He's 21 years old, and Superbad is his favorite movie, too. Anthony Palmer lives with his parents in Northeast Portland, and is a big Trail Blazers fan. When he's not going to school he works part time with a plumbing company.
I thought of him on Thursday because Palmer is a local college upperclassman who is the same age as the Blazers young center. And if we're looking for context, it's worth noting that this is about where Greg Oden might be in life if he weren't 7-feet tall and gifted with a basketball.
Oden had 18 points and 11 rebounds on Wednesday. For the first time this season he had more on-court smiles (one) than fouls (zero) during a game. And if you're like me, you spent Thursday wondering what the most encouraging part of Oden's recent improvement has been.
The points and rebounds are terrific. And the work Oden put in with assistant Bill Bayno is paying dividends. But what happens tonight against New Orleans is going to tell you as much about Oden as you've learned while he was beating up on Minnesota and Memphis.
If you're trying to look around the league and find the combination of teams against which Oden would have his largest advantage, don't waste your time. He just played them, back to back, and destroyed them.
The better measure comes (Friday night).
I'm talking about Emeka Okafor. When he was with Charlotte last season all Okafor did in a Bobcats win over Portland was serve as a headache for the Blazers, who failed to match up with him.
It's Oden vs. Okafor tonight. And there's Hornets guard Chris Paul, too, who will beat the Blazers point guards off the dribble, penetrate and cause Oden to rotate and try to stop the ball. And it's what happens in those critical seconds that will tell us how far Oden has come.
Will he reach? Will he fail to anticipate and move his feet? Will he commit foolish fouls? Because for all the excitement we had in the last four games, and as scary as a foul-free Oden makes the Blazers, if he ends up in foul trouble against the good teams, exactly how far can we say he's really come?...................
