Greg Oden vs. Brook Lopez

With Portland coming to New Jersey to play the Nets, sights have turned towards the match-up between rookie centers Greg Oden and Brook Lopez. Some people have started questioning whether Lopez will be a more productive pro than Oden. I think that the question of who will be a more productive pro is a little flawed as is the suggestion that Lopez has completely outplayed Oden to date in their rookie campaigns.

Lopez is averaging 10.8 points and grabbing 8.2 rebounds a game. Compare that to Oden's averages of 8.1 points and 7.1 rebounds in 7 fewer minutes. On what planet is averaging 2.7 points and 1.2 rebounds more a game in completely outplaying someone? This is 2009 and we have many more ways to gage productivity than simple average based on unequal playing time. If you look that their numbers per 36 minutes, they are essentially the same. Also if we look at stats like Points Scored or Allowed per 100 possessions, it becomes pretty clear who is having a more productive year. First the Blazers score 10 more points per 100 possessions while Oden is on the floor than the Nets score with Lopez on the court while the both give up the same amount of points. Huge advantage Blazers.

Further look at the Nets' roster. Behind Devin Harris and Vince Carter, Lopez is the 3rd leading scorer just ahead of Yi Jianlian who seems destined to be the center of an international incident due to either him lying about his age or in a couple of years being voted into an All-Star game he has no business playing in. In other words the Nets don't have a lot of scoring threats. The Blazers on the other hand have 5 different players who average 10 points or more and this despite playing at the slowest pace in the league, giving Oden fewer chances to accumulate stats.

Finally, Greg's basketball potential has been talked about for years. Here are some interesting Google Trends charts.

First a chart of Google searches of Greg Oden (blue) versus Brook Lopez (red):


Oden was being searched for on Google a full 2 years before Brook Lopez was. Another graph, this time with Greg Oden (blue), Kevin Durant (red) and OJ Mayo (orange) as the search subjects



Kevin Durant and OJ Mayo where showing up in Google searches a couple months behind Oden (who himself was about 1 year behind LeBron James). Why the digression into Google Trend charts? For Greg Oden to not become a great center it will be a black spot on the entire scouting system as lots of people had heard about him (evidenced by the Google Trends charts) and everyone was certain that he was going to be great. When there is that much consensus among scouts about the singularly of a talent, as there was in the cases of LeBron, Oden and Mayo, those talents almost never fail.