Why Self-proclaimed biggest-bust-in-NBA-history Greg Oden Is Wrong

Greg Oden has said before that he was considered as one of the biggest busts in NBA history, so when the fragile Portland Trail Blazer draft choice repeated his claim Friday, nobody was particularly surprised.
 
But as it turns out, he’s wrong for a number of reasons, starting with this: Who the hell does he think he is, stealing our gig?
 
We, the uninformed pundit-o-public, decide who the biggest bust in NBA history is, not him, and we have not yet had our annual meeting on that. In fact, when it comes to nebulous arguments with no criteria or logical conclusion, we are the undisputed kings and queens, and we’ll be the ones to decide when Greg Oden has a vote on Greg Oden, thank you very indeed.
 
Players like the idea of declaring themselves one thing or another to decouple public opinion from permanent legacy, but rarely do they seek out the low ground. Most of the time, So-And-Whom is trying to convince the public that he or she is the best whatever to come down whatever pike is in question at the time.
 
Oden, though, is claiming, almost as a pre-emptive strike, “I’ll be remembered as the biggest bust in NBA history,” as he did most recently for  Oden told Outside the Lines. “But I can't do nothing about that. Don't get me wrong. If I was healthy, I would love to continue playing, but I'm not healthy.”
 
Well, being a bust, let alone the biggest one of all, requires conditions that Oden failed to meet, in that he was never healthy enough to get a bust for being a bust. He played 105 games in seven years, missing four entire seasons due to a broken kneecap and three microfracture surgeries.
 
That’s not being a bust. That’s being betrayed, and by one’s own body at that.
 
Now we get where Oden is going here. He is railing, albeit in an understated way, against those who make blanket declarations on the basis of having someone available to listen to their blanket declarations. He is also railing against the definition of “bust,” which has a far harsher connotation than “was never healthy enough.”
 
And he is even making us consider the fact that the rest of the 2007 draft, which featured Kevin Durant, Al Horford, Mike Conley and Joakim Noah, is not his responsibility, either. They remained healthy, and Durant in particular was so healthy for so long that now he gets to be Public Enemy Number 1 for having the temerity to exercise his free agent rights.
 
So Oden can claim whatever he wants all he wants and for whatever reasons he may want, but fans and their often-irritating media representatives decide who busts and who does not. It’s one of the perks of being the payers rather than the payees.
 
And Greg Oden doesn’t come close. Hell, he’s going back to school to finish his degree and is serving as an assistant on the Ohio State basketball team for which he toiled a full decade ago. That sounds like someone who is adapting to his buzzard’s luck quite nicely.
 
You want busts? Adam Morrison in 2006 (picked third, lasted uninspiring three years) comes immediately to mind, and so does Darko Milicic from 2003 (picked second, right ahead of Carmelo Anthony). So does Kwame Brown from 2001 (long and largely laughable career), and Darius Miles from 2000 and Michael Olowokandi from 1998.
 
And if you want delve deeper into individual drafts, you can find all the Jonathan Benders and Jan Veselys and Fab Melos and Joe Alexanders and Cedric Simmonses you want. It just depends on your favorite team, your closest held grudges and how granular you ant to be about this.
 
I mean, the Warriors will always hold a dark place in their brains for Chris Washburn. Minnesota Timberwolves fans have visions of Jonny Flynn where Stephen Curry should have been. New York Knicks fans, who never don’t complain about anything, have Renaldo Balkman to keep them cold at night.
 
But Oden’s name doesn’t come up the way Ryan Leaf’s does in football because unlike Leaf, Oden was not the instrument of his own destruction, nor did the Trail Blazers err in taking him first, as he was considered the best player in the draft, Durant included. Sometimes, bad luck just tips up on you, and in Oden’s case, it came bearing a bag full of auto parts.
 
More important, though, it is not Oden’s job to tell us what our job is. We are the people who impose reputations on people, deserved and not so much, and as bad as we are at it, nobody puts nearly as much time into the process as we do. Hey, someone has to supply the kindling for tavern arguments that end with the cops taking names from the bouncer.
 
And we’re just the boys and girls to do it.