Greg Oden vs Kevin Durant: Does it Even Matter?

I remember this day last year, praying that when this day came, it wouldn’t even matter to the success of the New York Knick organization or its legion of fans. (50% of which live in my room apparently)

But I guess its like one of those “Be careful what you wish for” kind of things. Thanks for the lesson, God! But before I go carefully wording my draft day prayer let me talk about this for one second. After all, this is supposed to be a draft for the ages, right?

Well at the top of the draft are two high school studs, fresh victims of the Age Rule. One, Greg Oden, a seven-foot defensive monster, brought to Ohio State the biggest hype we’ve seen this side of LeBron James. Meanwhile, Kevin Durant playing the Carmelo to his Lebron, fresh off his domination in Texas.

Who to choose? This is the question that has plagued fans and journalists alike over the last couple months. This isn’t anything entirely new, however. We’ve been faced with these decisions before with Carmelo and LeBron, Dwight Howard and Emeka Okafor, and even the great Jordan v Bowie debate.

While the jury may be out on the other two, the Bowie draft pick over Michael is one that has plagued the Trailblazer organization to this day. That and a stretch when they were pretty much were the Bengals of the NBA combined causing fans to disappear faster than Clyde Drexler’s hairline.

So, faced with a similar decision again, what is Portland to do? Let’s just hold it for a minute right there. Is this really a draft the caliber of the 1984 draft that produced Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon, Charles Barkley, John Stockton and Rick Carlisle? (That’s right, 3rd round, 23rd pick to the Boston Celtics) I don’t think so. I don’t even think it’s on par with the draft that produced LeBron, Dwyane Wade, Carmelo and Bosh.

It’s funny that in sports we are always so quick to look for “successors.” God knows how many “Next Jordan’s” and “Next Dirk’s” we’ve had over the years. But let’s really compare these guys to what we have.

What is Greg Oden’s ceiling really? Are we looking at the next David Robinson? The next Patrick Ewing? The next Bill Russell? Let me answer all those three questions with a quick ‘no’ and an even quicker slap for insulting me.

As ‘great’ as Oden was in the championship game, I also saw a very flawed player. While he was an excellent shot-blocker, he looked a step slow on some plays and his offensive repertoire was about as extensive as Philip Seymour Hoffman in Along Came Polly. (Always a favorite of mine.)

How good can he really become? I see him as a bigger Ben Wallace with a slightly better offensive game. Nothing really more. And while he may be an important clog on a championship team, I don’t see him as being the Tim Duncan of a championship team.
Now before you go jumping on the shoulders of Kevin Durant, realize that he probably wouldn’t be able to hold you up. I understand that many players have come to the NBA rail-thin and have succeeded, but how many Next KG’s have to come and fail before we realize that he’s more the exception than the rule. More so, how many teams has Garnett carried to a championship in his tenure? 0.Lack of supporting cast or not, isn’t this what we expect out of a #1 pick?

Durant’s game is said to be more like Carmelo Anthony’s than anything, except Durant rebounds. My question is his heart. Honestly.

As an athlete, I’ve seen many people with that desire to become better and for some reason Durant throws up that red flag. Yeah, he’s really athletic, but seriously, I’m 165 lbs and I could bench press him. And my 100 pound girlfriend could bench 185 lbs. as many times as he can.

Arguments could be made for those the likes of Tayshaun Prince and Reggie Miller, but Tayshaun is a defender first, who isn’t asked to create his own shot, and Reggie never created his own shot with the ball. There’s a reason why there just aren’t that many of these guys.

I see a lot of Adam Morrison in him actually. I think he’s going to struggle to score as easily as he did in college, and as for the 11 RPG, I’d be surprised if he got seven.

Let’s say that that’s the ceiling for these guys. One is a taller Ben Wallace who can’t rebound. The other is a poor man’s Carmelo Anthony who has more of a face-up game than anything else. Now while both players would be excellent additions to veteran teams, neither is ready to take the NBA by storm and dominate like LeBron did. If you asked me, I would trade the pick, then hire Isiah Thomas as a draft day consultant. But then again, I am a Knick fan.


Jason Paderon is a co-founder, columnist, and cartoonist for ChewThemOut.com. Additionally, he was a news reporter for the Staten Island Advance. He can be reached at paderon@chewthemout.com.

Wrestling has Gone too Far

The recent untimely death of yet another pro wrestler has resurrected the question: Has wrestling gone too far?

In this time where instant gratification is valued above long-term success, it is that and that alone that has kept professional wrestling alive over the years. When the world wanted mullets and spandex colliding in a graceful, yet violent way, wrestling provided. When they wanted scantily clad women parading their surgically enhanced bodies all over the ring, they got it. When they wanted “huge bumps” and hardcore matches, wrestling gave it to them. But we as fans forgot about the whole other half - the guys who did this day in and day out and their families.

Instant gratification is wrestling’s only headlock on the boxing and MMA worlds. The fact that the biggest names could headline an overpriced Pay Per View card, then have a rematch the very next day on Raw. It was great for us, but what about the people with those names.

One may argue that the toll isn’t necessarily equivalent to that of the “real” combat sports, these aren’t exactly cream puffs landing on marshmallows. No matter how trained you are, no matter how muscular, no matter your pain tolerance; these athletes are working 300 days of the year for you, the fan. There are no off-seasons, and as a result, these aches and pains add up.

And then you see so many of these wrestlers dying at a young age. These are people. I’m only 21-years-old, and I’ve already seen more than my share of wrestling deaths. Deaths of many of those wrestlers of whom I grew up idolizing.

You see so many people so quickly dismiss wrestling because it’s “fixed.” But these deaths are real. Darren Drozdov is really paralyzed. Addictions to painkillers and steroids have become commonplace in wrestling locker rooms, more so than in any other comparable athletic activity. That’s why the number of deaths of wrestlers before age 50 is astronomical. Maybe it’s just me, but I never really thought of myself as middle-aged.

I’m just taking this as a wakeup call and I hope the wrestling world gets it too. The pressure we put on these people to be of a perfect physique for their whole lives are expectations that simply cannot be attained by the most genetically gifted. At least next time I watch a wrestling match on TV I won’t be yelling, “Kill him!” because the sad reality is the fans already are.


Jason Paderon is a co-founder, columnist, and cartoonist for ChewThemOut.com. Additionally, he was a news reporter for the Staten Island Advance. He can be reached at paderon@chewthemout.com.

Toon Them Out: Carl Pavano

Toon Them Out: Spurs rain on Cleveland's Parade

Hop off the Lebronwagon

Wow, you would have thought Jordan was back. That was the impression I’ve been getting ever since LeBron’s Game Five 48-point explosion that set the NBA world on fire. But before we all go hopping onto the Bronwagon, let’s just calm down for a second. While he did score 28 points consecutively, and while he really did make a historically great defense irrelevant, was it really the memorable performance everybody made it out to be?

I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me, but I’d rather watch Kobe go off for 81. I’d rather watch Jordan push off Craig Ehlo, forever casting him in the background of a decade’s worth of Gatorade commercials. I’d rather watch Reggie Miller score as many points as he could get out of that alien-body in 12 seconds. I’d rather watch Larry Johnson’s four-point play. Those are the memorable performances in my mind. Heck even the Allan Houston three pointer after a Stephon Marbury miss to force overtime against the Dallas Mavericks three years ago in the regular season will stand out more.

The point is that LeBron was just dunking, and not dunking it in a Vince Carter
way that you would remember either. They were uncontested basic dunks that my brother often does in warm-ups. When you’re six-feet and in high school, it’s really cool. When you’re 6’8 and in the NBA, it’s nothing we haven’t seen before. In fact, the most Vince Carter thing about his whole performance were the mindless, flat, fadeaway jumpers he took “cuz he was fillin’ it.”

There was no excitement. There was no point in that stretch where I had to step back, take a breath and just admire it. It happened too quickly. And whule, no, it doesn’t have to be flashy to be effective, it does need to be flashy to be memorable. After all, how many Tim Duncan and Shaquille O’Neal playoff highlights do you really remember?

And after all of that was said and done, Detroit was still in the game! After LeBron became a cyborg, he became human on defense. Jordan never did. Kobe never did. Duncan never did.

Don’t give me that crap about LeBron’s teammates or lack thereof. Jordan didn’t exactly have Hakeem Olajuwon in the middle. Heck, he didn’t even have Zydrunas Ilgauskas. And look at the Spurs. Other than Tim Duncan, who on that team was supposed to amount to anything? Michael Finley…14 years ago?

I look at the draft as a litmus test for how good the scouts believe a player would be. I understand that Tony Parker is quick, but he wasn’t supposed to be this good. Same thing goes for Manu Ginobili. But Tim Duncan (and Eva Longoria) has made them into household names and perennial All-Star contenders, and more importantly, perennial championship contenders.

Isn’t that what LeBron was supposed to do so well in the first place? To elevate the games of his teammates a la Magic Johnson? I mean, for all the times we’ve questioned the playing ability of Damon Jones and Eric Snow, did we totally forget that Robert Horry is horrible in precisely 47 minutes of every game? Yeah. Because Tim Duncan IS that good.

Not to take anything away from LeBron’s performance though. On that stage, in that arena, against that team, yeah; it was great. Did it surpise me? Not at all.

At no point did LeBron impress me really. I KNEW he could jump out of the gym. I KNEW he was a 22-year-old guard despite looking like a 30-year-old power forward. I knew this, and expected it in Game 1. After all, he could have powered home a dunk for the ages on Tayshaun, but instead he decided to defer to his fat 3-point shooting power forward, Donyell “No I’m not Ludacris in 10 years” Marshall. Then I was so sure that he would dunk it in Game 2. Instead, we got a Vince Carter type fadeaway five feet from the rim.

So he had failed twice already. So why does this become like he didn’t mess those situations up. If he does, this game doesn’t even take place. The Cavs would have swept the Pistons dynasty and the Knicks would be introducing Rasheed Wallace as their Power Forward right now. (I wish)

To me this is like A-Rod striking out 50 consecutive times in clutch situations. We know he has the talent. We knew it. Now in the World Series, he finally hits a clutch grand slam. Does it instantly make him clutch? Does it instantly make him great? What if instead of A-Rod, it’s Josh Phelps. Does he become an all-time great too? No. Just ask Miguel Cairo.)

Michael Jordan said it all recently when he said, "Making 'The Leap' is where you do it every single night. It's expected of you, and you do it. ... Not one game, not two games. It's consistent. Every defense comes in and they focus on you and you still impact the game. I think he's shown signs of that."

Signs. That’s it. Maybe he will become great one day and pass down this advice to the next LeBron. But he’s not there yet, and don’t be surprised if Tim Duncan shows him that. But instead of forcing the weight of the world’s expectations upon him, why don’t we just sit back and let him develop into the player he’s destined to be.

Jason Paderon is a co-founder, columnist, and cartoonist for ChewThemOut.com. Additionally, he was a news reporter for the Staten Island Advance. He can be reached at paderon@chewthemout.com.