The curse of the 1984 draft continues to haunt the Portland Trail Blazers. It was the year the Blazers passed on a player named Michael Jordan, by selecting Sam Bowie as the second pick over-all in the rookie draft. And the rest is history. Fast forward to the 2007 draft, the Blazers owns the top pick over-all. Their choice is down to two players, 7-0 center Greg Oden of Ohio State University or 6-9 forward Kevin Durant of University of Texas at Austin. Portland rolled the dice and selected Oden over Durant. The Seattle Supersonics (now Oklahoma City Thunder) gladly settled for Durant with the second pick. Fast forward to the present and Oden has played in only 82 games (out of a possible 328) because of various ailments, with career norms of 9.4 points, 7.3 rebounds and 1.4 blocks a game. Durant on the other hand, has averaged 25.9 ppg, , 6.3 rpg and 2.7 apg in 314 outings so far with the Sonics/Thunder. Durant also bagged the 2007-08 rookie of the year honors, was an all-star twice (2010 and 2011), and one of the strong favorites to win the MVP award last season. Former Blazers General Manager Kevin Pritchard recalled what really made them choose Oden over Durant in one of the biggest blunders in NBA draft history, according to Sports Radio Interviews.
“It’s the question that I probably get most. I have never studied a person or players like I did Durant/Oden. It was every single minute of every single second of their entire careers. We were going back into AAU and the one thing that kept hitting us really hard was Greg Oden lost three games until he got to Ohio State, then he got hurt again and only lost a couple there and that was over hundreds and hundreds of games. The overwhelming thing that we got from everybody we talked to was the cat doesn’t care if he scores or does anything, but he’s about winning. We had been really trying to change our culture for guys who really put the team first, not care about stats, and really be about winning. We thought he was the pick at the time. We did the same thing with Durant. They said he’s gonna be the best scorer in the league, he’s going to be an amazing player, and he’s gonna win. We just felt like Greg was going to be that guy that just doesn’t lose basketball games.”
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