A few points about points
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by user Verbalkint
- - Portland Trailblazers, Greg Oden, C
- - Seattle Supersonics - Kevin Durant, F
Okay. It's over. Here's why I thought they should pick Oden.
First of all, and I still don't hear enough about this, Kevin Durant does not play well with others. It's shocking to me that this is being overlooked.
I have no doubt that Durant can score 30,000 points in the NBA.
But let me give you a list. Karl Malone, Dominique Wilkins, George Gervin, Alex English, Reggie Miller, Patrick Ewing, Charles Barkley, Artis Gilmore, Adrian Dantley, Elgin Baylor, Clyde Drexler, Walt Bellamy, Dale Ellis, Mitch Richmond, Kevin Garnett, Reggie Theus, Eddie Johnson, Bernard King, Tom Chambers, John Stockton, Cliff Robinson, Bob Lanier, Walter Davis, Allen Iverson, and Terry Cummings.
All of those guys are in the Top 50 scorers of all time. And if they all put up their hands, they would have a combined ZERO championship rings. There's 25 names there -- that's half of the top 50 scorers. And they didn't win one ring.
Now, I would never question the talent or will of any of those guys, especially not to his face. But the point I'm making is, points do not equal championships. In fact, if you can't incorporate your teammates, you could argue that in some of those cases a great scorer may have actually prevented his team from winning.
And, Bill Russell, he of 11 championships? He's not in the top HUNDRED scorers. I think most of those 25 guys would give up thousands of points for one ring. And some of them might give up all of them.
By the way, all those times when someone tries to criticize a bad pick by saying, "Taking this guy before this guy is/was like taking..." The second half of all of those comparisons should be Sihugo Green. Never heard of him? Yeah, me neither, until I found out that Bill Russell was drafted second in the 1956 draft behind a person named Sihugo Green, which before this week you probably could've convinced me is the color of the walls in my living room.
I'm going to stop being negative to Durant for a second. He's an unbelievable talent. His long arms and fluid movement make him nearly impossible to defend against.
I don't mean to imply with anything I've written about Durant that I don't think he can be a great player, a huge star, and maybe a future NBA champion. But one of his signature games last year was a triple-overtime loss against Oklahoma State. In a whopping 52 minutes, Durant scored 37 points, grabbed 12 boards, and dished out one assist.
I'm sorry, I read that wrong. In 52 minutes, he had 37 points 12 rebounds and... one assist. Oh, apparently I didn't read it wrong.
In that game, Durant missed eight three-pointers. His team lost by two. He had one assist. I'm not Kevin Durant, but if it was me, I'm wishing I could take back one or two of those missed threes.
Durant is going to generate a lot of highlights. In fact, he already has. Unfortunately, the NBA Finals are not played on youtube. Look, he's going to be a great scorer. But he's got some growing to do if he's going to be a great player.
Now, to Greg Oden.
I thought he should be the first pick, and here's why: he got better and better every single time I saw him. That peaked in the championship game, where he had 25 points, 12 boards and four blocks. That came against a team that had 2 post players drafted in the top 10. That's man's work right there.
And in his worst game, against Tennessee, he made the best play in the entire tournament with his game-saving block.
By the way, Portland did something really interesting in this draft. First of all, they got rid of Zach Randolph. Good move. In order to ditch Randolph they had to get Steve Francis, who was carted away from a young Yao Ming and then a young Dwight Howard before he did too much damage. Now it looks like Francis won't be there long. Good move.
Portland also took Josh McRoberts, a close friend of Oden's. Good move. Duke didn't get out of the first round of the tournament, but that was hardly his fault: McRoberts played 40 minutes and went 22 and 12 with five blocks. Then they snuck Florida's Taurean Green way late in the second round.
So Portland just drafted 203 points from last year's NCAA tournament. David Stern is probably still smiling.
With their other two picks -- by the way, FIVE rookies? -- Portland took Petteri Koponen from Finland and Rudy Fernandez from Spain. So, add in Brandon Roy, Jarret Jack, Lemarcus Aldridge, and Sergio Rodriguez -- all of them under 25 -- and that looks like your Portland Trailblazers of the next 12 years. That's a nucleus with six college studs and four foreigners, which is a mix that sounds pretty similar to the one that just won another NBA championship.
There are two NBA teams hidden way west and way north of most of us. In the next 10 years, one of them will score a lot of points.
And one of them might just get a ring.
(Find more from me at http://mikemullensblog.blogspot.com)
