[King Glorious]

LeBron was on the cover of Sports Illustrated in the 7th or 8th grade. He would have been the #1 pick in the draft after his junior year in high school and may have gone top 10 after just his sophomore year. Everyone knew how good this kid was. LeBron had been playing against pro players well before he was drafted. Not in any official settings but he had played with them many times before. I remember being skeptical about him too for a long time before I heard Michael Jordan say that LeBron was the real deal. This was before he was drafted. It was no secret that LeBron James was going to be a superstar and that he was a once in a generation type of player.

Greg Oden cannot be judged properly now. The obvious comparisons are to guys like Ewing and Mutombo because of their size and because defense is where their biggest contributions are likely to be made. Oden doesn't appear to have much of an offensive game at the moment. But it will improve. I can't imagine how much pressure he must have felt when he hit the court for that opening night game. Sure, there are pressures for every top pick to perform but he had another year to let them build up and he's playing for a team that a lot of people want to pencil in as contenders for the Western Conference title. Add to that the mental hesitation that comes with coming off of an injury and it's easy to see how the results were what they were in that first game. Obviously health is going to be his biggest concern. If he can remain healthy though, I don't think it's hard to envision him as a guy that can give Portland 10-15 a night and 10+ boards a night and for him to be a serious presence on defense. Those aren't overwhelming numbers but they aren't bad either. I don't know if the comparison to Bynum is fair at all. Personally, I think I'd take Bynum over any center in the league right now, save for maybe Dwight Howard. But that's because we got a chance to see glimpses of what Bynum could do. I think that if you take away what we've seen of Bynum and go back to what Bynum had shown at this same point in his NBA development, nobody would say Bynum was the better one.