I agree that the idea of Oden being a bust is a little bit farfetched at this moment. Of course, one could never know how steady college play will translate to the pros, but with the physical gifts Oden has, he will always be at least an extremely valuable role player that every team would love to have. And if that sort of development for Oden was just the worst case...

Of course, especially with big men it is always possible that their carreers could be ravaged by injuries, but if you keep in mind how Amare Stoudemire's case went, you can never be sure that even a serious injuriy will destroy the carreer of a player, making him somewhat of a \"bust\" (although I prefer to think of a bust more as a player that was considered to have impact, but just never brought it to the stage instead of one that was injured, but anyways...I guess it doen't matter that much if a player can't play because of injury or just can't play at all).

Problem that I see with Portland is that they traded Randolph away thinking that they had a low post scorer in Oden to replace him. If Oden cannot play, it's up to the backups and Aldridge.

MWithers is absolutely right, although I'd like to add, that the Blazers also passed on Jamaal Magloire who at least at some point of his career was a solid low post player as well. I would also like to think that they did not trade Randolph only to make room for Oden, because you can never have too many 20-10 guys on your team, especially if you'd imagine pairing the offence-oriented Randolph at PF with the defensice minded Oden at C with Aldridge as your big men from the bench. That would have sounded good to me...in theory.

I tend to think that they wanted to get rid of the last remnant from the Jailblazers era whom they just would not have wanted to be in the same locker room as their young guys, just like I don't want Mark Blount to breathe the same air as the Wolves youngsters.

Sanyarin wrote:
I agree 100% with that statement. If Oden was still healthy the Blazers would be stacked with young talent and primed for a positive season with good players and citizens on their roster. I'd have to imagine Randolph's off-court troubles ended his career in Portland.

I can only imagine what kind of trouble he'll be able to find in NYC

Sanyarin wrote:
I agree with that. However, if they wouldn't have been able to get Oden, I don't think they would have traded Randolph.

I continue to agree with MWithers. The addition of Oden made Randolph expendable, although they appear as totally different player types to me. But if it wasn't for the fear that Randolph's attitude tarnishing their coming franshise player for the next decade, they would not have wasted the chance to put two players on the court that I believe complement each other perfectly (Randolph and Oden).

Sanyarin wrote:
That's my theory as well. Also, Randolph had a *massive* contract, so it did help them to get rid of that as well... regardless of his attitude.

College Wolf wrote:
Right, but they essentially traded a 20-10 player for pennies on the dollar to get that future cap space. It's funny because noone questioned the move at the time, but now that Oden is gone for the year...