Posted: Friday November 12, 2010
Ian Thomsen>THE SIXTH MAN
Oden aiming for 100 percent
Whenever Greg Oden walks the streets of Portland, he braces himself for the commentary of passers-by.
"I hear a lot of different stuff," the Trail Blazers' injured center said. "I hear everything from 'Stop getting hurt!' to 'Get well, we're here for you,' to 'You can't be here! You should be rehabbing.' And I hear it at all hours of the day.
"I just smile and keep on walking," continued Oden, who speaks in gentle tones and tends to smile regardless of the topic of conversation. "You've got to. Portland is small like that. You don't want to do something wrong here, because if you do one bad thing with Portland, you get a bad little reputation. You know people start to watch you, with all the bad stuff that went on before [during the 'Jail Blazers' era]. You can't do nothing, you really can't say nothing. You've just got to deal with people saying those things and just keep moving."
The 7-foot Oden has totaled 82 games in the four seasons since he was the No. 1 pick in the 2007 draft. Microfracture surgery on his right knee ended his rookie season before it began. He has not played since last December, when he fractured his left knee. He is 22 and weighs 285 pounds, and it's only natural -- given the excruciating pain and public scrutiny that accompanies each injury -- that he would be wary of returning to the court.
"We're sure he's [worried about it]," Blazers coach Nate McMillan said. "There's no question we're working with the mental aspect of this whole thing. Part of that is just trying to get him as healthy as possible and being patient and not forcing him to go out there. It's bad enough when you have an injury and you're playing against the best in the world and you're not 100 percent, and you've been out for, really, two years. Mentally, it does have an effect on you because you know you've got to perform against the best in the world, and they may be at 95 percent -- because nobody's 100 percent -- and you may be 60 percent. And there are the expectations and you want to perform, so, yeah, it's a mental thing that you have to get over."
I saw the reference to Sports Illustrated in Gomer's post and did not recognize the link to the onion 
