Wounded Knee

[September 19th, 2007] Repeat after me: Greg Oden is not Sam Bowie redux.

So relax, Trail Blazers fans. The Oden’s game has never been built on speed, so odds are his microfracture knee surgery won’t diminish the 7-footer’s rebounding and defensive force when he returns as a 20-year-old rookie in the 2008-09 season.

Besides, we’ve been through worse—and we’re not just talking about the Blazers’ biblically bad decision to draft Bowie over Michael Jordan in 1984. Here are some other, gut-punching disasters in the franchise’s 37-year history:

Twelve years before the Blazers set the bar for draft-day blunders with Bowie, they used the No. 1 pick on LaRue Martin instead of Julius Erving or Bob McAdoo.

Erving and McAdoo had Hall-of-Fame careers. Martin played only four seasons, averaging 5.2 points a game. He did deliver in one sense, going on to work for UPS. Then again, the Blazers remained so crummy that they got the top pick again in 1974 and chose Bill Walton.

The Blazers were 50-10 and seemingly on track for a second straight NBA title behind Walton. Then Walton went down with an injured left foot. The Blazers won only eight of their last 22 games and lost in the first round to Seattle.

Walton never played another regular-season game for the Blazers. He hobbled through six more seasons for San Diego and Boston before becoming a broadcaster and boring TV viewers regularly with his hyperbole.

Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals against Los Angeles. The Blazers were making a furious fourth-quarter comeback against the Lakers when Cliff Robinson dropped a gimme pass on a four-on-one fast break for what would have been a layup to give Portland the lead with less than a minute left.

The Lakers clinched, and the Blazers didn’t get to come home for a Game 7. This Blazers team, actually the strongest one of their 1990s versions, was deprived of a chance at the finals. Robinson went on to a long career choking in the playoffs for the Blazers and other teams.

Again, against the Lakers. Portland had trailed L.A. 3 games to 1, but had knotted the series at three games apiece. They led in Game 7 by 13 points heading into the fourth quarter. Shaq and Kobe punked Scottie Pippen and Rasheed Wallace, exposing both as the second bananas they truly are.

The collapse set off an implosion, leading to a freefall that finally ended when the Blazers got the No. 1 draft pick last spring. They chose Oden.