More than 15 years after his playing career in Portland ended, Greg Oden returned to the building where his NBA career started back in 2008.
It had been over 5,500 days since Oden had walked through the halls of what is now known as the Moda Center. His Trail Blazers playing career ended in early December 2009, and he hadn’t been back in the building since 2012 when he was waived by the team that drafted him No. 1 overall in 2007.
And yet as Oden entered the building on Saturday night, there wasn’t a since of regret of the painful flood of “What Ifs.” Instead, Oden approached his return with a sense of gratitude.
“I’m happy,” Oden said, prior to the Blazers win over the Dallas Mavericks on Saturday. “You know, this is a place where my life changed. I was thinking about it and I was like will I feel some type of way? And honestly, all I feel is just I’m so thankful and I’m just so honored to be back. It’s my first time going to a game since I played or since I was still on the team. And honestly, I’m just thinking about walking through these buildings when I used to drive my van down there in a little tunnel at the loading dock and I just got good memories. You know, we won a lot when I did play, and just the atmosphere and the fans, that’s what I’m thinking about and that’s what I’m excited about.”
Oden’s NBA career never took off. A knee injury stalled his rookie season a full year before he finally took the court in 2008. And then midway through his second season, on that December night in 2009, his Blazers career came to an unsatisfactory and sudden end with yet another knee injury. He’d have several more surgeries and miss the following three seasons before making a brief comeback with the Miami Heat in the 2013-14 season. He played 23 games for the Heat and then his NBA career quietly ended without fanfare.
There were dark times along the way for Oden form phenom, to No. 1 pick, to poster child of injury riddle “bust” labels. He admitted that this happy to return to Portland probably wasn’t possible a few years ago.
“Of course I had to grow in that,” he said. “Like if you asked me this, you know, seven years ago. I might have thought differently, but right now all I can think about is being here with my family and understanding that being when I was here – this changed my life.”
Oden returned with gratitude for a place that doesn’t on its face contain many happy memories for him. Let it be a lesson to all of us the power of appreciating what you have without lamenting what you don’t.
“When I’m by myself — Yes,” Oden said when asked if he lets himself entertain the What Ifs of what his playing career could have grown into. “But I don’t let that take up too much of my life and my thoughts because, you know, all I can control is what’s going on right now. You know, the past isn’t gonna impact me [with] what’s going on right now. You know, I love to think about what could have happened, but I mean, all I can do is start building for what I want now.”
