SBN’s Blazersedge Reacts To Losing Oden

From SBN’s always excellent Blazersedge:

Obviously this takes a huge bite out of the Blazers’ depth, defense, and rebounding. With Oden and Travis Outlaw out you’re going to see Joel Przybilla and LaMarcus Aldridge handling a ton of pressure defensively. One of the near-constants of the season has been the perimeter players relying on the big guys to mitigate their mistakes. Now they simply can’t afford it. Joel is a fine defender but the price for the strategy is fouls. Spend a couple fouls on Przybilla now and you’re stuck in a small lineup involuntarily for huge chunks of the game. That’s a huge difference from the voluntary small lineup. Long story short, we’re about to see how good or bad the Blazers guards really are defensively. They’re going to have to man up.

Here’s another blow: From the start of the season Oden provided an often-unnoticed intimidation factor in the lane. You can’t go so far as to say that opponents were scared to go in there, but they were definitely looking over their shoulders after the first block or two in a game. Nobody likes to get capped. Nobody likes to be used as an example of why Greg Oden is a beast. You saw players putting up different shots when Oden was in the game. Right here, right now, every opposing coach and scout is circling the painted area on the chalkboard and saying, “Drive against this team.” It was already raining a little. Now there’s going to be a hurricane. The Blazers have managed to cover most drivers this season but even while doing so they’ve given up open jumpers. Unless something changes they’re going to have to work harder just to stop the layups. That may spell disaster against any team that can shoot.

The rebounding aspect is just as scary. As much as we wanted Oden to get more touches on offense the team wasn’t trending that way. They telegraphed it a little tonight even, setting up Aldridge clearly in the first quarter and keeping Greg away from the basket in order to leave space for LaMarcus to work. Offensive rebounding, however, has been a huge threat and has provided extra points to a team desperately in need of them. Nobody you put on the floor is going to be as dangerous of an offensive rebounder as Greg. That takes potential points away. It also lets the opponent relax a little more, maybe allowing them to think about running out instead of crashing the boards.

Straight up: this is a loss that extends well beyond anything that shows up in the boxscore under Oden’s stat line. But you probably don’t need me to tell you that.