Oden/Polynice

Ohio State's Greg Oden will surely be picked #1 in this spring's NBA draft, right? That seems to be the consensus.

This bothers me, as the Oden hype has all along. So he won nine consecutive high school championships by an average margin of victory of 849 points. So he was named a McDonald's and Dominos and Nike and Rapid Oil Change High School Player of the Year seven consecutive times. So he's anchored a Big Ten team that's been at or near the top of the rankings all season. Is he the second coming of Shaquille O'Neal? To me he's the second coming of Rashard Griffith.

In the history of the NBA (1950 to present) there have been 304 centers drafted. Of those, 20 were the first pick of the draft. Of those, seven stand out for the same reasons Oden does and will: They were true post players who led their college teams to the top of the rankings, were widely praised as the best players in the country, and were chosen first in the draft. They are Shaquille O'Neal, David Robinson, Patrick Ewing, Akeem Olajuwon, Ralph Sampson, Bill Walton, and Lew Alcindor.

Do you put Oden in that company? I don't. In terms of performance at the college level I'm not sure you can even put him the company of top picks Andrew Bogut, Michael Olowokandi, and Joe Barry Carroll.

(For reference, 98 centers have been chosen as top ten picks. To get sense of the range of talent available in the top ten, Joel Przybilla (9) was drafted higher than Willis Reed (10) and Bryant "Big Country" Reeves (6) higher than Robert Parrish (8).)

I've said since first watching him play—and have not changed my opinon after several games—that the college players Oden most reminds me of are LSU's Stanley Roberts and Wisconsin's Rashard Griffith. Roberts was drafted 23rd in 1991 and bounced around the NBA for several years before finally being banned for substance abuse. Griffith went 38th in 1995, never suited up for an NBA team, and has played overseas. Both received about the same amount of hype as Oden in college.

Curious, I looked up Roberts's and Griffith's career college stats:

	YRS	PPG	FG%	REB	BLK
Stanley Roberts (7'0", 290)	1	14.1	57.6	9.8	2.2
Rashard Griffith (6'11", 275)	2	15.6	55.4	9.7	2.4
Greg Oden (7'0", 280)	1	15.3	61.4	9.3	3.5

Yep, those numbers are remarkably similar. And so are their styles of play. So, while NBA analyst Steve Kerr has described Oden as a "once-in-a-decade player," you'll pardon me if I stay on the sidewalk while the bandwagon passes. Yes, Oden and the Buckeyes have had an excellent year, even as the big center has favored his left hand while he recovers from surgey to his right. But having watched my share of Sam Bowies, Jon Koncaks, and Benoit Benjamins pass through these parts, I'll reserve judgement on Oden until, oh, March of 2008.

A children's play in the gym means no hoops this weekend. Use the free time to brush up on your drop-step.