Blazer's Greg Oden is an Impatient Patient

The next great NBA center isn't even the starting center of the Portland Trail Blazers as he enters a conference room at the team training facility, negotiates a sharp left turn and churns along with 6-foot, silver-colored crutches jammed into each armpit. Somewhere, a jumbo jet is missing its wings.

Each pendulum swing of his body gobbles up real estate in a forward motion until Greg Oden reaches the end of a table and eases himself into a chair with a slight exhale.

It had been like this for a little more than a month, since surgery on the right knee that ended his 2007-08 season before it started. The sitting and the crutches and the sitting and the disappointment and, oh, yeah, the sitting.

"These five weeks went pretty fast to me," he said then. "But I hear it's a long, long season."

That was late in exhibition play, before long, long had even started. Now, Oden is not even a month into his rookie season and already so desperate for exciting moments that discarding the crutches was celebrated as part of the festivities at the home opener.

If it wasn't a miracle, it was dramatically celebrated as a momentous occasion, with the Rose Garden darkened for player introductions and the spotlight finding Oden, 19, emphatically throwing the long strips of metal to the ground for effect. The crowd roared.

Of course, then he went back to the real world of sitting. Oden spent that game on the bench watching, just as he undoubtedly will be watching tonight as the Kings visit the Rose Garden, just as he is expected to watch the season without playing as the No. 1 overall draft pick.

"It's kind of like taking a little kid to a park and then not allowing him to play," said Martell Webster, Portland 's starting small forward. "That's what it's like for him. This is his playground, and he wants to get out and play."

The setback ripples through a franchise and a basketball-loving city that thought it had the glory days back. It was supposed to be the payback they had all earned, through the embarrassment of going from civic treasure as the only major professional team in town to a leaguewide punch line as the notorious "Jail Blazers."

The fans, once famously supportive in the same way the Kings became part of the fabric of Sacramento , turned on the Blazers as the character issues and losses mounted. Management finally responded and vowed to make tangible the promise that citizenship would factor into roster decisions.

Out went, in stages, the likes of Rasheed Wallace, Qyntel Woods and Zach Randolph. The respected Nate McMillan was hired as head coach, and Kevin Pritchard was named general manager. Pritchard presented a contrast to a former team GM, Bob Whitsitt, who was on the hook for the chemistry issues of the cringe-inducing Blazers.

Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge became the foundation of the next generation on the court, both embracing the responsibility of the new citizenship mandate. Swingman Roy became a near-unanimous selection as Rookie of the Year last season, and Aldridge showed great potential at power forward.

Oden was supposed to be the perfect fit in play and personality, a gifted defender and rebounder, and also mature beyond his years while leaving Ohio State after one season. He said he would have wanted to become a dentist if this whole basketball millionaire thing never happened. He listed his favorite subject in school as math. And he came across as polite and filled with good humor and perspective.

In the greatest sign that this player and this community were meant to be, the Trail Blazers finished tied for the sixth-worst record in the league last season and still lucked into the top overall pick in a lottery draw. So many people rushed the team's Web site that night that it crashed. Telephone lines into the Rose Garden jammed with fans wanting to buy season tickets.

Then: Sept. 13.

Oden went in for an exploratory operation on the knee and left with the crushing news that he needed microfracture surgery, a procedure that has torpedoed the careers of older players and now became a major setback for an upcoming star. On the way out of surgery, Pritchard later recalled at a news conference, Oden apologized 20 times, the guilt striking deep.

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