I find it outrageous that some so-called knowledgeable fans on various Blazer bulletin boards characterize Oden as a bust that should be traded. On the contrary, he is right up with Dwight Howard in terms of center performance on a per minute basis.

Let's compare him to Dwight Howard, the best center in the league. The stats below are from Basketball-Reference.com. They show the key areas want to be strengths for your center: shooting, rebounding, and blocking. And they show some overall stats: PER, offensive and defensive ratings, and win shares per minute.

These show two players that are quite close in on-court performance.  If I reversed the numbers for the two players, it wouldn't be screamingly evident.

Player      PER    TS%  eFG%    ORB% DRB% TRB% BLK% ORtg DRtg   WS/48

Howard    24.0   .630   .612        12.0     31.0      22.0     8.7      113     95      0.223

Oden        23.1   .647   .605        15.6      28.3     21.9     6.7      118    100     0.214

RANK IN NBA (AMONG PLAYERS WITH > 20 MINUTES/GAME)

Player      PER    TS%   eFG%    ORB% DRB% TRB% BLK% ORtg DRtg WS/48

Howard    6          5         2             11         2          2          4           49      1       4

Oden        8          1         3               1          7          3          1           17      4       8

The main difference between the players is minutes played. For Greg, it's injuries – not his fault – and fouls. And look at Howard's foul-plagued minutes in this year's playoffs.

So when you bang on Oden and express Durant remorse, please do it with the knowledge that Oden has a Dwight Howard-like impact on the game when he plays. That's Dwight Howard, the three time NBA all-star, two-time NBA defensive player of the year, three-time all-NBA team member, and starting center for our country's Olympic team!