Evidently Greg Oden won’t be drafted before Kevin Durant in this year’s fantasy draft after all. Actually, in most leagues, Greg Oden won’t be drafted at all. Is that right? Here are the following fantasy questions that owners should be asking themselves regarding Greg Oden.
Question #1: Should Greg Oden still be drafted in a non-keeper league and does he have any shot of playing this season?
Answer: The good news is that microfracture surgery doesn’t mean what it used to mean. It used to mean that the player would immediately be hit with the “Never the Same Player Again” tag. Hello Antonio McDyess. Then something happened. Amare went from, “never the same” to nasty in a matter of a month. Nene went from “day-to-day” to a consistent beast on the court. Even McDyess completely healed up, he was just a little bit of an older McMonster. With both Nene and Amare it took them a year to resume playing ball and then an additional few months to feel normal again. We’d be very surprised to see Oden rushed back into action this season. It has to be assumed that he won’t play a minute this season. So unless you have an extremely deep league, any Oden pick is probably a wasted pick.
Question #2: If it’s a keeper league should I draft him late?
Answer: Depends on how deep the keeper league is. Our league uses three keepers (the norm) and we wouldn’t do it.
Question #3: How many keepers would my league need to keep to warrant drafting Oden?
Answer: Four on a weak team and definitely five. If you keep five guys, Oden isn’t a bad option - especially if this is a league that people are committed to on a year-to-year basis.
Question #4: Will this effect Oden’s numbers in 2008-9?
Answer: As with both Amare and Nene, there will be a legit adjustment period when Oden returns to basketball. Combine that adjustment to adapting to the NBA game in general and it might not be until the second half of NEXT season till we see the big block/board numbers we’re hoping to see from the big man.
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