Oden stirs 'ghost of Sam Bowie' in Portland

Seven questions for the next seven days:

It was just one more sign of the way things have been going bad for the Portland Trail Blazers this season when coach Nate McMillan ruptured his Achilles' tendon while taking part in a practice because his team was short-handed.

But it is nothing short of cruel that center Greg Oden went down with a fractured left knee on Saturday night against Houston. If, as expected, Oden misses the rest of the season, he will have played in just 82 of a possible 246 games to start his NBA career.

"He kept apologizing to us when he was getting dragged off the court,'' said teammate Brandon Roy. "He felt he let us down.''

This latest injury will certainly bring up the "ghost of Sam Bowie' theories from many corners as second-guessers tick over the microfracture right knee surgery that cost Oden his first season, followed by right foot and bone chip in his left knee injuries that cost him another 20 games last season.

This injury will also bring up the good possibility that Oden becomes a restricted free agent in the summer of 2011, since the Blazers will likely be reluctant to give him a big contract extension next summer.

So what does Kobe Bryant do now for an encore? We're not even to Christmas and the Lakers' star has probably already locked up the top two spots for the season in the category of "Most Outrageous Shots."

First there was the over-the-backboard stunt against the Oklahoma City Thunder and then he drops in the going-to-his-left, one-legged, straight-off-the-backboard 3-pointer to sink the Miami Heat.

Not since Larry Bird and Michael Jordan were having their famous H-O-R-S-E shootout for a Big Mac and fries in those old McDonald's commercials -- "off the expressway, over the river, off the billboard, through the window, nothing but net" -- have so many people walked away shaking their heads in disbelief.

The next trick for Kobe & Co. will be finding out if their act can play as well on the road. After opening the season with 15 of their first 19 games at the Staples Center, the Lakers head out on Saturday to Utah for the start of a five-game trip that will also take them to Chicago, Milwaukee, New Jersey and Detroit.

First, Rasheed Wallace boldly predicted before the start of the season that the Boston Celtics could make a run at the all-time regular season record of 72-10 set by Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls in 1995-96. Then the Celtics lost three home games in the month of November and everyone figured all that talk was out the window.

But now the Celtics have just completed a 4-0 trip that included a back-to-back in San Antonio and Oklahoma City, they've won nine out of 10 road games and are just starting to see signs that Kevin Garnett is getting past the knee surgery. Of course, sitting at 16-4 as they start the week, the Celtics would still have to win 25 in a row to match the opening pace of the record-setting Bulls. Chicago didn't lose No. 5 that season until Feb. 5.

Now that the 76ers have managed to get the population of Philadelphia to remember that they exist by bringing Allen Iverson back into the fold, next on the agenda is figuring out what to do with Elton Brand. Just a season after he was their prize free agent acquisition and the guy who was going to lift them up to the level of Eastern Conference contenders, Brand is no happier sitting on Eddie Jordan's bench than Iverson would be in the same situation.

Is an offense that will put the ball into the hands of Iverson really going to find a way to get Brand involved? Is it even going to get Brand off the bench in the 4th quarter? Does Jordan even care? And who exactly is going to take that contract -- roughly $66 million for four more years -- off the Sixers' hands?

Was Joakim Noah simply reacting in frustration when he jawed at LeBron James midway through the fourth quarter of the Bulls loss to Cleveland? Or was the Chicago big man expressing the sentiments of a lot of other players around the league concerning James' look-at-me actions?

There's already the ceremonial tossing of rosin into the air at the scorer's table and the choreographed routines built around the introduction of the starting lineups. Now LeBron looks like he's auditioning for a spot on "Dancing With the Stars." When is enough enough? Or even too much?

After ending their NBA-worst 18-game season-opening skid on Friday night, the New Jersey Nets couldn't make it two in a row when they lost to the New York Knicks on Sunday. The Nets have a pair of road games this week at Chicago (Tuesday) and at Indiana (Friday) sandwiched around a home date with the lowly Golden State Warriors (Wednesday).

Dating back to April 13 of last season, the Nets' last two wins have been over Charlotte. The bad news is they don't run into the Bobcats again until Feb. 16.

What was more revealing about the 15-5 start by Phoenix -- the fact that the Suns played only six teams with winning records in their first 20 games or that they've only played seven games at home?

After facing the LA Lakers and Dallas Mavericks on the road to start this week, the Suns will finally be able to unpack and get comfortable, playing eight of their next 11 at home before the end of 2009.

Fran Blinebury has covered the NBA since 1977. You can e-mail him here.

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