Greg Oden (Photo. Jonathan Mannion)

Watching Ohio State punch its ticket to the NIT championship game last night, it reminded me that the last time any of us saw Greg Oden play in a game that counted, it was when he led the Buckeyes into the ’07 NCAA ‘chip against Florida (who, coincidentally, OSU almost ended up playing in the NIT final).

But imagine if Oden had decided to come back to school for his sophomore year (a very real possibility at the time) and the knee injury that cost him this season with the Blazers still surfaced last fall. If Oden had gone through with microfracture surgery, never played a minute as a sophomore, and then turned pro when his stock was still fairly high, where would Oden get drafted in ’08? Would he still be the odds-on favorite to be the #1 pick? Would he fall out of the top 10? Would Mike Beasley be seen as a safer prospect? What about Derrick Rose or Eric Gordon or O.J. Mayo? Or even another healthy big man like Roy Hibbert or Brook Lopez?

(And consider all the other events that would have been changed if Oden had stayed in school. Portland would have taken Kevin Durant with the first pick and probably wouldn’t have traded Zach Randolph, making for a core group of Brandon Roy, Durant, Zach and LaMarcus Aldridge. And then who would the Sonics have drafted: Al Horford? Mike Conley? Corey Brewer? Do they still do the Ray Allen/Jeff Green trade since they’re not getting an obvious building block like Durant? And without Ray in the fold, does Paul Pierce demand a trade from Boston? Does KG instead end up being traded to the Bulls or Lakers? It’s almost too much to comprehend.)

Anyway, back to the original hypothetical: I think even a with the surgery and being one year removed from having last played organized ball, Oden still would go top five in ’08, and for the same reasons why he went #1 in 2007: Because seven-foot game-changing centers are hard to come by, even ones with questionable health.