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More questions than answers from Oden

Commentary: Greg Jayne

The Columbian
Published: August 22, 2010, 12:00am
2 Photos
Marquis Mitchell, 10, from Portland, meets his favorite basketball player, Portland Trail Blazer Greg Oden, at Big Al's during Greg's annual Team Oden Oregon Mentors.
Marquis Mitchell, 10, from Portland, meets his favorite basketball player, Portland Trail Blazer Greg Oden, at Big Al's during Greg's annual Team Oden Oregon Mentors. Photo Gallery

It’s just like last year, only different.

Greg Oden is in Vancouver, throwing a party at Big Al’s to honor mentors and the youngsters they work with.

It’s a bowling party. It’s an arcade party. It’s a pizza-and-pop-and-chance-to-meet-the-Trail-Blazers-center party for about 200 youngsters.

And it’s a good thing, a reminder that while we tend to paint athletes with one-dimensional brush strokes, the reality is more complex.

In that regard, it’s just like last year, when Oden threw a similar party.

“I grew up with mentors, so anything I can do with mentors, I’m really happy,” he said Saturday. “I’ve been with Oregon Mentors since 2008, and I’m going to be with them for a long time.”

According to Carolyn Becic, executive director for Oregon Mentors, the organization works with about 100 mentoring groups that engage with roughly 35,000 youth, including those in Southwest Washington. That need will continue and, we can hope, so will the day-to-day work and the annual parties.

Yet as Oden worked his way through the crowd, greeting every youngster in attendance, it seemed so much different from a year ago.

There has been a fractured patella, followed by surgery and rehabilitation. There has been an unfortunate Internet photo. There has been turmoil and turnover in the Blazers’ front office.

While Oden and the franchise a year ago were surrounded by optimism ranging from cautious to wild, now they are surrounded by doubt.

Oden, in a few brief moments with the media Saturday, did little to assuage that.

To be fair, the point of the afternoon wasn’t to appease the media; it was to serve the children in attendance. But as Oden has become increasingly aloof — he didn’t join his teammates for the playoffs until the final game — Saturday’s interview left more questions than answers.

“The doctors tell me I’m on time,” he said when asked about his rehab from surgery.

What does that mean?

“It means I’m on schedule to heal.”

“I’m feeling good,” he said. “I have been running; I haven’t played (basketball).”

What’s the timetable?

“The next step is up to the doctors.”

How has this past year changed him?

“The biggest thing for me is I’m a year older, more mature,” he said. “Just making some good lifestyle choices and changes.”

What kind of changes?

“Personal changes.”

And as he delivered the response with a big smile, that was as deep as Greg Oden was willing to delve Saturday.

This is understandable. Living in a fishbowl can be a soul-crushing existence, and for Oden it includes constant questions about his constant injuries, frequent inquiries about his frequent surgeries.

Imagine, for a moment, being a 22-year-old millionaire and trying to live up to sometimes-absurd expectations. Trying to make peace with a body that constantly betrays you. Trying to answer the same questions over and over.

The answers are never as clear-cut as we would like them to be. We want to know and we want to know now, as if Oden or anybody else can look into the future.

Will Oden ever be an All-Star? Will he ever lead the Blazers to championship contention? Will he ever at least serve up an argument that the club was correct to draft him ahead of Kevin Durant?

The fact is that the answers might still be years away, despite how desperately we would like to have them immediately. Sometimes it’s best to just let history play out at its own pace. Sometimes it’s best to just let the world flow over you.

Oden is what he is, a young man trying to avoid being overwhelmed by expectations, making a difference off the court regardless of what happens on it. And for the time being, we’ll just have to be content with that.

Greg Jayne is Sports editor for The Columbian. He can be reached at 360-735-4531, or by e-mail at greg.jayne@columbian.com. To read his blog, go to columbian.com/weblogs/GregJayne

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