We are still at least two years away, and I would argue more, from being able to make any kind of a determination about this decision. This year will be a big one. There will be no more microfracture excuse. There will be no more rookie excuses. This year Oden needs to step up and show some big time improvement. He doesn’t have to average 20/10/3 or anything but he needs to stay on the floor and show that he is fitting in and contributing on the boards, on defense, and is starting to put some moves together in the post. If he shows improvement and he starts building confidence and momentum, it will be a successful season for him. Let’s worry about the Durant question after we see what Oden can develop into.

It is HORRIBLE. Sure A.I. looked good on the box score and on highlight films. Roll tape forward and it is Durant. The guy needs to learn how to play team basketball. The guy needs to learn what it takes to win.

Oden – knee injury > Durant
Oden + recovery > Durant

No worries.

Durant is a better “player” right now, but he isn’t enough of one to take a team with a lot of talent like OKC and lead them to non-horribleness. That makes him not as good as Roy, who did more with less talent.

But, Durant is a terrific scorer and very young, so he won’t get blamed for his team’s woes.

Oden, in limited minutes, was more effective at creating wins in my opinion. He had a TON of problems though, and was very awkward and couldn’t get out of his own way with fouls. His conditioning was bad. The year away from basketball did him no favors with improving his offensive game, or working on his coordination.

Despite all of that, he averaged 9/7 in 20 minutes. That is pretty damn good in a super young, extremely raw-as-cookie-dough big man.

But is it as good as 25/6 in a perimeter player the same age? I can’t blame someone for thinking the 25/6 is worth more.

I’m a guy who argued for Durant before that draft, and has since been disappointed by how he has developed thus far. Despite his scoring, he’s an overall bad offensive player. I think his defense will improve, so I don’t worry as much about that as I do his offensive court awareness and playmaking ability.

I am a big Oden believer though, and I think the sky is the limit for him. Only time will tell who is “better”, but even with Oden’s awkward rookie year and Durant’s prodigious scoring ability, I am pretty sure Oden is the better choice. We simply don’t need someone of Durant’s skillset next to Roy.

And Roy is clearly the better player… clearly. Many tiers above Durant. Durant has amazing percentages and is a very versatile scorer, and it has resulted in 2 points a game more than the non-future-scoring-champ Roy. I don’t expect that to last, but Roy will continue to score 23 PPG and at least 5 assists. Durant will score 30 points and average 2 assists and 3 turnovers. Even with the better percentages and versatile scoring ability, which is better? I think it is obvious.

You simply can’t blame others for not turning to Oden’s per-36 numbers, his PER, his WoW, etc, to compare him to Durant. Right now, Oden fouls a lot and is a 9/7/1 dude. Durant is 25/6. I can’t blame someone for thinking Durant matters more.

ANY DEBATE though, has to wait, because both are extremely young, coupled with extenuating circumstances and raw-ness for Oden and playing on a bad team for Durant. No matter one’s opinion, I don’t think there is much profit to be had to get really into this sort of debate.

Mortimer

’nuff said.

Durant may win scoring titles but a healthy Oden comes along once a decade.

is going to sell ten times as many shoes as Brandon Roy and Greg Oden combined.

The Blazers currently lack anyone with tier one star potential, something that Durant possesses in abundance. Durant is already better then their best player (Roy) and five years younger with room still to grow. Oden, if he can even stay on the court without sustaining injuries and/or fouling, may end up being a solid defensive big in the mold of a Tyson Chandler but nothing more.

Not just yet. I want to see Oden for a full year healthy..
That will never happen though.

Trying is the first step to failure. Oden tried, he failed. Durant tried, he succeeded.
So the lesson for Oden is to never try again.

It could be said right after David Stern announced his name. Everyone know Durant’s a BEAST.

Durant is an NBA superstar on the rise, possessing freakish physical abilities, amazing skill-level, great scoring instincts and good leadership qualities to boot. Pairing him with Roy would be just unfair to other teams. Do you realize that Durant’s last year’s scoring #s are better than, for example, Ray Allen’s best season? That kind of scoring prowess is unheard of for a 20-years old. And it’s not like he’s standing pat, he’s actually working like a maniac to improve even more. And the word around the league is that he’s going to get much better as soon as next season. So to catch up to him Oden’s gonna need to progress like three times as fast, which is completely impossible. That train has already left for Greg. In fact the gap is so wide right now, that all this talk about Oden being a “better fit” or a “defensive presence” sounds pretty silly. Blazers had a chance to draft a modern version of Jordan-Pippen combo and with great supporting cast to boot. And they blew it.

That’s the best refute in the thread so far, from good ole Blazers fan Wizenheimer showing how the Blazers became a top rebounding team with Oden
http://www.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=936119&start=60#p20492295

With Durant, we have a backcourt scoring 100,000 points a game, except we’d have no defense. Meanwhile, Greg would be down in The City That Shall Not Be Named pulling down enough rebounds to make Wilt Chamberlain weep openly. All of a sudden, people start saying, “Sure, Portland has an awesome backcourt, but imagine how much better they’d be if they had Oden’s defense. Durant’s a bust. A defensive presence like Oden only comes once in a decade.”

Simply put, it’s really easy to look like the next MJ on a terrible team, but if you’re coming into an already solid team, you won’t look quite as good by comparison.

Portland is young, but they are build to make the playoffs already. Thunder have alot of potential, and should be in the playoffs soon… but they are still in need of a solid big man

oh and I think Durant is better than Roy right now. I think most of you don’t realize just how good Durant is, and how great he can end up being…[/quote]

He is good and he can end up being great (better then Roy and most likely will), but that is the future, this is the present and currently Roy is better then Durant. Roy can still get better to, you know? Or are you one of those in the camp who think “Roy is what he is, he will not improve much?”

Centers are VERY valuable though and it is still early days. Oden is just a baby, we need to remember that.

I was and still am a huge Oden guy but come on people, durant is the better player right now. I suppose we can dig for all kinds of stats to make a solid argument but just eyeball it and try to take your blazer fandom out of the picture for 1 second. its not close.

oden has a lot to live up to and still has time to do it.

Durant will be a great player as he gets better players around him. It’s silly to criticize Durant for performing as he does now on a very poor team. We would happily trade any three players on our team not including Brandon, LMA, Oden, or possibly Joel for him. Oden could mean more to us than Durant if Oden develops. But it’s too soon to know that yet.

Would you trade LMA for Durant straight up? I would, but we would then have to get a good starting PF for Rudy plus some combination of everyone else but Brandon, Oden, and Joel.

he’ll get offered a max contract too.

his and roy’s games are just too incomparable.

but I can’t say that that’s exactly what we needed when we drafted Oden. We could all delve into revisionist theory and say that KP made the wrong choice given the short sampling of careers we have witnessed so far. However we are talking about young guys, and just as Oden missed a lot of time in his first two years, who’s to say that Durant couldn’t be sidelined with a career threatening injury in the future. That coupled with the fact that Oden filled a greater perceived need for us at the time of the draft, and maybe into the future. My take is that we have a greatly skilled team with a lot of weapons, and quite frankly a much more balanced gameplan than the OKC Z’s have. That may not have been the case if we had drafted someone of such obvious offensive dominance. They have fireworks and we have wins. I’ll take the wins

He was shutting things down in the team USA mini camp.

Portland= 54 wins
OKC= 23 wins

I know that there is more to the story than Greg vs. Kevin, but it is really hard to argue with those numbers IMO. That is 31 more wins in an 82 game season. If Durant is sooooo great, then why is his team not even getting to respectably bad? Oden may not be ‘better’ but he makes this team better than Durant would if he were here.

Hey c’mon it’s one thing to be a Blazer homer and it’s another thing altogether to completely ignore reality. Sure Greg might become a solid player eventually but Durant is already a superstar.

I don’t think there’s much room for debate.

However, it is nice to think about how two season ago, one of our glaring weaknesses was rebounding….. seems like a long time ago. When it comes to what the Blazers need more – they need defense and rebounding. A scoring option of KD’s caliber is a luxury for us – not a need.

But comparing the two is silly. It is like comparing TJ Houshmanzadeh and Tom Brady. The two do very different things, but one is way better than the other.

telfair/jack
miles/dixon/webster
patterson/outlaw
ZBo/outlaw
pryz/ratliff/ha

Telfair/Jack
Durant/Webster
Morrison/Outlaw
ZBo
Przybilla

Yuck, I feel dizzy

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: loud head-banging music to fade :

in the wins category, I’m happy