Oden Will be Great, Durant Will be Better

Ten years ago, the San Antonio Spurs selected Tim Duncan as the first overall pick of the 1997 NBA Draft, and have since won four NBA championships. That draft was a watershed moment in recent NBA history, in that it set up the first dynasty of the post-Jordan league.

Many observers of the league believe that this year’s draft will mark a similar watershed, and that Greg Oden will come to dominate the league in the same, quiet manner as Duncan has for the past ten years as a member of the Portland Trail Blazers.

The one problem with this viewpoint is simple: Oden is not the best player, and will not become the best player, from this draft. That player, a player who could go on to become one of the great players in the history of basketball, will most likely be taken second overall by the Seattle SuperSonics – Texas forward Kevin Durant.

The conventional wisdom states that a dominant big man is necessary for a championship team (i.e., Duncan, Shaquille O’Neal, Bill Russell, etc.), and that when such a big man like Oden comes along, it’s borderline insane to pass him up for a non-center like Durant. For this reason, the Houston Rockets have gotten a historical pass for passing up MJ in the 1984 draft for Hakeem Olajuwon.

Of course, the only reason the Rockets won their two championships with Olajuwon was the absence of Jordan, who led his Bulls to six titles in the 1990s and earned the title of the greatest to ever play the game.

Durant will almost certainly not swipe this mantle from Jordan when his playing days are done. However, in his one year at Texas, he displayed a range of skill that has earned him comparisons to Kevin Garnett, Tracy McGrady, and Jordan himself. He is a remarkable physical specimen (6’9” with a 7’6” wingspan, and a 25-foot shooting range), who put up remarkable statistics at Texas, dominating a major conference nearly by himself as a 19-year old freshman. Even more importantly, he has demonstrated poise and a budding killer instinct beyond his years in several big games during the Big 12 season.

Oden showed a disturbing lack of such poise in Ohio State’s second-round game against Xavier, by shoving a Xavier player out of bounds in the closing seconds, an action that was clearly an intentional foul, which would have likely knocked Ohio State out of the tournament.

Yes, Oden was a dominant defensive player for the entire season, and played much of the season recovering from a broken right wrist, leaving to scouts’ imagination how well he would have performed on the offensive end while healthy.

Make no mistake about it: I believe Oden will be an excellent pro, a perennial All-Star and member of the NBA’s All-Defensive Team. The Blazers will be a playoff team for the next several years with the young nucleus they have in place, which will likely feature Oden, LaMarcus Aldridge, 2006-7 Rookie of the Year Brandon Roy, and perhaps Zach Randolph (if he is not traded away in the next few weeks).

But with Durant, they would contend for the NBA title within three years. Twenty-three years ago, the Blazers made a fatal mistake by selecting Sam Bowie over Michael Jordan. Today, they seem poised to make a similar mistake, in passing up a once-in-a-lifetime talent in order to make the “safe” choice.