Greg Oden: Will Injury End Portland Trail Blazer's Basketball Career?

We know that Shaquille O'Neal is one of the greatest centers to step on the basketball court. There is also no doubt that big men like Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Wilt Chamberlain changed the face of how big men played the game. The one thing that we now question is if we will ever fully get a chance to see if Greg Oden will ever have an opportunity to show himself deserving of being mentioned in that class.

Recently, the Portland Trail Blazers suffered a huge bite in their hearts - larger than the bite the Mike Tyson placed Evander Holyfield. After going through arthroscopic surgery it has been revealed that Oden has cartilage damage in his right knee. He more than likely will miss the entire 2007-2008 NBA season.

This is not the first time that Oden has suffered injury. Oden missed the early portion of his freshman year at Ohio State do to injury this past season. Even after he was drafted he suffered in June faces issues with tonsillectomy. This problem was detected when he was gasping for air in Summer League Play.

If you are a Portland fan it only causes a deep seeded fear in your heart in that you have been down this road before. You can only imagine how the fans and organization are rehearsing their history with Sam Bowie suffering a career ending injuries and never blossoming into the player they thought he would be. In the meantime Michael Jordan (who they did not pick) goes on the revolutionalize the game with exploits that could not be described in any column.

Now here is the big issue here. Was Oden the right pick for the Portland Trail Blazers? Could it be that Kevin Durant was the better pick and player for the situation? Given history it appears that he is the more durable of the two and after even his colleagues observed his play in this Summers Olympic Team Tryouts even they left in awe of what the skinny kid could do on the offensive end of the court.