Atlanta – At 7 feet tall, Greg Oden is the biggest lie in American basketball.
We have failed our own game, fallen behind the rest of the world at a sport born in the USA, because we no longer give the proper education to young players such as 19-year-old phenom Oden.
Instead, we punch high on the microwave for 35 seconds, and declare another millionaire ready to be hot stuff in the NBA.
Please, tell me again how Oden, the big man-child on campus at Ohio State, is ready to be the next big thing in pro hoops, then listen to me cackle like Boston Celtics legend Bill Russell, the most dominating defensive player ever to lace up a pair of black Converse sneakers.
Oden will get his shot at the NCAA championship, after beating back both foul trouble and pesky Georgetown Hoyas nipping at his heels, during a 67-60 victory.
He beats Russell in only one department, though. Oden already looks older than the 73-year-old Hall of Fame center.
Shouldn’t the game’s next big thing post bigger numbers than the 13 points and nine rebounds Oden produced against Georgetown?
“What happened? The ref blew the whistle,” Oden said Saturday, after sitting half this semifinal game on the Ohio State bench, doing hard time for committing clumsy fouls.
From Hummers to hamburgers, there’s no denying size matters in America. Nobody does big better than us.
And Oden is the super-sized sports buzzword of the moment.
Turn pro, and he seems like a lock to be picked No. 1 in the NBA draft.
But his growth will be stunted and his raw potential might never be reached should Oden give in to the same old greed that keeps us fat, but leaves everybody unhappy when our brightest basketball stars lose to Puerto Rico at the Olympics.
While a new NBA rule prohibiting teenagers from jumping directly to the pros without spending a year on a college campus has money-grubbers howling that league commissioner David Stern is the enemy of truth, justice and the American way, this denial of instant gratification is actually good for what ails the game.
“It will benefit (the players), it will benefit the college programs and it will benefit the NBA,” Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim said.
Don’t get me wrong. After one season with the Buckeyes, Oden is already way more talented than Kwame Brown, a huge waste of 8 million bucks for the Los Angeles Lakers.
At 280 pounds, every ounce of Oden is thoroughly humble and immediately likable.
Although still a teenager, his eyes are wide open and Oden sees fame for what it is: talent stretched to ridiculous extremes by the fun-house mirror of marketing.
Any young movie buff who declares with a straight face that “American Pie 2” is a Hollywood classic earns serious points in my book for not taking himself too seriously. To steal a line from the flick: Oden is a band geek. He just never joined the band.
Everything about Oden is XXL except his ego.
“I’m in college, a college student. And that’s what I’m planning to do,” said Oden, delightfully nerdy enough to have fantasized in high school about being a dentist.
News flash: Oden will be filling the lane for a living rather than drilling teeth.
But the Ohio State University is exactly where Oden should stay for another year, if he wants his skills to catch up with his body before taking the cash. The millions awaiting Oden are not going anywhere.
For a generation whose attention span is not a nanosecond longer than a “SportsCenter” sound bite, it’s easy to forget that before Russell won two NCAA titles and 11 championships with the Celtics, his lone scholarship offer was from the University of San Francisco.
The moral of that little story? Even legends need time to mature.
The NBA is a lousy place to get a basketball education, unless your idea of knowledge is listening to the wisdom of Jay-Z through the ear buds of your iPod while flying through the vast darkness between Indianapolis and Milwaukee on the team charter.
Late in the second half, itching to rip the rim from its hinges out of simmering frustration, Oden went flying for a dunk, only to see the basketball clank off the iron when he was fouled by a Georgetown defender.
“If I had made it,” Oden said with a bemused smile, “it would have been on the ‘One Shining Moment’ tape.”
This kid is gonna be big. Really big.
But until he’s unstoppable, it would be smarter for him and better for the sport if Oden stayed in school.
And that’s the truth.
Staff writer Mark Kiszla can be reached at 303-954-1053 or mkiszla@denverpost.com.
