Still Standing

Greg Oden calls himself the biggest bust in NBA history, cursed by the body that once was his blessing. For his second act, he’s seeing how far his mind can take him.

- Seth Wickersham

Greg Oden has a recurring dream. He’s playing defense for the Trail Blazers. He blocks a shot and passes to the outlet and sprints down court, light and fast and strong. He’s three years removed from his last NBA appearance now, trying to build a new life out of the lows of his last one, but in the dream he can still play. He can still run. He glides to the paint, catches a return pass and dunks. Coast-to-coast. The crowd explodes. He feels a sweet rush of adrenaline. Fans love him, and he loves himself—all joy and no shame.

ODEN IS IN the lobby of the academic support center on the Ohio State campus on a late-May morning, registering for classes to finish the degree he started a decade ago. He lived in a dorm a block away at the time. He remembers returning to Columbus after a Final Four run ended in a national championship loss to Florida in 2007. Most assumed he would leave for the NBA, but he came back to go to class. “I never planned on leaving,” he says. Students waited for him outside his dorm. Cars stopped on the street to stare. It took him 45 minutes to walk one block. Oden called his coach, Thad Matta, and said, “I can’t get to class.” A few weeks later, Oden announced that he would leave for the draft, one of many decisions in his life that wasn’t really his to make. Now, 10 years, three major knee surgeries and a failed career later, Oden arrives at the academic support center unnoticed and unbothered, his burden no longer walking to this building but rather walking up it.