For Shame: The Blazers Fans Deserve Better Than Oden's Bad Luck

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.