Thursday, June 07, 2007

Greg Oden: Super Blogger

Oden: Dunker, defender, writer?

As Greg Oden anxiously awaits his big payday (actually, his second big payday), it turns out he has a little time to kill. He is no longer taking class at Ohio State University, so I'm assuming he only has two responsibilities in life at the moment: Don't fall flat on your face in front of NBA Scouts, and don't die.

Of course, that first one is easier said than done, but it looks like at the moment he is making the most of his visit at the NBA Combine in Orlando. Multiple league sources have noted that Oden's biggest challenger for the #1 overall pick, Texas phenom Kevin Durant, performed more than sub-par in his initial workouts in the combine. Based solely on workout performance, Durant was the 78th ranked player out of 80 total. The article does not mention Oden's overall rank, but Oden did finish better than him in multiple drills, including the vertical leap (34 inches to Durant's 33.5), agility drill (11.67 seconds to Durant's 12.33) , and three quarter court sprint (3.27 seconds to Durant's 3.45). Oden very well may have been the big winner at the combine, considering most of his numbers are relatively unheard of from a Center, whereas Durant was the big loser with his aforementioned performance. However, don't expect this combine workout to solidify Oden as the #1 pick or even drop Durant down a few. It doesn't work quite like the NFL Combine. As one scout said about Durant, "No one will care, he's a basketball player. But if you're comparing him to Oden, then yes, Oden is the big winner." Essentially, the NBA comes down to the factor of "Can the kid actually play?" much more so than the NFL Draft, which often times relies on potential to determine one's draft spot.

That other somewhat sarcastic "responsibility" of Oden's that I mentioned? The don't die one? Well, it turns out, with all of his extra time, Greg is taking after yours truly (Okay, so he's not actually taking after me, I just happen to be the experienced veteran in this field), and has started his own blog. How much of this blog is actually original Greg Oden material beats me, but as Sean at AroundTheOval points out, much of it seems to be written by a college freshman, filled with grammatical errors, slang terms, etc. The blog is filled with more than just Oden's (or whoever it is') writings, too. There are multiple Oden highlight reels, which I got much satisfaction from looking back on, with my personal favorite being the block against Tennessee. Needless to say, I'll be adding this to my Blogroll on the sidebar.

Update: Blogger is undergoing some maintenance at the moment, and I am unable to update my sidebar. I will try it again this evening.