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• Rose vs. Beasley draft debate
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PORTLAND, Ore. -- Catching up with the No. 1 pick in the 2007 draft ...

5 Ways Greg Oden spent his year away from basketball

5. Remembering his last game. One year later, Oden was in his Portland home with his uncle watching the NCAA tournament final, a game his Ohio State team lost to Florida in 2007. "The first play,'' he said, "the announcer said something about me and the trouble [Memphis' Joey] Dorsey had with me [in an Elite Eight game], and that was kind of cool -- like, 'Dang, I was there just last year.' "

Oden empathized with Memphis after its loss to Kansas the other day. "I knew how they felt. I knew how it was when I sat there,'' Oden said of being in the locker room after the game. "And I waited the whole long time and I watched the One Shining Moment. I just remembered last year trying to watch it and [senior guard] Ron Lewis turning it off, like, 'We don't want to see this because we are not in it.' And I remember me and [freshman guard] Daequan [Cook] looking like, 'Man, we came to college to see us in the One Shining Moment.' Even though we lost, we still wanted to see it.

"I know you would love to be at the end of it, and we weren't. But it was still good to be seen on that. That's a memory you're always going to have.''

4. Improving as a player. "He's more comical than people think,'' Trail Blazers general manager Kevin Pritchard said. Which is not to say that Oden hasn't been serious about returning to the court. Within a week of having microfracture surgery on his right knee, Oden was back in the training room to resume upper-body workouts. The 7-footer would eventually bulk up to more than 290 pounds.

Oden has averaged a team-leading 25 to 30 workouts per month, according to the board kept by Portland strength and conditioning coach Bob Medina. "Two guys I can compare him to that I've worked with in the past are a young Shawn Kemp and a young Jermaine O'Neal,'' Medina said. "As young guys when they started training, their bodies just ate it up. How Greg has been ... other guys you have to encourage them to get in here; with Greg you say, 'Hey, we need to take a day off.' "

Oden won't resume playing full court until September, in part because the Blazers haven't resolved the cause of his knee injury last summer. "We have to really be careful in his rehab,'' coach Nate McMillan said, "because we don't know what happened.''

Oden weighs 285 now; he played at 275 last year with Ohio State. "Where I want him next year, I told him 260,'' McMillan said. "It's just a goal, but I think lighter for him is better to start off, especially coming off surgery. The more weight that you have to carry for an 82-game schedule that you've never played -- you're going to play twice as many games as you've ever played -- you don't want to be carrying a lot of weight. That will have an effect on your ability to stay healthy.

"Once you get through your first year, now you can say I want to put on 15 to 20 pounds. But I think first you try to have speed and the ability to run and to move, more so than being a physical monster in that paint. But the main reason is that he's coming off a major surgery and we want him to try to play 82 games, and the more weight you carry makes it harder for anybody.''

His shooting has improved too. "Because that's basically all I can do,'' Oden said. "So I have the best standing jump shot you've ever seen, I'll tell you that.''

Shooting coach John Townsend has worked with Oden to center his shooting hand behind the ball. He, too, keeps stats on a board in the Blazers' practice gym, which on Thursday showed that Brandon Roy has attempted a team-leading 357 free throws and made 75.9 percent of them.

"Greg's probably going to have 100 more this time next year,'' Townsend said. "I'll probably sit him down before the season next year to try to get him to commit to doing 83 percent, because Yao Ming and Brad Miller are the two best 5s percentage-wise in the NBA and they're both [just above] 83 percent.''

Oden was viewed by some as a limited scorer, but the Blazers have bigger ideas. "He's got very soft hands, a very soft touch,'' Townsend said. "You can throw it to him and he can catch it. Not many guys his size can do that.''

3. Fitting into the team. "We'll be playing around him and off him,'' McMillan said. "It will be Greg stepping out there and quickly realizing the areas he needs to improve upon. It will come really quick for him because we're going to throw him out there. And the thing that we'll have to do with him is to bring him on, not so much slowly, but to help him in his growth, his development.''

The league's youngest team has already helped ease Oden's transition by nearing a .500 season in his absence, which reduces the pressure on Oden to transform the franchise. It's not like he's going to come in and ruin a good thing, either.

"He's really an easy guy to integrate, the way he plays,'' Roy said. "He's a great shot-blocker, a great defender, and he lets offense come to him. Whenever he's healthy and ready to come back, we can put him in real smooth.''

They Blazers also learned that he wants to be part of the team rather than its master. "Every game when he travels with us, he's in the tunnel high-fiving everybody,'' Medina said. "It's not like it's all about him. If you didn't know any better, he's the 15th guy. He comes and does whatever you ask him to do. He's very coachable, he's on time, and it's rare to see that in the NBA -- especially with high-profile guys. A lot of times it goes to their head.

"Here's the No. 1 pick and every game at halftime the team's in the locker room and he's making ice bags with the ball boys. Not because somebody told him to do it. Just because he does it. How many times is the No. 1 pick doing that?''

In Tuesday's game against the Lakers, Oden could be seen during a timeout wearing a toy helmet and firing plastic mini basketballs out of a compressed drum into the crowd. When Oden returned to the huddle, point guard Jarrett Jack stared at him with a slow shake of the head.

"He was looking at me like, 'Man, don't talk to me again,' " Oden said. "It was probably because of the hard hat.''

2. Learning from the past. Others have wondered if Oden is too nice to destroy opponents. "He's very powerful under the basket,'' said assistant coach Maurice Lucas, the power forward on the Blazers' 1976-77 championship team. "You can tell a lot about guys' personalities the way they like to dunk the ball, and he loves to dunk it hard and powerful. He has that kind of Amaré [Stoudemire], early Shaq kind of thing in the post: 'Give me the ball, and whoever's in the way I'm going to dunk on him.' ''

Lucas has been showing Oden film of centers to emulate. "I compare him a lot to the great Nate Thurmond, a guy who's got great agility,'' Lucas said. "I showed him Wes Unseld, I showed him Bill Walton, I showed him Wilt [Chamberlain]. I showed him Elvin Hayes down there just for footwork, and I showed Hakeem [Olajuwon] for footwork. I want him to see all the different guys and how they played and the different effects they had on the game.''

Next year the Blazers will add Oden and their lottery pick. They also are expected to welcome Spanish guard Rudy Fernandez, the No. 24 pick in last year's draft who would be a top 10 pick this year, according to Pritchard. In 2009, they could have $26 million to $33 million in cap space; or this summer they could offer the pick and Raef Lafrentz's expiring contract if a rebuilding team is interested in making the kind of deal that sent Kevin Garnett to the Celtics or Pau Gasol to the Lakers. They have Roy, an All-Star this year, and LaMarcus Aldridge, who will be an All-Star soon. But their championship aspirations are built around the 20-year-old who has yet to play a minute.

"Who do you want to be?'' McMillan said, referring to Oden. "Think about what you want to be, and then become it. Because it's important for you when you step out there that everyone knows -- the league, the officials, your teammates -- who you want to become. Then do it. Become it.''

This is one of those times when an interview turns into a pep talk, so ambitious is the coach to start coaching.

"Because you have the potential to be a Hall of Famer,'' McMillan said. "Now you're going to have to become that. Some of us can say that, but we're just saying it. With your potential, with your makeup at such a young age, yeah, you could be that.''

1. Wanting what he can't have. The most damning speculation about Oden before the draft came from those in the league who wondered if he was passionate about the game. Was he too nice? Did he love basketball? Oden answered both questions -- yes and yes -- by participating in a pair of pickup games at a Portland health club last month.

"I called him and I said, 'OK, here's the good news, I'm ecstatic that you played. The bad news is you can't do it again,' " Pritchard said.

"I just wanted to get out there, I haven't been out there in so long,'' Oden said. "But the thing was, it wasn't as deep as people made it to be. It was a jog, a couple of jump shots, maybe one or two dunks. It wasn't that big of a deal. At least not to me.''

It was a small gesture of appreciation to a player whose talent came naturally. The injury has shifted his perspective, because he isn't entitled to be a star any longer. He is going to have to work for it. If nothing else, this lost season has answered the question of whether Oden will work hard to fulfill his potential.