing weakside shotblocker we thought he’d immediately be.
- The block on Robin Lopez at 1:30. Are you kidding me? We saw nothing like that at all this year.
- The block at 2:05. Look at him keep his arms straight up and time the play well.

We drafted a quick, agile, athletic big man. I hope he takes the court for us someday. Even if he doesn’t, what we have can be a really good player… but we’ll wonder what might have been.

I agree Greg’s a physical specimen but i’m not sold that he has the right mentality to be a good NBA player ( or perhaps the NBA isnt suited for him and his long term life goals).

Two more years and i suppose we’ll have and idea of where his career is heading " Franchise cornerstone or trade bait.

A few earlier posters have sort of touched on what I want to say. Not sure if many of you can relate to this, but here it is: way back when I was just learning to play table tennis, I studied the good players – watched the world-class players on tape (I SAID it was way back) and watched the local high-caliber players. I saw what they could do and my thinking was, “Yeah, I can do that!”. And I could, with lots of practice. But only some of the time. And I still play that way: I have a little movie in my head going – a movie of what is possible, what CAN be done. But I can’t always pull it off. Somebody tosses a 70 mph loop at me and I’ll kill the thing and win the point … maybe half the time. The rest of the time, I’m hitting it into the net or off the end or whatever.

So, is Greg maybe doing the same sort of thing? He knows what he used to be able to do, pre-microfracture, pre-tougher competition … and he tries to do it and ends up with an epic fail too often. Is his mind sort of making promises on which his body can’t (currently) deliver. The OP said, ‘He’s a monster 7ft’er that wants to guard guys in the paint like he’s Tony Parker. He tries to reach and finesse when all he has to do is “be”.’ Right – he’s not TP, but he used to be able to sort of be like TP against college level players. Does he, in that sense, just need to ratchet down his expectations and simply learn what he can reasonably expect to do and what he can’t? FWIW.

Watching his ealier film really makes you remember how he was billed as a “once in a lifetime” type player. Now, after watching him this year the only thing I can think is "I hope, two or three years down the road, he turns into a top 5 Center. That quickness displayed in that video is long gone. I don’t think that 25 extra lbs is all of it either. I wonder if his knee will ever get back to the way it was.

It’s kind of depressing to go from “He could be the best player in the NBA” to “If everything pans out he could be the 3rd best player on the Blazers.”

nor am i expecting him to turn into the next coming of shaq. even if he turns into a reliable center thats fine with me, we have enough scorers that odens offensive development does not need to be quick. by year 3 if hes averaging 12-14 points, 8-12 boards and a block or two, then thats fine. im more interested in his defensive development, as that is the part of the teams game that needs the most help.

As a fanbase we’re starting to move from inflated expectations, hype, and lame excuses to realism.

Oden isn’t some sort of savior or key to immediate dynastic pretensions. He is a very raw kid with a sensitive disposition; physical tools to be among the best in the league, but a long, long learning curve ahead of him.

Oden and Bayless should hang together. It would do both of them a lot of good.