2025-26 NBA Season Discussion

[penbeast0]

I don't remember Oden being particularly injury prone before the NBA. He played all 32 games for Ohio State and neither the pre draft nor the post draft evaluations mention it:

https://www.nbadraft.net/players/greg-oden/
https://www.draftexpress.com/amp/article/2007-NBA-Draft-Report-Card-2156/

Oden plays 32 of 39
https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/schools/ohio-state/men/2007.html

Per Wikipedia

Oden had surgery on his right wrist on June 16, 2006, in Indianapolis to repair a ligament injury that occurred late in his senior high school season.[10] As a result, he sat on the Ohio State bench during the beginning of the 2006–07 season

I don't know about anything at the level of Embiid or which would have led people to have a good idea where his career actually went.

thanks.

[Owly]

He gets credit for not taking Greg Oden since Greg Oden was picked #1 and Oklahoma City had the #2 pick?

The mental gymnastics here are incredible.

AS you can surely see yourself, there's a difference though I don't blame Portland or their GM for picking Oden. Injuries aren't something you can predict. He gets a minimal amount of credit for Durant over Horford, or someone like Jeff Green. People do make the wrong choice, like Bowie, or my Wiz taking Kwame Brown over #2 Pau Gasol. Often, but not always, the consensus choice is the right one.

So I wanted to jump in here because I think beast & I see things similarly, but because he's expressing with nuance I'm not sure if it's clear.

When he said "not choosing Bowie of that year", I interpreted that to mean broadly choosing the (actual, not just projected) BPA rather than reaching for someone less talented in the name of fit. As such, given that Oden was already off the board before they picked, beat wasn't talking about Oden about the possibility of picking someone other than Durant at the 2nd spot and instead picking someone else available.

Folks I think are clearly confused because Oden like Bowie had huge injury issues, and that's understandable, but regardless of those similarities, Oden was off the board, end of story.

Beyond that, I do think we all have the reaction of "Who would the Bowie even have been given that 2007 was about the most clear cut 2-man-draft draft we ever saw?". There really was no discussion about who to pick 2nd, it was always "Whichever of the two superstar talents doesn't go #1."

But I do think it's worth recalling that:

a) Bowie was a freshman in '79-80, so by the time of the 1984 Draft, he was positively ancient by modern draft pick standards.

b) Bowie only made 3rd team All-SEC in the '83-84 season, so we're not talking about an actual dominant college star.

c) If we compare Bowie to the #1 pick 2-years-younger Hakeem based on box score stats:

PPG: Hakeem 16.8 on 64.7% TS, Bowie 10.5 on 56.2.
RPG: Hakeem 13.5, Bowie 9.2
BPG: Hakeem 5.6, Bowie 1.9
SPG: Hakeem 1.6, Bowie 0.6

While it's not like Portland ever made the case that Bowie was debatable against Hakeem for the top spot, I do think picking Bowie second kind of implies that at the very least they were getting a "poor man's #1 big", and to me this is where things get so damning. If you were imagining Bowie as a big time defensive anchor, how could you ignore the fact he's only blocking 1/3rd of the shots as the guy he's supposed to be the poor man of?

I've said before and I'll say again: I think the fact that Bowie's team got to the Final 4 at a time when Hakeem & Patrick Ewing did too made the Blazers thing "bigs are how you win, and since Ewing isn't in the draft, we're getting the 2nd best big and thus the 2nd most valuable draft pick".

And thus part of what we're talking about here is essentially "casual GMing". This wasn't a situation where a massive scouting department watched tons of film and came up with a minority opinion, this is about a lazy approach where they were looking for a player archetype and settled on whoever seemed like he could fit.

And while we might say no one is that incompetent today, we can at least say that when Presti drafted Durant, that was proof he wasn't THAT incompetent.

More broadly, as you say, we're kinda talking about 3 tiers of drafting:

Top: Disagreeing with consensus and proving to be right.
Middle: Agreeing with consensus whether they are right or wrong.
Bottom: Disagreeing with consensus and proving to be wrong.

Presti is in the Top tier for guys like Westbrook, Harden & JDub, in the Middle with KD, and I'm not sure if he's ever been in that Bottom tier.

And since you've brought up Kwame, here's my assessment, from years I was therefore, of #1 draft picks who weren't actually consensus top prospects:

1989 - Pervis Ellison (Sac)
1998 - Michael Olowokandi (LAC)
2006 - Andrea Bargnani (Tor)
2013 - Anthony Bennett (Cle)
2024 - Zaccharie Risacher (ATL)

I'd note that in none of these years was there a "sure thing superstar" available for choosing.

On Bowie and I may be wrong and Portland sure were and the logic is somewhat tortured ... but just for context to those stats ...

I think maybe they thought they were getting sophomore Sam Bowie. The scoring and blocks were better before the two missed years (rate makes it clear this is true for him as a freshman too). Maybe if you think that's the Bowie and you think he's the better passer and 20 percentage points better from the stripe and he's bigger and you squint you can say "He's not Olajuwon but ..."

There were comments (from the Hollander yearbook after that draft) about flashes of greatness and a thoroughbred and "if healthy he'll be one of the great ones". And a high-post passer like Walton.

I also suppose if you look at his stats versus Sampson's with them both sophs in '81 (and note Sampson didn't play with any good bigs, whilst Bowie will have shared at least some minutes with "Dinner Bell" Mel Turpin) and you again see (over college career) him not far off 20 percentage better from the stripe ...

If you convince yourself '81 (and before) is the "real" Bowie and he's heading back to that, and last year is part of him recovering ... rather than he's stalled for two years, structurally damaged and now demonstrably worse playing against younger players ...

I'm just guessing. There's a book about that draft which I haven't read in a while (and most of it is after the fact so there's probably some misremembering and face-saving and bs-ing) if one particularly wants to dive in.

[Special_Puppy]

What's the most surprising development so far this season? How good the Heat look and how bad the Clippers look?

[jalengreen]

I don't remember Oden being particularly injury prone before the NBA. He played all 32 games for Ohio State and neither the pre draft nor the post draft evaluations mention it:

https://www.nbadraft.net/players/greg-oden/
https://www.draftexpress.com/amp/article/2007-NBA-Draft-Report-Card-2156/

Oden plays 32 of 39
https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/schools/ohio-state/men/2007.html

Per Wikipedia

Oden had surgery on his right wrist on June 16, 2006, in Indianapolis to repair a ligament injury that occurred late in his senior high school season.[10] As a result, he sat on the Ohio State bench during the beginning of the 2006–07 season

I don't know about anything at the level of Embiid or which would have led people to have a good idea where his career actually went.

Not a playing injury but:

Oden explains that when he was in sixth grade, he grew so volcanically -- 6 inches in less than a year -- that his right hip detached from its socket. After surgery to place two pins in the joint, Oden enjoyed swinging his gangly legs on crutches down the hallways at school. But though the procedure worked, it left his right leg 8 millimeters shorter than his left. He walked with a bit of a dip, leaving people to assume that he was strutting, acting hard. Over time, his body adjusted, but the hip required the occasional heavy tug when it jammed.

After Oden was drafted first overall by the Trail Blazers in 2007, one pick ahead of Kevin Durant, the team outfitted him with a special orthotic insert to even his legs. "Three weeks later, I'm in surgery," he says. Oden can't prove that the orthotic is the sole reason his body collapsed in the NBA. The wheels were in motion for his body to fall apart the moment he hit his first growth spurt on the way to 7 feet. Everything in his life since has been governed by it.

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/19868061/cursed-body-was-blessing-greg-oden-headed-back-ohio-state

Now 37, Oden said that he still deals with leg issues and explained that the Blazers' attempts to correct the problems that dated back to his childhood unfortunately backfired.

"To this day, I still have two pins in my hip," Oden said. "Because of that, I used to always walk with a limp, and my body got used to it. When I got to Portland, I got orthotics that helped correct it, but I don’t think my body was used to the change. I swear to God, the next day after getting orthotics, my knee blew up. Probably a week later, I was having microfracture surgery—and that was the end of my rookie season."

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/25164863-former-no-1-nba-pick-greg-oden-says-his-leg-was-falling-out-his-hip-6th-grade

So while I'm not sure if it was discussed publicly, I imagine it was known to teams that he had hip surgery and walked with a limp because of a leg differential. But it had never led to a knee injury at that point in his career.

I don't have sufficient knowledge of biomechanics to have an opinion on whether his insinuation that the Blazers are at fault (at least partly) is well-founded. Maybe his body was doomed to fail him eventually (in which case, should teams have known that based on the information at their disposal? also not sure), or maybe not and it really was the orthotic inserts that screwed everything up.

[Doctor MJ]

AS you can surely see yourself, there's a difference though I don't blame Portland or their GM for picking Oden. Injuries aren't something you can predict. He gets a minimal amount of credit for Durant over Horford, or someone like Jeff Green. People do make the wrong choice, like Bowie, or my Wiz taking Kwame Brown over #2 Pau Gasol. Often, but not always, the consensus choice is the right one.

So I wanted to jump in here because I think beast & I see things similarly, but because he's expressing with nuance I'm not sure if it's clear.

When he said "not choosing Bowie of that year", I interpreted that to mean broadly choosing the (actual, not just projected) BPA rather than reaching for someone less talented in the name of fit. As such, given that Oden was already off the board before they picked, beat wasn't talking about Oden about the possibility of picking someone other than Durant at the 2nd spot and instead picking someone else available.

Folks I think are clearly confused because Oden like Bowie had huge injury issues, and that's understandable, but regardless of those similarities, Oden was off the board, end of story.

Beyond that, I do think we all have the reaction of "Who would the Bowie even have been given that 2007 was about the most clear cut 2-man-draft draft we ever saw?". There really was no discussion about who to pick 2nd, it was always "Whichever of the two superstar talents doesn't go #1."

But I do think it's worth recalling that:

a) Bowie was a freshman in '79-80, so by the time of the 1984 Draft, he was positively ancient by modern draft pick standards.

b) Bowie only made 3rd team All-SEC in the '83-84 season, so we're not talking about an actual dominant college star.

c) If we compare Bowie to the #1 pick 2-years-younger Hakeem based on box score stats:

PPG: Hakeem 16.8 on 64.7% TS, Bowie 10.5 on 56.2.
RPG: Hakeem 13.5, Bowie 9.2
BPG: Hakeem 5.6, Bowie 1.9
SPG: Hakeem 1.6, Bowie 0.6

While it's not like Portland ever made the case that Bowie was debatable against Hakeem for the top spot, I do think picking Bowie second kind of implies that at the very least they were getting a "poor man's #1 big", and to me this is where things get so damning. If you were imagining Bowie as a big time defensive anchor, how could you ignore the fact he's only blocking 1/3rd of the shots as the guy he's supposed to be the poor man of?

I've said before and I'll say again: I think the fact that Bowie's team got to the Final 4 at a time when Hakeem & Patrick Ewing did too made the Blazers thing "bigs are how you win, and since Ewing isn't in the draft, we're getting the 2nd best big and thus the 2nd most valuable draft pick".

And thus part of what we're talking about here is essentially "casual GMing". This wasn't a situation where a massive scouting department watched tons of film and came up with a minority opinion, this is about a lazy approach where they were looking for a player archetype and settled on whoever seemed like he could fit.

And while we might say no one is that incompetent today, we can at least say that when Presti drafted Durant, that was proof he wasn't THAT incompetent.

More broadly, as you say, we're kinda talking about 3 tiers of drafting:

Top: Disagreeing with consensus and proving to be right.
Middle: Agreeing with consensus whether they are right or wrong.
Bottom: Disagreeing with consensus and proving to be wrong.

Presti is in the Top tier for guys like Westbrook, Harden & JDub, in the Middle with KD, and I'm not sure if he's ever been in that Bottom tier.

And since you've brought up Kwame, here's my assessment, from years I was therefore, of #1 draft picks who weren't actually consensus top prospects:

1989 - Pervis Ellison (Sac)
1998 - Michael Olowokandi (LAC)
2006 - Andrea Bargnani (Tor)
2013 - Anthony Bennett (Cle)
2024 - Zaccharie Risacher (ATL)

I'd note that in none of these years was there a "sure thing superstar" available for choosing.

On Bowie and I may be wrong and Portland sure were and the logic is somewhat tortured ... but just for context to those stats ...

I think maybe they thought they were getting sophomore Sam Bowie. The scoring and blocks were better before the two missed years (rate makes it clear this is true for him as a freshman too). Maybe if you think that's the Bowie and you think he's the better passer and 20 percentage points better from the stripe and he's bigger and you squint you can say "He's not Olajuwon but ..."

There were comments (from the Hollander yearbook after that draft) about flashes of greatness and a thoroughbred and "if healthy he'll be one of the great ones". And a high-post passer like Walton.

I also suppose if you look at his stats versus Sampson's with them both sophs in '81 (and note Sampson didn't play with any good bigs, whilst Bowie will have shared at least some minutes with "Dinner Bell" Mel Turpin) and you again see (over college career) him not far off 20 percentage better from the stripe ...

If you convince yourself '81 (and before) is the "real" Bowie and he's heading back to that, and last year is part of him recovering ... rather than he's stalled for two years, structurally damaged and now demonstrably worse playing against younger players ...

I'm just guessing. There's a book about that draft which I haven't read in a while (and most of it is after the fact so there's probably some misremembering and face-saving and bs-ing) if one particularly wants to dive in.

Great points, and yeah, I do imagine that when the Blazers drafted Bowie in 1984, they were hoping for '80-81 Bowie more so than '83-84 Bowie. The fact that he was 3 years on from that point and not playing as well is something that I'd expect would have kept him from getting drafted so high in more modern drafts - I don't think you'll see a guy get drafted so high based on something so long before today - but certainly is part of the truth of what they were thinking.

[Doctor MJ]

I don't remember Oden being particularly injury prone before the NBA. He played all 32 games for Ohio State and neither the pre draft nor the post draft evaluations mention it:

https://www.nbadraft.net/players/greg-oden/
https://www.draftexpress.com/amp/article/2007-NBA-Draft-Report-Card-2156/

Oden plays 32 of 39
https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/schools/ohio-state/men/2007.html

Per Wikipedia

Oden had surgery on his right wrist on June 16, 2006, in Indianapolis to repair a ligament injury that occurred late in his senior high school season.[10] As a result, he sat on the Ohio State bench during the beginning of the 2006–07 season

I don't know about anything at the level of Embiid or which would have led people to have a good idea where his career actually went.

Not a playing injury but:

Oden explains that when he was in sixth grade, he grew so volcanically -- 6 inches in less than a year -- that his right hip detached from its socket. After surgery to place two pins in the joint, Oden enjoyed swinging his gangly legs on crutches down the hallways at school. But though the procedure worked, it left his right leg 8 millimeters shorter than his left. He walked with a bit of a dip, leaving people to assume that he was strutting, acting hard. Over time, his body adjusted, but the hip required the occasional heavy tug when it jammed.

After Oden was drafted first overall by the Trail Blazers in 2007, one pick ahead of Kevin Durant, the team outfitted him with a special orthotic insert to even his legs. "Three weeks later, I'm in surgery," he says. Oden can't prove that the orthotic is the sole reason his body collapsed in the NBA. The wheels were in motion for his body to fall apart the moment he hit his first growth spurt on the way to 7 feet. Everything in his life since has been governed by it.

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/19868061/cursed-body-was-blessing-greg-oden-headed-back-ohio-state

Now 37, Oden said that he still deals with leg issues and explained that the Blazers' attempts to correct the problems that dated back to his childhood unfortunately backfired.

"To this day, I still have two pins in my hip," Oden said. "Because of that, I used to always walk with a limp, and my body got used to it. When I got to Portland, I got orthotics that helped correct it, but I don’t think my body was used to the change. I swear to God, the next day after getting orthotics, my knee blew up. Probably a week later, I was having microfracture surgery—and that was the end of my rookie season."

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/25164863-former-no-1-nba-pick-greg-oden-says-his-leg-was-falling-out-his-hip-6th-grade

So while I'm not sure if it was discussed publicly, I imagine it was known to teams that he had hip surgery and walked with a limp because of a leg differential. But it had never led to a knee injury at that point in his career.

I don't have sufficient knowledge of biomechanics to have an opinion on whether his insinuation that the Blazers are at fault (at least partly) is well-founded. Maybe his body was doomed to fail him eventually (in which case, should teams have known that based on the information at their disposal? also not sure), or maybe not and it really was the orthotic inserts that screwed everything up.

Really good, if really sad, stuff.

I remember when Oden was a high school prospect and was seen as at least the best prospect since LeBron - LeBron vs Oden was an actual debate - and I don't recall anyone talking about any kind of health issues with him.

I remember when Oden was in college and some said the injury in his wrist was a bad omen, but I think most of us thought it reasonable that that could be a fluke - plus he was pretty damn impressive anyway. I remember watching the finals against Florida with him, Mike Conley, Joakim Noah & Al Horford, and he just looked like a man amongst boys while playing not one but two future NBA all-star centers. To this day there's zero doubt in my mind that Oden was easily the greatest talent in that game, and the only reason he wasn't the greatest talent in the draft is because a) KD was awesome, and b) shifts in the game were going to favor KD over Oden regardless of injuries.

On the question of whether Oden would have been fine if the Blazers hadn't tried to correct his asymmetry, I'm very skeptical. I can believe that the rapid change by the operation set off injuries, but I don't believe you get that kind of rest-of-career-domino-effect of fractures if there isn't some inherent fragility in his bone structure.

[Peregrine01]

Incredibly ironic that Harrison traded away Luka ostensibly because of his weight issues for Anthony Davis, who's now the most overweight he's ever been.

Read on Twitter

[eminence]

Truly inspiring stuff coming from the Dallas organization.

[Special_Puppy]

Read on Twitter

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[penbeast0]

Read on Twitter

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Sorry, you don't get an injury exemption when you traded Luca for Anthony Davis because of "conditioning."

[Clyde Frazier]

This is a pretty general observation, but I feel like we're seeing a significant shift in the league this season. The stars are starting to age out, the younger players are now established stars, and there's plenty of up and coming players. And sure, that's a natural progression of the league decade to decade, but this season feels more unique. Only a few weeks in and so many teams look different.

With all that said, really enjoying the season so far and looking forward to seeing where we were at the halfway point. Right now my observation is a bit intangible, so maybe by then we'll be able to quantify it better. Meanwhile the Thunder look unstoppable despite no Jalen Williams and rotating through whichever role players are healthy that night.

[ShotCreator]

This is a pretty general observation, but I feel like we're seeing a significant shift in the league this season. The stars are starting to age out, the younger players are now established stars, and there's plenty of up and coming players. And sure, that's a natural progression of the league decade to decade, but this season feels more unique. Only a few weeks in and so many teams look different.

With all that said, really enjoying the season so far and looking forward to seeing where we were at the halfway point. Right now my observation is a bit intangible, so maybe by then we'll be able to quantify it better. Meanwhile the Thunder look unstoppable despite no Jalen Williams and rotating through whichever role players are healthy that night.

You could see it last year but now even a guy like Kawhi Leonard isn't elite anymore. It is totally over for the guys who peaked in the 2010's. They're all officially old without a shadow of a doubt.

Jimmy Butler is the best 2010's star right now.


However I'm not impressed with the current batch of 2020's stars at all.

Cade, LaMelo, Morant, Zion, Edwards are all all-star level talents and nothing more in a stacked era like the late 80's, late 00's, or late 10's.

Wemby right now isn't better than peak Gobert IMO. He looked like he turned a big corner offensively with his shot selection and approach but he's regressed back to old habits as the league has adjusted to him. Until he realizes his only effective spot on the court is the elbow, he will be a middling offensive player. For all the flash and hype, his offensive game is not good at all. SA has a lot of bogged down possessions when you watch them, and it's really based on him a lot of times.

I'm getting ahead of the Wemby hype and inevitable reputation downfall. The current version of this guy would be in absolute hell if he had to face OKC in a playoff series. They'd take away everything.

Right now, Sengun is probably a top 10 guy. He wouldn't have had a shot at that 10 years ago. So things look weak outside the current top 4. Jokic, Giannis, SGA and Luka. Massive drop off after them. Maxey is probably 5th but only while piping hot.

[Jaivl]

Right now, Sengun is probably a top 10 guy. He wouldn't have had a shot at that 10 years ago. So things look weak outside the current top 4. Jokic, Giannis, SGA and Luka. Massive drop off after them. Maxey is probably 5th but only while piping hot.

Really? I'd find hard to not consider him past the first 8 or 9 guys (James, Curry, KD, Kawhi, Westbrook, Green, Harden, George... maybe Irving... ehm...). A guy like 2016 Lillard is not better than him.

[frica]

SGA and Giannis are having a historical season looking at their WS/48.
Jokic is uh, well...

[eminence]

Right now, Sengun is probably a top 10 guy. He wouldn't have had a shot at that 10 years ago. So things look weak outside the current top 4. Jokic, Giannis, SGA and Luka. Massive drop off after them. Maxey is probably 5th but only while piping hot.

Really? I'd find hard to not consider him past the first 8 or 9 guys (James, Curry, KD, Kawhi, Westbrook, Green, Harden, George... maybe Irving... ehm...). A guy like 2016 Lillard is not better than him.

Missed? CP3. And I'd probably get Lowry into the back of the top 10 (leave off Kyrie).

But agreed - a guy like Sengun should absolutely be considered with players like Kyrie/Lowry, very well may be working his way higher - only 23.

The top 6 of LeBron, GS duo, OKC duo, Kawhi is a pretty ridiculous top 6 though.

[lessthanjake]

This definitely isn’t going to last, but it’s pretty astounding to see that Jokic has a 78.6% FG% on two-point shots 10 games into the season, particularly since he’s a guy who doesn’t dunk a lot.

[frica]

Jokic WS/48m .4336 now.

I wonder what the record for a 10 game run is.

[ball_takes23]

This is a pretty general observation, but I feel like we're seeing a significant shift in the league this season. The stars are starting to age out, the younger players are now established stars, and there's plenty of up and coming players. And sure, that's a natural progression of the league decade to decade, but this season feels more unique. Only a few weeks in and so many teams look different.

With all that said, really enjoying the season so far and looking forward to seeing where we were at the halfway point. Right now my observation is a bit intangible, so maybe by then we'll be able to quantify it better. Meanwhile the Thunder look unstoppable despite no Jalen Williams and rotating through whichever role players are healthy that night.

The shift has already been going on for a while now. KD, Steph, LeBron, harden, Kawhi have a combined one playoff series win over the last two years. people were just reluctant to acknowledge the reality and were artificially boosting those players based purely on name recognition. Stat inflation was also helping to mask the true extent of their declines. The only difference with this season is the reality is so bad that they can’t even get by on name recognition anymore. Although I still expect that a bunch of undeserved all-star bids will likely be given.

[EmpireFalls]

This definitely isn’t going to last, but it’s pretty astounding to see that Jokic has a 78.6% FG% on two-point shots 10 games into the season, particularly since he’s a guy who doesn’t dunk a lot.

I think one day we’re going to view Jokic’s touch the same way we do Steph’s 3 point shooting. Just by far and away the best ever with no real competition for second.

[frica]

This is a pretty general observation, but I feel like we're seeing a significant shift in the league this season. The stars are starting to age out, the younger players are now established stars, and there's plenty of up and coming players. And sure, that's a natural progression of the league decade to decade, but this season feels more unique. Only a few weeks in and so many teams look different.

With all that said, really enjoying the season so far and looking forward to seeing where we were at the halfway point. Right now my observation is a bit intangible, so maybe by then we'll be able to quantify it better. Meanwhile the Thunder look unstoppable despite no Jalen Williams and rotating through whichever role players are healthy that night.

The shift has already been going on for a while now. KD, Steph, LeBron, harden, Kawhi have a combined one playoff series win over the last two years. people were just reluctant to acknowledge the reality and were artificially boosting those players based purely on name recognition. Stat inflation was also helping to mask the true extent of their declines. The only difference with this season is the reality is so bad that they can’t even get by on name recognition anymore. Although I still expect that a bunch of undeserved all-star bids will likely be given.

Average age in the NBA has mostly been skewing younger since the 90s.
2021 - 2023 actually had the lowest average age of all NBA seasons.

https://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_stats_per_game.html