Oden Out For The Season; Blazers Fans Reeling After Yet Another Setback

Okay, so Kevin Pelton outlined the injury’s on-court implications below, but what about the effect it has on the franchise-as-a-whole? Dave at Blazersedge has composed what can only be described as an opus, outlining the injury from all angles.

But perhaps most touching—or bizarre, if you’re not familiar with the situation—is the section devoted to coping with this news:

Both the team and its fans could maybe take the examples this season has already given us--the examples of friends and teammates in the Blazer family who have suffered this year--when dealing with the loss and whatever letdown accompanies it.

Well, how do you cope when you’re diagnosed with cancer? Initially it’s devastating and there are going to be plenty of hard days. It’s not fair and it’s out of your control, at least from the diagnostic standpoint. "The sun will come up tomorrow" sometimes seems more of a curse than an affirmation. It isn’t right that it does. It seems like it should stop where it is because this happened. But sooner or later you figure out that it doesn’t stop and it’s not going to.

Tomorrow comes anyway. You don’t have any more choice about that than about the initial event. The only choice you have is how you’re going to deal with tomorrow. Even your expectations here are changed. Maybe you used to have 16 great hours in a day and that’s now reduced to 10 or 15 good minutes (especially at first). But those are your 10 or 15 minutes and you have to make them mean as much as the whole day used to. Some days will be better, some worse, but they’re still yours to live.

Maybe the Blazers used to take 48 minutes of winning basketball for granted but now with all the injuries they have to struggle to make 24. Some nights that’ll be enough. Some nights you’ll get 36 or that original 48. You celebrate those like crazy. Some nights it won’t be enough. But you hold on to what good effort you had and you try to expand that for the next game. You don’t worry about what’s out of your control. You take care of what you can control. The games are coming anyway. You do everything you can to play each one well.

So, that knee injury? Yeah. Kind of like cancer. [Ed. note: according to Blazersedge's Ben in the comments, the reference to cancer is because of Blazers' owner Paul Allen’s recent diagnosis]. If that sounds over-dramatic, then you don’t understand the level of commitment from Trail Blazers fans. For all intents and purposes, they’re the best fans in the NBA, and nobody on that team is more sacred to Portland fans than Oden. It’s a testament to the city of Portland that, despite disappointments, he’s been welcomed with such open arms. Can you imagine if the Knicks had drafted him?

And this year, he was finally putting things together. Like watching a struggling student finally wise up, come into his own, and graduate college. That’s what was happening for Greg Oden and the Portland fans, people who blindly and feverishly supported him.

So that’s why this injury feels so personal. Like a family member that just keeps having horrible accidents happen. It’s not Greg’s fault, he doesn’t deserve it, and it all just makes it so much more painful for the Blazers fans that love him.

Of course, stepping back from the maudlin scene in Portland, there are a few simple realities: part of the reason Portland fans love Oden is because his success is closely intertwined to the history of their beloved Blazers. If he succeeds, it’s a departure from the narrative that began when Portland passed up Sam Bowie for Michael Jordan. If he fails, he becomes another Sam Bowie, injury-plagued and perpetually disappointing. And like it or not, with Kevin Durant shredding the league in Oklahoma City, that makes Portland sort of a sad punchline.

It’s only sad because like Oden, the Portland fans just don’t deserve this. Both Oden and the Blazers are mild-mannered, exuberant, and unfailingly classy. But these are the facts: with this injury, Oden will have missed the majority of two seasons, and badly underperformed in the one season he did play. Does this make him a bust? Not necessarily, but that’s only if you’re naive enough to think this is the last of his injury concerns.

Fair or not, some players just get hurt a lot.

Oden is one of them. It happened at Ohio State, it’s happened his first few years, and unfortunately, it’s the type of thing that could keep happening his whole career. Whether it’s biology or bad luck, it just feels like this is Oden’s destiny. As Dave from Blazersedge said of this injury, in particular, "It’s not fair and it’s out of your control." But it’s reality, and we may just have to accept the previous sentiments as broad commentary on Oden’s legacy. For shame.

Kevin Pelton over at Basketball Prospectus explains what Oden's season-ending injury will mean for the Blazers:

From the Blazers' perspective, while the loss of Oden is painful, there is a silver lining in the short term. Oden's emergence as a go-to player on offense had created some issues as Portland figured out how to incorporate his skills into an attack that was already one of the league's best. Neither LaMarcus Aldridge nor Brandon Roy has played as well early this year as they did in 2008-09, and the Blazers' offense as a whole (currently 10th in the league in Offensive Rating) has dropped off compared to last year's efficient performance.

Aldridge will now return to his role as Portland's go-to player inside, giving him more of the quality looks on which he thrived during the second half of last season. He and Roy also have had more success on the two-man game, whereas Roy has never been entirely comfortable working with Oden on pick-and-rolls.

As was the case when Oden missed all of 2007-08 and two extended periods in 2008-09, the Blazers are fortunate to have the luxury of a starting-caliber center in backup Joel Przybilla. Przybilla is another Portland player who has slumped in the early going, but it is possible he will be more effective in longer stints as part of a starting lineup that already has more than enough scoring.

The biggest concern for the Blazers in the short term is depth. Channing Frye served as Przybilla's backup the last two seasons when Oden was out, but he is now in Phoenix and Portland does not have either a natural center or anyone taller than 6'9" on the bench.

[...]

Surely, no injury is as important to the Blazers' long-term future as Oden's. The evidence and precedence suggests to me that Oden should be able to return to health next season. Certainly, losing the balance of the season will set back Oden's development, robbing him of valuable court time. But where Oden's last rehab saw him trying to live up to the expectations placed on him as the No. 1 overall pick--a process that clearly took a mental toll last season--now Oden merely needs to return to the level at which he was playing before Saturday night.

First the good, via Joe Freeman at the Oregonian:

Trail Blazers center Greg Oden underwent successful surgery Sunday to repair his fractured left patella. ... “Surgery went very well,” general manager Kevin Pritchard said. “He knows he’s got work to do in rehab but we have a lot of confidence in him and expect him to make a full recovery.”

Now, the bad:

Roberts inserted two screws into Oden’s left knee to reattach the patella and that bone now has to repair and bond itself. Pritchard said this typically takes two months. Through that process, in which Oden will be forced to do very little, he will experience muscular atrophy and it will take roughly two more months of rehabilitation to recover from that.

Pritchard refused to put a timeline on Oden’s return during a conference call with reporters, except to say that he expects the 7-foot center to be back in time for the start of training camp next season. Oden was expected to remain at the hospital for observation overnight and return to his home sometime Monday. Multiple family members were either en route or had made plans to travel to Portland to be with him.

Indeed, however "successful" the surgery may have been, this still means that Oden is having screws put into his knee. There will be muscular atrophy and a lengthy rehabilitation process and all the other good stuff that comes with suffering a serious injury. The Blazers and Oden have been here before; they know the process well.

And that's why it hurts so much.

Via BlazersEdge, Portland released a statement on Greg Oden’s surgery.

PORTLAND, Ore. – Portland Trail Blazers center Greg Oden will miss the remainder of the 2009-10 season after undergoing successful surgery Sunday to repair a fracture in his left patella, it was announced by General Manager Kevin Pritchard.

Joe Freeman of The Oregonian reports via his twitter…

Had 2 screws inserted to reattach his patella. The bone has to repair and bond itself; should take 2 months. After so much inactivity, Oden will then experience muscle atrophy. That will take another two months of recovery.

Via SBN's Blazersedge comes this video of Blazers head coach Nate McMilland and GM Kevin Pritchard talking about Greg Oden's likely season-ending injury after the team's win over the Rockets. First, McMillan:

And GM Kevin Pritchard:

From SBN’s always excellent Blazersedge:

Obviously this takes a huge bite out of the Blazers’ depth, defense, and rebounding. With Oden and Travis Outlaw out you’re going to see Joel Przybilla and LaMarcus Aldridge handling a ton of pressure defensively. One of the near-constants of the season has been the perimeter players relying on the big guys to mitigate their mistakes. Now they simply can’t afford it. Joel is a fine defender but the price for the strategy is fouls. Spend a couple fouls on Przybilla now and you’re stuck in a small lineup involuntarily for huge chunks of the game. That’s a huge difference from the voluntary small lineup. Long story short, we’re about to see how good or bad the Blazers guards really are defensively. They’re going to have to man up.

Here’s another blow: From the start of the season Oden provided an often-unnoticed intimidation factor in the lane. You can’t go so far as to say that opponents were scared to go in there, but they were definitely looking over their shoulders after the first block or two in a game. Nobody likes to get capped. Nobody likes to be used as an example of why Greg Oden is a beast. You saw players putting up different shots when Oden was in the game. Right here, right now, every opposing coach and scout is circling the painted area on the chalkboard and saying, “Drive against this team.” It was already raining a little. Now there’s going to be a hurricane. The Blazers have managed to cover most drivers this season but even while doing so they’ve given up open jumpers. Unless something changes they’re going to have to work harder just to stop the layups. That may spell disaster against any team that can shoot.

The rebounding aspect is just as scary. As much as we wanted Oden to get more touches on offense the team wasn’t trending that way. They telegraphed it a little tonight even, setting up Aldridge clearly in the first quarter and keeping Greg away from the basket in order to leave space for LaMarcus to work. Offensive rebounding, however, has been a huge threat and has provided extra points to a team desperately in need of them. Nobody you put on the floor is going to be as dangerous of an offensive rebounder as Greg. That takes potential points away. It also lets the opponent relax a little more, maybe allowing them to think about running out instead of crashing the boards.

Straight up: this is a loss that extends well beyond anything that shows up in the boxscore under Oden’s stat line. But you probably don’t need me to tell you that.

The Portland Trail Blazer’s official twitter account relays these comments from Greg Oden about his fractured patella:

I’m obviously disappointed having worked so hard to get back to where I was. This is a setback, but I’ll be back.

It’s in God’s hands now. I want to thank the fans, my teammates, and everyone in the Blazers family for all of their good thoughts.

According to the Portland Trail Blazers' official twitter account:

This is obviously devastating news for both the Blazers and Oden, who has now suffered season-ending injuries in two of his first three years in the NBA. While Oden was still foul-prone, he had undeniably improved this season, and seemed on the verge of fulfilling some of the mammoth potential that led the Blazers to select him first overall in the 2007 draft.

Oden's latest injury is particularly bitter for a Blazers franchise that has been snake-bitten when it comes to highly drafted big men. From Bill Walton, to Sam Bowie (who the team infamously took ahead of a shooting guard named Michael Jordan), now to Greg Oden (who the team took ahead of Kevin Durant), the Blazers have had a bevy of highly touted centers had their careers derailed by repeated injuries.

Yahoo!'s Adrian Wojnarowski reports:

Brian Smith of The Columbian reports that Blazers center Greg Oden has been taken to the Rebound Orthopedic facility to undergo an MRI on his injured left knee.

We’ll have more information on his knee once it becomes available.