Simmons with some quality blasts at the Blazers

[WillG]

Really? You know how many athletes have later admitted their demons, and said nobody around them had a clue? Do you know what it's like living with an addict? Addicts are deceiving by nature, and they become very good at concealing their use of substances. It's even easier for a guy like Oden to get away with it because he was so frequently injured, he didn't have as much exposure (i.e. he wasn't in his normal practice and game routines where he was expected to perform).

Of course addicts can often behave in a coercive, deceitful manner.

Oden changed over time, distancing himself from teammates, sitting by himself on the bench(if he was even there). Along with talk of sightings where he was drunk frequently.
When that change in Odens behaviour is evident to even the most casual of fans, then the Blazers ought to have been on top of it.

Sadly this happens a lot with professional athletes, and precautions should be in place no matter the worth of the player, but with so much of the owners money invested in one individual, you would think they would be extra careful.

 

[WillG]

Could the Blazers have handled things differently with Oden? Sure. I probably would have fired the whole fucking training staff after the first or second year or injuries.
It's amazing that professional athletes have to be babysat these days. Nobody babysat Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, or Charles Barkley. Oden was fucking coddled from day one. Kids go off to college at your age and take care of themselves.

Great points, especially about young people having to deal with pressures in the real world. They'll never have the luxury of a multi-million dollar safety net in life.

 

[Natebishop3]

Great points, especially about young people having to deal with pressures in the real world. They'll never have the luxury of a multi-million dollar safety net in life.

You wouldn't even believe how coddled these guys are. They are literally treated like children. I'm surprised they don't have nap mats and juice boxes at the practice facility. They are told where to be almost every second of every day, and in some cases the Blazers have them driven around by employees. They have all this money and very very little responsibility. They have people who look over their money and pay their bills, they have people who drive them around, they have people who keep them to their schedules. These guys never have to grow up.

 

[MickZagger]

I can disagree on both accounts. wev interviewed a ton of candiates and we have ex gms coming out clammering for the job. a gm position no matter how horrible is always going to have ton of candiates and ours is far from horrible as much as people want to act like it is. not ideal but far from horrible.
as for Oden it's a little harder but people like to take swings at the blazers because apparently in two years we went from a model organization to a laughing stock and everyone wants to jump on the bashing bandwagon.
The team had to have known about the parties and attempted to bring him into line. there was a lot of rumblings about Oden being in trouble with the coaching staff his second year here. They couldnt force Oden to stop anything he did without a media firestorm which would make everything worse. An introvert who's depressed being the talk of ESPN and every sports news writer for weeks would have killed any trust he had for this organization and would probably have ended with him demanding a trade.
instead of putting the blame solely on the blazers how about holding Oden a little accountable for his own actions.

Sent from my LS670 using Tapatalk 2

You write posts that long on a cell phone. Thats a talent!

 

[BLAZINGGIANTS]

You write posts that long on a cell phone. Thats a talent!

Amazing talent, actually. But a sickness that you can't get away from this place!

 

[3RA1N1AC]

oden sent something really long on his cell phone once

 

[Sinobas]

I don't get all this bullshit. He was like 20 right, it wasn't like he was a little 12 year old living by himself. Who knows, if he hadn't sucked back on all that booze, maybe he'd still be playing. It could have interfered with his healing process.

But I doubt anything could have saved him. His body couldn't take it. No one needs 3 microfractures in a row without even taking the court.

Oh, the Blazers are so horrible because they didn't hire someone to tuck Greggie Weggie in at night. And make sure he takes his flintstone vitamins!

 

[jlprk]

Thoughts:

1) Based on Oden's now-former (I'm sure) friend's wording it that Oden called himself "almost" an alcoholic, you guys are calling him an "addict." Just because of a second-hand account of his own amateur self-diagnosis that he drank too much for a few months.

2) As I have often said, the national press gets its slant by reading local media hacks from every NBA city. Simmons is just repeating last week's Jaynes article speculating that no one wants to be our GM (yet we see interviews, and experienced GMs saying they're interested and not getting interviews). But now that someone in the national media repeats Jaynes, wow, it now carries authority. Big deal. I respect someone like Woj more, who comes up with original stuff, and doesn't just parrot Canzano and Jaynes like Simmons does.

3) Pritchard lovers now criticize "the organization" or Allen for Pritchard's bad leadership--while criticizing Allen for firing Pritchard for this same lack of leadership.

After sex symbol Rudy posted on his blog how lonely he was during holidays, and people noticed how teammates ignored him in the locker room, I posted a couple of times, we're losing this guy's loyalty, why doesn't Pritchard fix him up with some Spanish-speaking friends? I was told, that's not his job.

I also constantly got after the team for not making Oden stay in town, and was always told that someone's monkey's uncle had heard a rumor that his aunt's friend's cousin had seen Oden's shadow walking through a door 2 weeks ago, so Oden must be working out fervently in Portland, and get off the poor guy's back.

Now, the Pritchard loyalists get after Allen and "the organization" for ignoring Oden. Who in the organization should have been monitoring him?

 

[jlprk]

And remember how Oden bulked up way too much above the waist, until the trainers bragged to the media who told McMillan who put a stop to it? Where was the GM, Pritchard, in monitoring what the dumb trainers were up to? He was gloating to his fiance Quick about how great he was, reading his own publicity. Then their mistake was covered up, instead of getting them fired for probably causing the next injury.

How you guys can hate on Paul Allen for not monitoring Oden is beyond me. And then hate him for canning the guy who was supposed to be doing it.

So there are "some quality blasts" from me.

 

[jlprk]

I'm very dangerous when I don't drink. You call Simmons doing his Jaynes imitation "quality blasts?" He ain't got nuttn'.

That's right, I put the apostrophe before the period. Deal with it.

 

[Shooter]

So now it's the Blazers' fault that Oden was drinking and partying? My God, the guy stole millions of dollars from the organization, and they were supposed to babysit him, too?

 

[oldmangrouch]

If Oden was as good at basketball as he is at blaming everybody else for his problems, the Blazers would have had a heckuva team.

 

[C_note]

You must be an ignorant fool to blame only Oden for what happened, especially with the recent news that came out. Of course, Oden deserves a lot of the blame, but so do the Blazers. They played it cheap and didn't appoint anyone to take care of their #1 pick and once-in-a-generation center.

Of course they should have had someone babysit him. You think he only cost the team the millions he made from his contract?
Let's say things happened differently, he never takes up drinking, heals up after the first injury and is in much better shape/weight and goes on to a healthy career.

Now you can argue that the Blazers cost themselves hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenues, playoff appearances and possible championships. Yes, he could have been that good. All because they wouldn't dish out 60k a year to some shmuck to watch Oden all the time.

The entire management fabric of the organization needs to be fired. They aren't trying hard enough.

 

[Natebishop3]

You must be an ignorant fool to blame only Oden for what happened, especially with the recent news that came out. Of course, Oden deserves a lot of the blame, but so do the Blazers. They played it cheap and didn't appoint anyone to take care of their #1 pick and once-in-a-generation center.

Of course they should have had someone babysit him. You think he only cost the team the millions he made from his contract?
Let's say things happened differently, he never takes up drinking, heals up after the first injury and is in much better shape/weight and goes on to a healthy career.

Now you can argue that the Blazers cost themselves hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenues, playoff appearances and possible championships. Yes, he could have been that good. All because they wouldn't dish out 60k a year to some shmuck to watch Oden all the time.

The entire management fabric of the organization needs to be fired. They aren't trying hard enough.

I guarantee the team had someone keeping an eye on him. If they were willing to hire Travis Outlaw's brother to watch him, why wouldn't they have someone watching their #1 pick? You're making an awful lot of assumptions about what the team did or didn't do. They can't watch him 24/7. He's an employee, not a child and not a prisoner.

With that said, I blame the team for how they handled his rehab, and I think the training staff in Portland is terrible, but whatever he did off the court on his own time is his own fault. You can't lay the blame on the team for Oden developing a drinking problem, or partying too much. The team didn't adopt him.

 

[crandc]

Simmons is talking out of both sides of his mouth. He says the Blazers are a laughingstock because they drafted Oden instead of Durant (although for at least a year Oden was the consensus #1). Then he says with a "real" time Oden would have been productive. So which is it, Billy-boy? If Oden's a bust, he's a bust anywhere. If the city of Portland and/or the Blazers are so toxic they destroy any player it wouldn't matter whom the Blazers draft, Durant would have been a bust here as well. You can argue one or the other but not both.

It's of course a lot easier to speculate than to do actual investigative journalism. Simmons and his apologists assume the Blazers were either unaware of Oden's problems or did nothing about them. How do they know? Isn't it at least as likely that they did know, and did try? But you really can't handcuff someone to Oden 24/7. You can work with him. You can make suggestions. But if as he says he was an alcholic, believe me, the only one who could change that would be Oden. You can offer all the help you want, you can offer incentives and punishments, but only one person can make the decision how Oden will live his life and that is Greg Oden.

I had a friend, not rich and famous, but smart, highly educated & with a good job who lost EVERYTHING to his alcoholism, his job, his wife, his home, car, life savings, friends, health, spent time in jail, finally died at in his 30's when he crossed a street too plastered to notice the traffic. He had chance after chance to get into rehab, occasionally tried but left after a few days. In the final analysis no one could help him but himself. I sincerely hope with all my heart that Greg Oden does not end up like that.

 

[PapaG]

Simmons is talking out of both sides of his mouth. He says the Blazers are a laughingstock because they drafted Oden instead of Durant (although for at least a year Oden was the consensus #1). Then he says with a "real" time Oden would have been productive. So which is it, Billy-boy? If Oden's a bust, he's a bust anywhere. If the city of Portland and/or the Blazers are so toxic they destroy any player it wouldn't matter whom the Blazers draft, Durant would have been a bust here as well. You can argue one or the other but not both.

It's of course a lot easier to speculate than to do actual investigative journalism. Simmons and his apologists assume the Blazers were either unaware of Oden's problems or did nothing about them. How do they know? Isn't it at least as likely that they did know, and did try? But you really can't handcuff someone to Oden 24/7. You can work with him. You can make suggestions. But if as he says he was an alcholic, believe me, the only one who could change that would be Oden. You can offer all the help you want, you can offer incentives and punishments, but only one person can make the decision how Oden will live his life and that is Greg Oden.

I had a friend, not rich and famous, but smart, highly educated & with a good job who lost EVERYTHING to his alcoholism, his job, his wife, his home, car, life savings, friends, health, spent time in jail, finally died at in his 30's when he crossed a street too plastered to notice the traffic. He had chance after chance to get into rehab, occasionally tried but left after a few days. In the final analysis no one could help him but himself. I sincerely hope with all my heart that Greg Oden does not end up like that.

Simmons was one of the very few to have written he'd pick Durant over Oden. Looking back, he nailed it.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=nbamockdraft/070627

1. PORTLAND TRAIL BLAZERS

Bill Simmons selects: Kevin Durant, SF, Texas

If I'm Portland's GM, I just spent the last five weeks wondering about Greg Oden. What's his ceiling? Can he be better than Patrick Ewing? Alonzo Mourning? Can he become as dominant as Tim Duncan? Should I be worried about his surgically repaired wrist, or the fact that he might suffer back problems some day because his legs are different sizes? What about the fact that he likes basketball, but doesn't love it? The thing is, all these franchise centers are basically the same -- it just comes down to their inherent will to dominate a game. Hakeem had that will, Duncan has it, Moses had it, Shaq had it in 2000 and 2001 ... for whatever reason, Ewing didn't have it, and neither did Mourning or Robinson. Can you see Oden stepping onto a basketball court and saying, "There's no way we're losing this f-ing game. I'm destroying the other team tonight." For some reason, I can't.


Well, Durant plays that way every game. He's a cold-blooded killer. I hate pre-draft workouts, but didn't you find it interesting that Oden was nervous, awkward and apologetic during his workout in Portland, but a confident Durant strolled in there two days later and blew everyone away? You know what's funny about that? I knew that was going to happen. One guy plays basketball because he was created to play basketball; the other plays because he was bigger than everyone else and it seemed like the logical thing to do. If there was a pickup game and Oden was on one side, Durant was on the other, and your life depended on the game, you'd pick Durant. You would.


So if Portland takes Oden, it will happen because of conventional NBA logic (you always take the franchise center), because their fans are pushing for him (obviously, nobody watches college basketball in Portland) and because he's a personable, gregarious, likable big guy for a city that's desperately needed a personable, gregarious, likable big guy ever since Bill Walton ditched Portland for San Diego. I'm not saying those reasons are wrong. In fact, I understand them completely. But if I'm Portland's GM, I'm taking the guy with a legitimate chance to go down with Bird, Magic, MJ, Baylor, Oscar, West, Duncan, Pettit, Havlicek and every other great non-center who ever played in the National Basketball Association. I'm taking Kevin Durant.

 

[C_note]

You can't lay the blame on the team for Oden developing a drinking problem, or partying too much. The team didn't adopt him.

Maybe not, but they had to have seen it happening and obviously did nothing to stop it or help him.

 

[PapaG]

Simmons gets a lifetime pass in the credibility department, IMO.

Bill: Chad, I'm disappointed. You and I have been driving the Durant Bandwagon for five months, and now we're at the final stoplight of our long journey, and you just hopped out of the car and jumped into Greg Oden's hummer. I hope you can sleep tonight, you traitor.

Anyway, I agree with you on one thing: In real life (not mock life), Portland will take Oden. It's the safe, logical choice, and he'd never ditch them for New York or Chicago. But we disagree on Durant. He's a sure thing. I think he's the surest thing that's come into the league since Jordan. Barring injury, he's going to be the league's next dominant forward. I have no doubts. If Pritchard's reason for taking Oden is that he's too loyal to ever leave Portland, that's a lousy reason -- especially when Durant is destroying the conference for the Las Vegas Sonics in three years. By all accounts, Durant is a good kid. He'd be a hero in Portland, Nike's right there, and he wouldn't want to leave if they were winning. Which they would.

Chad, you wrote: "If I was a sports columnist, I'd take Durant too. If I'm wrong, and Greg Oden is Tim Duncan, I crack a joke about it and move on. If Kevin Pritchard is wrong, he's selling programs for the ABA Kansas City Knights."

In theory, you're correct. But this is the NBA! Chris Wallace helped ruin the Celtics and got a GM job in Memphis four years later.

Wait ...

Hold on, Chad ... I have Kevin Durant on the line ... he's wondering if you could help him pull out the knife that you just plunged in his back.

 

[PapaG]

Maybe not, but they had to have seen it happening and obviously did nothing to stop it or help him.

What are you going to do? Force the entire team to have an intervention with Oden? Portland babied him too much, IMO. Remember how he got Paul Allen's bedroom on Blazer One? I wonder what Roy and LMA thought about that favortism?

 

[Fez Hammersticks]

Simmons did nail that draft. He was talking Durant>Oden well before anyone that summer.

He's still the biggest douche on the planet though.

 

[crandc]

Fez, you know what they say about a stopped clock.

 

[BlazerCaravan]

Fez, you know what they say about a stopped clock.

It picks Durant, then hangs its hat on that one choice for years while making fun of Portland?

 

[Mediocre Man]

Fez, you know what they say about a stopped clock.

I like the one about "you know what they say about blind prostitutes" better

 

[BBert]

Simmons did nail that draft. He was talking Durant>Oden well before anyone that summer.

He's still the biggest douche on the planet though.

That wasn't a big risk. They were considered a toss-up. No-lose. Even though supposedely 28 out of 30 GMs would have taken Oden, it was Oden by a hair in each case. The Blazers themselves had a hard time deciding. So...taking the contrarian view was no-risk. If they both panned out as expected, picking the close second was not a whiff, and no one would remember or care he liked Durant better. However, by taking the contrarian view he can act like he's smarter than everyone else if it turns out the other way, which, again, was not a big gamble. He's a calculating douche.

 

[PapaG]

That wasn't a big risk. They were considered a toss-up. No-lose. Even though supposedely 28 out of 30 GMs would have taken Oden, it was Oden by a hair in each case. The Blazers themselves had a hard time deciding. So...taking the contrarian view was no-risk. If they both panned out as expected, picking the close second was not a whiff, and no one would remember or care he liked Durant better. However, by taking the contrarian view he can act like he's smarter than everyone else if it turns out the other way. He's a calculating douche.

He didn't just "take" Durant, though. He said he was a sure thing, and would be tearing up the West three years after he was drafted.

Which is exactly what happened.

 

[BBert]

Of course Durant was a sure thing. No one, but no one thought differently. Everyone thought and said Durant would tear it up -- including Kevin Pritchard. Oden was also considered a sure thing (although I think most thought he was a slightly higher risk-reward option, big men win titles, blah, blah, blah). Except that Oden couldn't keep from breaking something for more than 15 minutes.

 

[3RA1N1AC]

durant was crap until he got westbrook there to help him, and westbrook was crap until he got harden there to help him, and harden is only good because he has durant and westbrook to help him

science

 

[MickZagger]

He didn't just "take" Durant, though. He said he was a sure thing, and would be tearing up the West three years after he was drafted.

Which is exactly what happened.

I said at the time that you can't go wrong with either player. I actually preferred Durant, because I thought he'd be an instant 20ppg wing that would be hard to guard.

Bill Simmons gets a lifetime vouch of credibility. Yet, when I say tomato you say tamahto.

Trollish behavior at its finest.

 

[RoyToy]

Durant isn't surprising anyone with what he's doing. Everyone knew he was going to be one of the best players in the NBA.

 

[oldmangrouch]

At least this forum has moved past the point where we have posters claiming that:

A) Oden isn't a flop
B) Oden isn't injury prone
C) Oden was the "right" choice anyway

For awhile there, all the "I am in denial!" posts were getting tough to stomach.