\Also, who's to say that Oden would have had all these injuries if we had drafted him? He could have ended up being healthy as easily as the balls bounced against us during the draft lottery.
That is an interesting point. You hear players rave about some teams, like Phoenix, for their trainers and fitness staff. And I think ours has to be a quality group as well, considering how our vets have held up and if you look at say, how KG has bounced back from looking washed up at the end of last year to looking great this year and how Perk seems to be bouncing back ahead of schedule. Maybe a different surgery decision or rehab schedule could have helped, or different training to strengthen his knees. I mean you see him get injured now but he played through a whole season at Ohio State and years in high school looking great.
It seems Oden's career will always be a what if deal and that's really sad. He was such a great player in college and a really good kid. Hopefully I'm wrong and he turns things around. Maybe he can channel some of the Blazers history with Bill Walton, if he can manage to stay healthy he could be the best C in the league for a season or two like Walton did before him, who knows.
And you make a good point on the Roy extension though. That was a bad move by Portland for sure. They had to know the risks there. It's similar to what Washington did signing Gilbert right off a knee surgery, you have to wonder what they are thinking doing that.