Oden or Durant?

If he's ready, he's ready. Portland is certainly ready for him . Unless I'm completely wrong, he's going to be the best big man in a long long time. Better than Shaqfu, and Robinson, and on a par with Olajuwan. Certainly better than any one Portlands ever had before, with no apologies to Bill Walton (boooooo).

Whoa, let's not get ahead of ourselves here.

Better than Shaq and Robinson? On par with the "Dream"? Most will tell you Shaq's the most dominant center who's ever played, including Chamberlain. I might agree with them.

I wouldn't put Oden at that level just yet.

Peace

Nobody is put on that level until they bring it, and continue bringing it for their career. It's only this year that they finally allowed LeBron to be compared to MJ, and that was only after his Game 5 performance against the Pistons. After slightly stinking it out against the Spurs, those comparisons are gone for the time being.

I stand against any comparison to any legend, until that person deserves it.

Their "game" can emulate a Jordan, Shaq, Wilt, etc., but until they actually do something, they should not be grouped with them.

I said it was possible, the potential is there, barring all kinds of unforeseen problems.

I'll agree he does have a ways to go to match those I mentioned, but the raw game is there.

Going back to the "should he have come back to college" question, I'll give an absolute "no". In fact, he never should have had to miss out on the NBA last year. If a guy's good enough to go pro right out of high school, he should be allowed.

Personally, I'd rather see the college game be for true college athletes and not for guys who don't belong in college and only stay for a year, anyway.

Oden certainly was a capable student and more than able to do college level academic work. But the financials being what they are, it made no sense to jeopardize a multi-multi-million dollar contract with the injury possibility.

What I'd like to see (and never will) are some MAJOR penalties for recruiting and signing a kid who jumps to the pros in his first two years (or flunks out).

Now there's way too much money involved for that to ever happen, but wouldn't it be nice to have college athletic programs populated by true student athletes? And I know I'm in the minority on this issue.

My alma mater (Indiana University) has the next pheenom coming in this fall, Eric Gordon. All my alumni buddies were beside themselves with joy. And yeah, it'll be nice to have him, for the year he's there.

Originally posted by yeahright


Oden certainly was a capable student and more than able to do college level academic work. But the financials being what they are, it made no sense to jeopardize a multi-multi-million dollar contract with the injury possibility.

And a pleasant surprise it was too. Nothing is stopping any of these kids going back to finish college at a later date. If I had a chance to play a game for umpteen million dollars a year, guess what my choice would be? Yep, you were right the first time .