Due to an unfortunate string of injuries the Blazers' #1 overall pick in the 2007 NBA Draft, aka Greg Oden, is back at Ohio State working on getting his degree and helping the Buckeyes along as a student assistant coach.
The 28-year old big man played in just 105 games during his brief stint in the league, but when he was on the court he showed signs of promise averaging 11 points, 8.5 rebounds and 2+ blocks per game.
That said, Oden still feels as though he'll be remembered as the biggest bust in NBA history.
Speaking with ESPN's Outside The Lines, Oden said:
"Don't get me wrong," Oden told Outside the Lines. "If I was healthy, I would love to continue playing, but I'm not healthy."
"I'll be remembered as the biggest bust in NBA history," Oden said. "But I can't do nothing about that."
"But I will say that when I was playing, can you say that? ... I don't think I was that bad when I was on the court," Oden said. "I felt like it could have just got better if I had more time on there."
The guy who went #2 in the 2007 draft, Kevin Durant, thinks Oden is being too hard himself and that the "bust" rhetoric is simply nonsense.
Durant told ESPN in regards to Greg Oden's comments:
"Nonsense. That’s nonsense."
"In order for you to be a bust, you have to actually play and show people that you progressed as a player. He didn’t get a chance to."
"He didn’t want to get hurt," Durant said. "That was the last thing he wanted to do was to get hurt. That wasn’t even in the cards, and he got injured and that was unfortunate. But when he did play, he was a force. Protecting the paint. They were so good with him and LaMarcus down low, with Brandon Roy [and] Andre Miller at the time. They had a nice team. So he was a big part of that. He’s not a bust. He just didn’t play a long time because of injuries, and that’s just what it is."
