Oden left you hoping he stayed healthy, hoping basketball would become more important to him, hoping his spotty college year wasn't an aberration, hoping he developed a low-post game and a killer instinct for a sure thing, you sure were doing a lot of hoping.

I thought Durant was a genetic freak: like Tracy McGrady crossed with Plastic Man, someone God created to make baskets and get to the line. If you followed Durant in college (and Ainge fell head over heels for him, as did I), you knew about his work ethic, leadership, character and scoring DNA. Like me, Boston GM Danny Ainge liked Durant as the top pick for one reason: Durant was the sure thing, not Oden. That presumes Oden was considered a sure thing - like Kareem, Ewing or Hakeem - and ignores those six months everyone spent wondering about him before the 2007 Draft. Because we love revising history over time, owner Paul Allen and then-general manager Kevin Pritchard have been protected by the 'Come on, anyone would have taken Oden, you always take a franchise center, it's not their fault he keeps getting injured' defense. Throw in Portland's tortured history with fragile centers and, as the years pass, it's becoming harder to fathom that the Blazers willingly decided, 'Screw the sure thing, let's take the big guy with uneven legs who played one great college game.' But that's what they did. Meanwhile, Durant lived and breathed basketball, became a national phenomenon during his only Texas season, crushed his Portland workout and had no conceivable offensive ceiling. Here's what we knew about Oden heading into the 2007 Draft: owned Ewing-like potential as a rebounder and shotblocker struggled with a broken wrist during his freshman year at Ohio State only played one 'Wow!' game (the '07 NCAA Championship: 25 points, 12 rebounds, 4 blocks in defeat against Florida's Joakim Noah and Al Horford) his right leg was one inch longer than his left leg (a red flag for potential knee/feet/back issues) openly admitted that he didn't love basketball and once wanted to become a dentist frightened everyone in Portland with a jittery pre-draft workout looked and walked like a thirty-six-year-old man. What if Portland had taken Kevin Durant over Greg Oden? You can order the paperback from Random House,, , Borders or other retailers. Reprinted by arrangement with ESPN Books, an imprint of ESPN Inc., New York, and Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House Inc. ESPN'The Book of Basketball' comes out in paperback with new updates and a revised Hall of Fame pyramid.Įditor's note: The following is excerpted from 'The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to the Sports Guy,' by Bill Simmons.

The Book of Basketball by Bill Simmons