So I haven’t cared much about the NBA since the last of the Clyde, Terry, Jerome, and Buck crew left town and were replaced by a comically miscast succession of former #1 flameouts, petty criminals, and promising children. (Really good idea, by the way, Mr. Whitsitt, plucking 12-year-olds out of school and flying them around in the company of pot-obsessed dogfighting enthusiasts. Strange that it didn’t work out.)
Still, what NBA partisan, however latent, could be uncheered by the news that the league’s silly Magic 8 Ball method of awarding new talent finally came up with an IT IS CERTAIN for the Blazers.
Now the question, apparently, is which sure-fire, can’t-miss, future Hall of Fame star should we pick: the rare true center with even rarer speed and agility or the alleged* best freshman scorer ever to play in the NCAA?
I thought the choice was, ahem, a slam dunk, given the stone-simple math of great center + a few other guys = championship rings for multiple fingers. I was surprised, then, when my brother in law (*source of the allegation above) gave me the hard sell on why Portland just had to pick Durant. To wit: the guy may well be the best player of his generation, he’s exciting, he’s promotable, he’ll fill the seats and put Portland back on the map, Oden is probably not the next Tim Duncan and may not even be the next Mutombo, and so on.
Pretty compelling stuff, and I was nodding along to the centers-are-boring, let’s-score-some-point logic…until I read this.
But what am I speculating on this for anyway, what with a practically credentialed and borderline obsessive/compulsive NBA scout here at hand. So which’ll it be, Barton: orphan or dame?
