Oden's Knees Passed Test

General manager Kevin Pritchard acknowledged this weekend that the Trail Blazers had questions about the health of Greg Oden before they selected him with the No. 1 pick in the June NBA draft, but that his right knee was not among them.

Oden had season-ending microfracture surgery on his right knee Thursday, stunning the organization.

"We had worries about a lot of things, but not his knees," Pritchard said.

Nearly all the Blazers' pre-draft worries were tempered when Oden's agents allowed the Blazers to perform a series of magnetic resonance imagings on various parts of Oden's body, including his wrists, hips and knees.

The MRI on his knees taken June 20 -- eight days before the draft -- came back "absolutely pristine," Pritchard said.

Still, several media outlets have published comments from unnamed front office personnel from the Eastern Conference that said they had red-flagged Oden's physical, which was taken at the league's pre-draft camp in Orlando, Fla., in early June. The inference in those quotes was that Pritchard and the Blazers should have seen Oden as an injury-prone player.

Pritchard, who said he knows the identity of the Eastern Conference front office source, categorized the comments as "a cheap shot." He said the Blazers compiled 167 reports on Oden, which he studied nightly until he couldn't stay awake.

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source : oregonlive.com