Greg Oden's injury was a huge blow to the Blazers.  While the media and many fans focus most on his injury history, here I'll focus on his on-court performance as captured by statistics taken from Basketball-Reference.com.  Sometimes I forget how good he was playing before the injury.  This helps remind me.

I've got two comparisons.  The first compares him to Dwight Howard, considered by most to be the best of today's centers.  This comparison shows their rankings among the NBA's best this year (among players averaging more than 20 minutes per game).  Both are fantastic players.  Greg bests Howard in six of the eight categories below.

Greg Oden's Rank is NBA

2009-2010 Season, As Of All-Star Break

                                                                 Oden Howard

Blocks per 36 minutes                        1st        4th

Field goal percentage                          2nd     3rd

Offensive rebounds per 36 minutes 2nd     11th

True shooting percentage                   5th      9th

Total rebounds per 36 minutes         6th        2nd

Defensive rating                                    8th      1st

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PER                                                         8th    10th

Offensive rating                                   29th    71st

The second comparison is based on an indicator I developed: net offensive minus defensive rating. For Greg, his ORtg is 119 and his DRtg is 101, so the difference is 18.  That is what is shown in the table below.   Only eight players in the league have a net rating greater than 15.  Oden is tied with Tim Duncan for third place in the league, two places ahead of Howard.  Pau Gasol tops the list.  Notice Nicolas Batum on the list as well!

Offensive Rating Minus Defensive Rating

Pau Gasol                 20

Anderson Varajao   19

Tim Duncan             18

Greg Oden               18

Andrew Bynum        17

Dwight Howard       16

Nicolas Batum        16

Marc Gasol              16

Greg is a great player.  I wish him well in his recovery and look forward to continued improvement next year.