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Oden got a phone call from McMillan scolding him.
“It was one of those things where he got excited and wanted to shoot some hoops, I guess. You can’t do that, though,” McMillan said. “He’s a young man and he wants to be the same young man that came here, and he’s not. There’s a huge value on him. He wants to do some of the same things he probably did a couple of years ago, and there’s certain things you can’t do as a professional athlete, a lottery pick, a franchise player.
“He’s aware of that now and he understands that. And I don’t think that it will happen again.”
Oden said the ill-conceived game was a lighter workout than he gets with the Blazers. He’s admittedly in no shape to play.
“Right now I can’t go. I’m not ready to cut,” he said. “I still have to get both my legs evenly strong. Right now, one leg’s stronger than the other, I’m favoring my left knee more.”
While Oden has been rehabbing, the Blazers carried along surprisingly well considering that many wrote their season off. The NBA’s youngest team finished 41-41, buoyed by a 13-game winning streak in December. Roy was named to the All-Star team in just his second season, and Aldridge is considered a candidate for Most Improved Player.
Oden, quick to joke and often sporting a toothy grin, has few laments. And they don’t often center on his knee or what his own achievements might have been this season.
“It’s more about being around the team and just bonding with the guys at my standpoint, because I’m new coming in, so really not a lot of them knew me. I get injured, and it’s like they go on the road trips and I’m staying home recovering,” he said.
“You just want to get that time to bond with those guys and be a part of this team — even though I am, and they treat me like I am — but really, I’m not going through everything that they went through. I haven’t played a game.”
He’ll get to do that next season.
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