The unkept promise of Greg Oden

Greg Oden is everything he has been accused of being. He has missed so many games as to be certifiable as a horrible disappointment. (Is the Kevin Durant vs. Oden debate on hold, or dead?)

At the same time, as promised, in those times he has been on the court, he has produced, as promised, like the best young big man in the game. Even through the awkwardness of getting used to the league -- he has played just a season's worth of games -- he was a top-10 NBA player, according to PER, in his 21 games of last season. He is also one of the best young rebounders in NBA history.

But none of that matters when he's nursing an injury on the bench, as he's doing, once again, for the foreseeable future.

"It's all right," he says of his left knee, which has recovered from a broken kneecap, but is now burdened with "jumper's knee," a kind of tendinitis. "It has its good days and it has its better days. After a workout it gets a little stiff but that happens with everybody. Just a little bit more with me because of the equipment I have in there. Just normal stuff. After I work out, it's pretty sore, but I keep it moving.

"Whenever I feel that it's ready, and that I can go out there and do all the things that I'm capable of doing, that's when I'm going to come back. I'm not going to put a date on it, because that puts a lot of pressure, and usually just hypes up the media, because if I don't come back on that date they make it a big problem, and ask why didn't you come back on this day. I try to stay away from that."

Pressure is not Oden's thing. Not now. He admits, for instance, that he does not have the thickest skin when it comes to criticism.

"In the media, from the little bit that I have read ... there's not a lot of pity. There are some people, usually older people who have been around, or people who really know basketball. Other people in the media are usually like 'well, stop getting injured.' You know, like I can control it. Like I'd go out there and want to get injured. I don't know how to really look at that. I just go on and do what I do and try not to listen to it. Because if you listen to it, it's really discouraging. People out there in the media, people who talk trash -- that stuff hurts."