Filed under: Trail Blazers, NBA Draft, Thunder
Kevin Durant is a better player than Greg Oden.
I know. Shocking information, right? Hard-hitting news, that's what I'm bringing you at the moment. And trust me, the whole "they play completely different games" argument isn't lost on me. But the gap is simply too wide between their respective contributions, even when Oden is healthy (you know, the five minutes that happens per year) to believe anything else.
Thing is, it wasn't obvious when those two were drafted consecutively back in 2007. It pretty much boiled down to which one you'd watched more often, and which school of thought you subscribed to, at the time. In Filip Bondy's book on the 1984 draft, "Tip-Off: How The NBA Draft Changed Basketball Forever," Bondy discusses how Michael Jordan would forever alter a fundamental NBA drafting belief: "You always take the big man." Jordan's world-changing abilities would set a new corollary to the draft manifestos of GMs and fans. "Always take the big man, unless some other guy is insanely good at putting the little round thing through the circle thing." But after spending a decade trying to find the next Airness, the traditional thought regained its momentum. And with Oden's combination of not only height but brawn, he was an ideal candidate for the traditionalists, along with those that believe in drafting for need, except in the rarest of circumstances.
And just like with Jordan, there was simply no way to know Durant would be this good.
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Full story at http://nba.fanhouse.com/2010/09/15/durants-star-continues-to-shine-light-on-blazers-oden-decision/
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