Greg Oden and The All-Time "What If?" Team

[weezie]

Can we include Mike Jordan as in 'what if he had actually been a competent GM?'

[DUKIE V(A)]

No, not Marty. Arvydas Sabonis. The greatest center to ever play in Europe, and by some estimations the most versatile big man to ever play the game of basketball period, Sabonis never recorded a single minute of action in the NBA during his prime. Beleaguered by physical deterioration and his home country's refusal to allow him to leave the U.S.S.R during the height of his playing career, the 7-foot-3 Lithuanian giant was merely a fossil of his former self by the time his game finally reached stateside in 1995. At the time of his first NBA game with the Portland Trail Blazers, he was already 31 years old. Compare that to Shaquille O'Neal, who debuted with the Orlando Magic at a still vibrant and youthful 21. In the demanding and often abbreviated life of an NBA center, Sabonis already had one pivot inside of his career grave before ever even beginning his rookie season.

Despite these limitations, Sabonis still managed career averages of 12 points, 7 rebounds and 2 assists per game in seven NBA seasons, including scoring 23 a game during the 1996 playoffs. As impressive a scorer from underneath the basket as he was from beyond the arc, Sabonis was an even more brilliant passer, possessing a feel for the game that was highly unusual for a man of his size. A graceful giant. While still playing in Europe, before becoming the weary and rundown Hack-a-Shaq we saw in the 2000 NBA Playoffs, he was Larry Bird playing in Shaq’s body. And the most talented center the planet has never truly known.

Maybe only the words of an NBA legend could fully do justice the awesome nature of Sabonis’ game and offer an educated perspective into what might have been.

Once said Clyde Drexler, “Had Arvydas spent his entire prime in Portland, we would have had four, five or six titles. Guaranteed. He was that good. He could pass, shoot three-pointers, had a great post game, and dominated the paint.”

Lived on a military base in Spain and got to see a young Sabonis play against Real Madrid in person. Real Madrid won the game but Sabonis put on a show. Amazing talent. I am surprised he only averaged 2 assists a game in the NBA...He was a brilliant passer.

[luvdahops]

Reggie Lewis seemed destined for greatness. Not to mention that his death seemed to set the Celtics back at least a decade.

Depends on how you define greatness, I guess. Lewis had already been in the league 6 years when he passed away, with one All-Star appearance and two seasons as the Celtics main option as Bird, McHale and Parish faded late in their careers. Averaged around 20ppg, 5rpg and 3apg in his best seasons, and always seemed to need a lot of shots to get his points. While those stats are nothing to sneeze at, I am not sure they equate to greatness at the NBA level, and they certainly don't suggest someone who was truly going to take over for Bird as the face of the franchise with minimal dropoff.

[Starter]

Would you put Penny over Grant Hill's possible career?

Career highs for a season in some major categories -

Penny - 21.7 points, 5.8 rebounds, 7.2 assists, .513 FG%. All-NBA 1st team twice, 3rd team once.

Grant - 25.8 points, 9.8 rebounds, 7.3 assists, .523 FG%. All-NBA 1st team once, 2nd team 4X.

A pretty good argument...

Definitely. Very, very difficult to call. Grant was totally awesome, basically a point guard from the 3. (Detroit didn't even actually play a point guard with him -- no need.) You could look at Grant's 25.8 ppg season one of two ways -- it was an outlier, since all of his other years in Detroit he was right around 21. Or it was a sign of the player he was becoming, since it was basically the final season he played mostly on a good ankle. I'd probably assume it was the latter. The sad part with Grant is that one of his best attributes, his desire, led to his downfall in certain ways since he gutted it out on a terrible ankle and was never even close to the same. At the very least, he still plays, not to mention at a relatively high level of contribution.

With Penny, I sort of felt like he had only begun to scratch the surface of what he was capable of. You had a sense of where Grant's limits might have been, but we didn't yet know that about Penny. He was an amazing defender and a superb rebounder for a point guard, used his athleticism so well. One of my great regrets as a fan is that I never got to see what he would have done without Shaquille, how he would have put his stamp on that team and made it his own, and who they would have put around him. Again though, Penny left a great legacy and is still surprisingly relevant today. Nothing to be ashamed of.

Anyway, not sure who I'd pick. They were both incredible. But just like with Pippen, who had no other option but to be underrated based on playing with Jordan, Penny had Shaquille to steal the spotlight. Grant was a one-man band.

[hq2]

In terms of unrealized (injury related) talent, I think he's up there with Sam Bowie (the man known most famously as the player taken
ahead of Michael Jordan). Oden's not even 25, and he looks washed up. One wonders what would have happened in Boston had they
gotten the number one pick in '07 and taken him. No 17th banner, nothing. A total loss.

[Starter]

Depends on how you define greatness, I guess. Lewis had already been in the league 6 years when he passed away, with one All-Star appearance and two seasons as the Celtics main option as Bird, McHale and Parish faded late in their careers. Averaged around 20ppg, 5rpg and 3apg in his best seasons, and always seemed to need a lot of shots to get his points. While those stats are nothing to sneeze at, I am not sure they equate to greatness at the NBA level, and they certainly don't suggest someone who was truly going to take over for Bird as the face of the franchise with minimal dropoff.

With all due respect, you're not doing Reggie justice. He was a fantastic defender who made Jordan work, played at Northeastern and was a team captain for the Celtics (and that honor wasn't lightly bestowed). He also shot 48% for his career, so it wasn't like he was a gunner. At 27, he was just entering his prime. Comparing him to Bird isn't fair, but it's not like Reggie didn't carve out his own lane during the short time he was there.

[Devil in the Blue Dress]

Has anyone mentioned Jason Williams and the great potential he had before the motorcycle accident? He's adapted, but what a career he might have had had he stayed off that motorcycle....

[Cameron]

Lived on a military base in Spain and got to see a young Sabonis play against Real Madrid in person. Real Madrid won the game but Sabonis put on a show. Amazing talent. I am surprised he only averaged 2 assists a game in the NBA...He was a brilliant passer.

I sure wish I would have had the opportunity do that. It would have been a privilege.

Had Sabonis not been riddled by injury, it's safe to say that his minutes per game would have increased substantially (he played an average of 24 minutes per over seven years, only twice surpassing more than 25 minutes a night) and, consequently, so would have his assist totals. He was a magician, and could make a ball disappear -- behind his back or through an opponent's legs -- as effortlessly as Bob Cousy or Harry Houdini. I was too young to have seen him play during his prime -- much of my memory of Sabonis comes only through highlights and the recollections of others -- but I watched the Blazers religiously when Arvydas still towered above the City of Roses. My favorite Sabonis passes were often the ones that resulted in a turnover, those out-of-nowhere rockets of genius that spiraled past defenders like a pinball and hit intended teammates directly in the head. What I wouldn't give to listen to the great announcer Bill Walton describe just one more Sabonis miracle through traffic.

I miss the NBA of yesteryear.

[mgtr]

Oden's not even 25, and he looks washed up. One wonders what would have happened in Boston had they
gotten the number one pick in '07 and taken him. No 17th banner, nothing. A total loss.

Is it clear that Boston would have taken Oden with the number 1 pick? I know that Portland did, but the number two pick was also pretty good that year. Boston might well have taken Durant instead of Oden. Who knows, hard to play the what if game. They might have even traded the pick for a couple decent players.

[throatybeard]

I think L'il Penny needs to be on this team.

Not basketball, but there was a great 30 for 30 on ESPN covering Marcus Dupree at Oklahoma. Given my exact age, I had never heard of this dude until I moved to Mississippi. He has got to be one of the most befuddling "what the heck happened there" cases of unfulfilled potential in American sport. I can tell ya where his house is in Neshoba, but I don't know what he's doing.

[Olympic Fan]

There are countless stories of playground legends who have slipped through the cracks of our nation's concrete canyons without ever getting the opportunity to showcase their abilities to the world, but Oakland product Demetrius "Hook" Mitchell is one that might just be worth noting. ESPN a few years back aired an emotionally-driven documentary on Hook's painful tale of god-given talent gone wasted and there were a lot of NBA stars that backed the story up. Oakland natives such as Hall-of-Famers Gary Payton and Jason Kidd as well as guys like Brian Shaw and Antonio Davis all agreed that, of all of the NBA players who came from The City during their era, Hook was the best of them all. Said Kidd during the doc, "Hook was better than me, better than Gary, better than Brian, better than everybody. People, they just don't even know."

Mitchell played for two seasons at Contra Costa College in northern California and another year at Cal State before robbing a Blockbuster at gunpoint in the mid-90s and spending what might have been the prime of an NBA career behind bars. Released at the age of 32, Mitchell never got his chance to play in the League, becoming just another statistic of the streets and a broken childhood. Sad story.

I think you are on the right track, but you may have the wrong playground legend. There was a guy named Earl “The Goat” Manigault. He was born in Charleston, S.C., but grew up in Harlem, where a promising prep basketball career was derailed by academic and behavioral problems. He briefly attended Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina and enrolled at Johnson C. Smith in Charlotte, but he had a dispute with his coach and left school without playing a game.
Manigault went home and became the king of the New York playgrounds. In the late 1960s and throughout most of the 1970s, “The Goat” was whispered about in basketball circles – a legendary leaper with a deadly long-range shot. His signature move was the double-dunk – he could slam the basketball through with his right hand, catch it and dunk it again with his left … all on the same leap. He held his own or outplayed such NBA stars such as Earl The Pearl Monroe and Connie Hawkins on even terms. When Kareem Abdul-Jabbar retired in Los Angeles, he was asked the greatest player he ever saw. He picked “The Goat” Manigault.
Manigault never had the discpline to get off drugs long enough play pro basketball.

And similar to Mitchell was Ben Wilson, a 6-8 star at a Chicago's Simeon High School. He was rated the No. 1 prospect in his class -- ahead of Danny Manning and Chris Washburn. On Nov. 24, 1984 -- just days before the start of his senior season at Simeon, he got into an argument with three guys outside a convience store and was shot in the throat. He died the next morning.

[Cameron]

I think you are on the right track, but you may have the wrong playground legend. There was a guy named Earl “The Goat” Manigault. He was born in Charleston, S.C., but grew up in Harlem, where a promising prep basketball career was derailed by academic and behavioral problems. He briefly attended Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina and enrolled at Johnson C. Smith in Charlotte, but he had a dispute with his coach and left school without playing a game.
Manigault went home and became the king of the New York playgrounds. In the late 1960s and throughout most of the 1970s, “The Goat” was whispered about in basketball circles – a legendary leaper with a deadly long-range shot. His signature move was the double-dunk – he could slam the basketball through with his right hand, catch it and dunk it again with his left … all on the same leap. He held his own or outplayed such NBA stars such as Earl The Pearl Monroe and Connie Hawkins on even terms. When Kareem Abdul-Jabbar retired in Los Angeles, he was asked the greatest player he ever saw. He picked “The Goat” Manigault.
Manigault never had the discpline to get off drugs long enough play pro basketball.

And similar to Mitchell was Ben Wilson, a 6-8 star at a Chicago's Simeon High School. He was rated the No. 1 prospect in his class -- ahead of Danny Manning and Chris Washburn. On Nov. 24, 1984 -- just days before the start of his senior season at Simeon, he got into an argument with three guys outside a convience store and was shot in the throat. He died the next morning.

Great stuff, Olympic. I'm an avid reader of SLAM Magazine and have always been fascinated by the playground game. The "GOAT" would have been an amazing talent to witness. As would have another fabled New Yorker named Joe "The Destroyer" Hammond.

Hammond, another prolific talent that suffered the same fate as so many other products of the ghetto who ended up swallowed by the harsh realities of the street, was once labeled in the New York Times as the greatest player to ever come out of Harlem, including the great Earl Manigualt. In just a single half of basketball while guarded by the Doctor himself, Julius Erving, Hammond dropped 50 points in a 1970s playground game that he didn't show for until the intermission, having been out too late the night before high and partying. Or so the story goes. He was selected by the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA hardship draft of 1971 but, due to already making more money than he knew what to do with on the streets hustling and selling narcotics, Hammond politely declined and so the legend, or tragedy depending upon your view, was born.

Really interesting stuff. The game of basketball is full of wonder.

[hq2]

Once said Clyde Drexler, “Had Arvydas spent his entire prime in Portland, we would have had four, five or six titles. Guaranteed. He was that good. He could pass, shoot three-pointers, had a great post game, and dominated the paint.”

Sabonis in his prime was indeed an incredible player. We saw him very little, but when we did see him, judging from the way he beat America in the '88 Olympics
(was David Robinson on the U.S. team? I think he was), he was pretty amazing. I recall one replay from a game in '87 where he did a one-handed
rebound slam from somewhere in the lane that had to be seen to be believed. By the time he came over in '95, his knees were gone and he could barely jump or run. He was only a shell of what he had been, but at that, he was still better than most.

[luvdahops]

With all due respect, you're not doing Reggie justice. He was a fantastic defender who made Jordan work, played at Northeastern and was a team captain for the Celtics (and that honor wasn't lightly bestowed). He also shot 48% for his career, so it wasn't like he was a gunner. At 27, he was just entering his prime. Comparing him to Bird isn't fair, but it's not like Reggie didn't carve out his own lane during the short time he was there.

Well, with all due respect, you are a perfect example of the tendency for Celtics fans to exaggerate and romanticize Reggie. I fully appreciate the great narrative - local kid who worked his butt off and was a terrific team player and leader. But he was not, as many Celtic fans seemed to the think at the time and since, the sort of transcendent talent who could have been the centerpiece of a perennial contender (Len Bias was, but not Reggie). FWIW, I have lived in Chicago most of my adult life, and followed the Bulls - and the NBA in general - very closely in the 80s and 90s. I do not remember Lewis giving Jordan any particular trouble or ever getting any serious NBA All-Defense consideration. He was indeed a very good shooter. But when I say he needed a lot of shots to get his points, it is a reflection of the fact that he didn't get to the line very often (less than 20% of his career points came on free throws) or shoot the 3 very well. To put it another way, in modern (i.e. KenPom or Hollinger) terms, he was not a very "efficient" scorer.

[Starter]

Well, with all due respect, you are a perfect example of the tendency for Celtics fans to exaggerate and romanticize Reggie. I fully appreciate the great narrative - local kid who worked his butt off and was a terrific team player and leader. But he was not, as many Celtic fans seemed to the think at the time and since, the sort of transcendent talent who could have been the centerpiece of a perennial contender (Len Bias was, but not Reggie). FWIW, I have lived in Chicago most of my adult life, and followed the Bulls - and the NBA in general - very closely in the 80s and 90s. I do not remember Lewis giving Jordan any particular trouble or ever getting any serious NBA All-Defense consideration. He was indeed a very good shooter. But when I say he needed a lot of shots to get his points, it is a reflection of the fact that he didn't get to the line very often (less than 20% of his career points came on free throws) or shoot the 3 very well. To put it another way, in modern (i.e. KenPom or Hollinger) terms, he was not a very "efficient" scorer.

I'm not a Celtics fan.

[luvdahops]

I'm not a Celtics fan.

Then I stand corrected on that assumption. But I also stand by the points I made in my post.

[77devil]

I'll throw in Sam Bowie, infamously selected ahead of MJ in the 1984 draft. While he lasted ten years in the NBA, I believe he spent much more than half of it injured. He played only 60+ games in four seasons after his rookie year. The hand writing was on the wall as Bowie missed two seasons at Kentucky due to injuries but he was the 2nd selection by Portland none the less. Quick, can anyone name the first without looking it up? His name resonates with me because I saw him play against Duke and the G-Man in Kentucky's first and last game of the 1979-80 season.

[Starter]

Then I stand corrected on that assumption. But I also stand by the points I made in my post.

At least you're consistent. You're still way off base, though. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like you're just perusing someone's stats and making judgments based on that instead of remembering the kind of player and leader he was. Lewis ranked 32nd in free throw attempts in 1992-93, if that matters; it's not like he never went to the line. And with three-pointers, Dwyane Wade has one this year; wouldn't you take him on your team?

And seriously, you don't remember Lewis hassling Jordan with his length and quickness, at least relative to what others could do? He blocked him four times in a game. Find another guy who's done that, I won't hold my breath. Hardware or not, everyone who actually watched him knew how good Lewis was.

[luvdahops]

At least you're consistent. You're still way off base, though. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like you're just perusing someone's stats and making judgments based on that instead of remembering the kind of player and leader he was. Lewis ranked 32nd in free throw attempts in 1992-93, if that matters; it's not like he never went to the line. And with three-pointers, Dwyane Wade has one this year; wouldn't you take him on your team?

And seriously, you don't remember Lewis hassling Jordan with his length and quickness, at least relative to what others could do? He blocked him four times in a game. Find another guy who's done that, I won't hold my breath. Hardware or not, everyone who actually watched him knew how good Lewis was.

I saw both Jordan and Lewis play a lot. One great, memorable defensive game does not make someone an elite defender. Lots of guys got up for playing MJ, and had career games against him here and there. Do you seriously believe that Lewis was an elite defender? If so, is it based on something more than a four block game against Jordan?

Interesting that you bring up Wade. He is a completely different sort of player; while he doesn't shoot 3s well either, D-Wade has always attacked the basket relentlessly, averaging 9.0 FTAs per game for his career with 28% of his TP from the line. His FTAs per game have come down a bit with LeBron at his side, but even this year, with that factor along with injuries and reduced minutes, he is getting to the line 6.7x per game, with 24% of points on FTs. Lewis's career highs were 4.7 FTAs per game and 20% of points from FTs.

I don't base my arguments on stats - I use stats to back up what I see with my eyes. You might want to try it sometime.

[sagegrouse]

I'll throw in Sam Bowie, infamously selected ahead of MJ in the 1984 draft. While he lasted ten years in the NBA, I believe he spent much more than half of it injured. He played only 60+ games in four seasons after his rookie year. The hand writing was on the wall as Bowie missed two seasons at Kentucky due to injuries but he was the 2nd selection by Portland none the less. Quick, can anyone name the first without looking it up? His name resonates with me because I saw him play against Duke and the G-Man in Kentucky's first and last game of the 1979-80 season.

Hakeem Ulajuwan. Hardly anyone criticizes Houston for picking him first over MJ. After all, he got two titles and is in the HOF. --sage