Greg Oden is widely known as one of the most disappointing No. 1 picks in NBA history, as he was picked right before Kevin Durant. There is no question that there were a lot of high expectations for the center, as he performed extremely well at the college level.
Former All-Star Brandon Roy revealed that when Greg Oden was drafted, he believed that the Portland Trail Blazers could win a championship. There’s no doubt that after seeing Oden’s college performances, it would be easy to draw that conclusion, as Oden had great athleticism and was physically dominant. (1:20)
Long story short, we end up drafting Greg… we’re having these workouts, we doing like football stuff… he could run, he could run. And then we got into open gym, whoever’s team Greg was on was going to win… Greg could defend better than just about anybody. He could get offensive rebounds, he kept every ball alive.
I remember calling my dad, and he was like, ‘How good is he?’ I was like “We can win a championship.” For the first time in my life, playing with him, I was like, ‘We could win a championship.’ He was that good. I’m not saying we could win it that year, but having him on the team we had everything we needed to win a championship, because he filled a lot of those holes… He was that good.
Even if he didn’t fulfill expectations, Greg Oden was at one point an extremely talented basketball player whose career was cut short due to injuries. Injuries are an unfortunate and constant part of basketball, but it still hurts to see players with all the potential in the world get hampered.
We won’t ever know if the Portland Trail Blazers would have won a championship, but Roy’s reasoning makes sense. Greg Oden is one of the big “what if?” stories in the NBA, and there’s no question that he had a lot of promise when he was drafted.
