Greg Oden, a former No 1 NBA draft pick of the Portland Blazers, recently reflected on his professional career, which has been riddled by injuries. With only 5 years under his belt in the NBA, Oden has endured multiple knee surgeries and has yet to complete a single season. The usually private Oden gives an update about his life off the court that has mirrored his life on the hardwood. Grantland has the latest.
It’s hard to believe you could say this about a former no. 1 overall pick in the NBA draft who also had naked pictures of himself leaked onto the Internet, but Greg Oden is as private a person as I’ve ever known.
Our friendship dates back to the summer of 2001, when I joined Greg’s AAU team shortly before we both entered eighth grade. My previous AAU team was comprised of a bunch of kids who were like me: upper middle class white guys from the Indianapolis suburbs. Greg’s AAU team, on the other hand, was almost exclusively made up of black guys from the city. Because of this, as I entered the gym for my first practice, I felt as out of place as Christian Laettner on the Dream Team and wondered if I’d ever fit in. But it only took five minutes for this uneasiness to subside. Why? Because I realized that the tall, goofy-looking kid wearing Rec-Specs and shooting by himself on the side basket was just as shy as I was.
Since he was the only other introvert on the team, Greg and I immediately hit it off. On road trips, when the rest of our team would go out at night and do exactly what you would expect teenage boys who are visiting new cities to do, Greg and I would typically stay in our hotel room and watch TV, quote Will Ferrell movies, or discuss Laguna Beach. As we got older, I stopped growing, somehow became less athletic, and transformed into the scrub benchwarmer that I’m known for being today. Meanwhile, Greg ditched the Rec-Specs, figured out how to run without tripping over his own feet, and transformed into the best high school big man since Lew Alcindor. Yet despite the attention that accompanied being one of the most sought-after college recruits ever, Greg never really stopped being that goofy eighth grader who shied away from attention and just wanted to play ball.
And now, with his career in limbo after all that’s happened to him, he’s the same guy today.
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