Blazers GM Cho takes winding road back in time

Welcome to the other side. Kevin Durant gets celebrated not for signing an extension that was obviously coming, but because of the way he signed it, and Greg Oden makes news for not landing a new deal.

Kevin Durant is in his fourth season, is an All-Star and in the conversation for best player in the world. Greg Oden in the same time frame is being watched to see when he'll play again.

Rich Cho went from Oklahoma City to Portland, from the Thunder to the Trail Blazers, and he went back in time.

He gets to live the 2007 Draft all over again, now in the reversed role of the blowout loss. With a winning franchise in a great city, a passionate fan base, an owner who will spend to no end, a roster already pointed to the playoffs -- yes, yes, yes and yes. The Blazers are not exactly a reclamation project. But this is still unavoidably stepping into a time machine.

It is particularly true at the moment. Monday was the deadline for the '07 draft class to sign extensions or become free agents after the season, and the club had already announced Oden would not get a new deal. No surprise, no argument. It forced the spotlight back on Oden in the worst possible way, though, making him the first No. 1 pick since Kwame Brown to fail to get a new pact off the rookie contract and at a time he is unable to play because of injury. Yeah, no surprise either.

The turn of events is that it has become Cho's problem. He represented the SuperSonics in the back room for the super-secret actual proceedings of the 2007 lottery, before the results were announced in the public setting of a national-television game show with other team representatives on stage. He was sitting next to Kevin Pritchard of the Trail Blazers as the ping-pong balls spit out to determine the draft order. Portland got No. 1 and eventually took Oden, Seattle got No. 2 and was left with the consolation prize.

Durant quickly became a star, the SuperSonics turned into the Thunder, the Thunder turned into the worst nightmare for the rest of the league going forward, and the Trail Blazers fired Pritchard on draft night 2010 after a major role in rebuilding the franchise's reputation and roster. Cho, a top Sam Presti lieutenant in Oklahoma City, got the job.

Oh, how the planets aligned.

"I just think it's really ironic," Cho said. "I was sitting next to Kevin when the lottery balls were drawn. He got the No. 1 pick and I got the No. 2 pick. Or, actually, the Blazers got the No. 1 pick and the Sonics, at the time, got the No. 2 pick. I was fortunate enough to be on the team that Kevin Durant was on and now I'm really fortunate to be on the team that's Greg Oden is on."

What else can he say? The Blazers have so much potential that they preceded the Thunder by a year as The Team Of The Future, to where the 50-32 finish last season was talked about as a disappointment, but on all matters Oden, the Blazers got into prevent defense.

A timeline for the come back?

Nope.

A month? Not a specific target date for a return. How about narrowing it down to a month?

Uh-uh.

Oden has been hurt so much and faced so many losing comparisons to Durant and has gotten so many questions about coming back that Portland decided to eliminate any potential future injury setback: there is no public timetable for a return. No public timetable means no new criticisms on his health. No new criticisms mean no fresh blows to Oden's psyche.

"What's a realistic range for his return?" Cho is asked.

"It's hard to say," he replied. "I hate to put a timeline on it. He is working hard every day, and I look forward to seeing him come back."

"Are you able to say December, January, February? Even a month?"

"Again, I don't really want to put a timetable on it and put any pressure on him," Cho said. "I think the important thing is that when he does come back, he's a hundred percent."

The All-Star break, then. Let's cut the season in half. Will Oden be back before the All-Star break?

"I think he'll be back before the All-Star break, yes," Cho said.

Concrete news! Greg Oden is expected to return to the lineup sometime in the next 3 ½ months, NBA.com has learned!

Oden hates the eternal health questions and it clearly makes a lot of people around the team uncomfortable in an attempt to protect him, but there's no avoiding interest in a No. 1 pick. Not in general, not around the time Durant signed a massive new deal and received great praise for doing it in such an understated manner in contrast to LeBron James, and not in the week of no extension. The topic isn't fun for any of them. It's just that Cho only recently stepped out from the time machine to deal with it, here on the other side.

Scott Howard-Cooper has covered the NBA since 1988. You can e-mail him here and follow him on twitter.

The views on this page do not necessarily reflect the views of the NBA, its clubs or Turner Broadcasting.