January 27, 2007
Offense:
Greg Oden was rarely
aggressive in this game. There were
exactly 2 moves in this game where Oden made a drop step and aggressively attacked
the defender and the basket. Both
resulted in foul calls. The rest of the
game, he was content to catch the ball, turn and shoot a jump hook over the
defender. Early in the game, those shots
were falling for him. They stopped
falling for him later in the first half… and he didn’t hit a single shot in the
2nd half.
Without the ball,
Oden was very often seemingly disinterested in setting picks. There was one possession in particular where
Oden just causally jogged to a spot and stood there while his teammate, and his
teammate’s defender, just ran by him.
Then he jogged to another spot where the same thing happened. I didn’t see Oden set anything that resembled
a decent pick all night long.
The one thing I
noticed about Oden’s play is that it was aggressive out
of stoppages. He started the game hot…
then cooled off. He made good plays out
of timeouts… and when he came back in after sitting on the bench. His first aggressive move to the hoop was on
his first touch out of the second half.
This all means that his conditioning is way off. That is obviously understandable since he
hasn’t been able to do much with the injured wrist. However, once that wrist heals, it is imperative
that he adds bulk. Right now, there are
guys who will never come close to the NBA that can body him up and keep him
from attacking the basket. Oden is worn
down easily, and his disinterest in the offense is most likely because he’s too
tired to move and take more hits as he’s setting picks. If he’s in this condition when he enters the
NBA, it will be a very long, very tough road for him.
Defense:
That fatigue is
probably the reason why I saw him play a lot of defense with his hands by his
side. However, the arms went up whenever
he sensed a blocked shot coming. He has
good instincts when it comes to shot blocking, especially as the help
defender. All 3 of his blocks came on
someone else’s man. I don’t recall a
single instance of his man posting up and taking a shot. The only time his man scored is when he was
lost on a pick and roll.
When he’s defending
the pick and roll, he does a decent job of showing himself and blocking the
ball handler’s path long enough for his teammate to recover. Just about every time, he forced the ball
handler to dribble away from the basket.
It would have been better if he’d gotten his hands up more, but no one
on
One very good thing
that I saw was his attempts at boxing out.
He always looked to box someone out when the shot went up, rather than
relying on his height to get rebounds.
He only got 6 rebounds on the night, but it was rarely because he didn’t
box someone out. There were about 2 or 3
chances he missed because of his lack of strength. Right now, Oden can be moved off the spot by
a stronger opponent. He loses battles in
the air because stronger guys can force him away from the ball.
Overall:
There is no doubt
Oden has a ton of talent, and a lot of heart.
He dove and recovered a late loose ball, and hit a big free throw after
he was fouled in the scrum. After all of
the notes I made during the game about his lack of interest in the offense and
the lack of aggressiveness in the post, I came to one conclusion as to why it
was happening. He is simply out of
shape.
The bottom line here
is this: Greg Oden is very talented, but
still very raw.