With top pick Oden out, Portland must 'pay its dues'

Blazers coach Nate McMillan likened losing top pick Greg Oden (above) for the season to "winning the lottery but you don't get the money for a year." AP

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Pandemonium in Portland had reached pandemic proportions. Blimps, skyrockets and the Blue Angels over downtown's Pioneer Courthouse Square were becoming commonplace in the wake of the Trail Blazers' lottery luck and draft selection of No. 1 pick Greg Oden, the can't-miss center from Ohio State.

And it wasn't stopping there: Not content to just name their newborns after him, people started renaming their grandpas, whom Oden more closely resembled anyway. Rumor has it that a bill was floated on the floor of the legislature in Salem to change the spelling of the 33rd state to "Odengon,'' on the assumption that Oden soon would put the "D'' in Oregon. Surely it was only a matter of time before Portland's historic Steel Bridge across the Willamette River became known as the Blocked Shot Bridge in honor of the big kid's game.

And then, just like that -- red light. Brick wall. Parade over, like the marching band in Animal House turning down the dead-end alley. Oden, the most highly anticipated big man to enter the NBA since Shaquille O'Neal in 1992, underwent microfracture surgery on his right knee on Sept. 13 and was lost for 2007-08.

All of a sudden, it was David Chase scheduling the next season of The Sopranos.' Check back in, oh, 13 months or so. The Blazers might have something for you then.

"Think about winning the lottery but you don't get the money for a year,'' Portland coach Nate McMillan said this week. "You come up with all these plans and you buy things, but you don't get the check. In the meantime, how do you pay your bills?''

Uh, pretty much the way any of us would, faced with a serious cash-flow problem: by running up debt. After a summer of so much excitement, Portland opened 0-3, losing last week in rapid succession at San Antonio, New Orleans and Houston, three road games in four nights, all home openers for their foes. Tough way to start for a fledgling team missing its shiniest new part.

"Even the NBA got caught up in it,'' McMillan said. "You know they wanted to have 'Tim [Duncan] and Oden' and 'Yao [Ming] and Oden.' We didn't have that schedule last year.''

While Seattle, the Blazers' rival up I-5, also lost its first three games, Sonics fans at least got to watch rookie Kevin Durant, the No. 2 pick, score 18, 27 and 24 points in the defeats. In Portland, meanwhile, the Oden days -- which many hope will match or surpass the franchise's olden days (Bill Walton circa 1977) -- remained stuck firmly in the future.

"Every team has to pay its dues,'' general manager Kevin Pritchard said. "We have to be patient, and we hope the fans are, too.''

Said McMillan: "Every day, we feel it. Every day, we feel that loss [of Oden], and rightfully so. We know the direction we want to take this team. It will take some time. If we just go by [the fans], we would trade everybody that we have.''

The challenge now is to make this a productive season despite Oden's injury, both for the rehabbing rookie and for everyone waiting on him. For the 7-foot center, that means more than just blogging about the Blazers for the team's Web site.

"We want to keep him with the team, and as soon as he can start traveling, we will let him,'' the coach said. "We've got to give him things to do, not just send him to the therapist to for treatment.

"He doesn't want to do that anyway. He has more time than the rest of our guys. He can be exposed to more, in terms of learning what we want to do. He doesn't have the demands on his schedule that the other players do.''

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