Y’know, if Greg Oden’s surgery had been on Tuesday, what happened in New York six years ago might have become known as “the other 9/11” around Portland.

As John Canzano of the Oregonian notes:

We’re not mourning for Oden. He isn’t Len Bias or Reggie Lewis or Hank Gathers

Last post on this from me, I swear (after all, I’m house-sitting for someone who has DirecTV, which means tomorrow I’ll be thoroughly entranced by Penn State-Buffalo and Duke-Northwestern, as well as ESPNU’s broadcast of the real big-money football game).

But since, for work-related reasons, I’ve been following this story even more closely than the stuff I’m into as a fan, it’s been fascinating to see not just the volume of the coverage, but how long it takes for everyone to get around to saying/noticing all of the same things, myself included. It’s especially amusing to think that, even now, there is a commenter out there somewhere who’s about to make a Sam Bowie reference – and will think he’s being fresh and funny. Oh, snap!

True Hoop continues to debunk that comparison; personally, I’ve always thought the analogy was backwards anyway. Not the injury-prone part, but rather the passing-on-a-superstar part. It might have been just as hard for the Blazers to live down taking Durant over the big man, especially since Oden had more hype. Nobody knows for sure (except the Sports Guy).

And hey, if everyone was already figuring that Durant had ROY locked up, does this mean Oden has a better shot at it next season?

Back to Canzano (above). Now remember, he’s the lead sports columnist for Portland’s only daily. The paper had 10 people at the press conference, ran seven stories in today’s edition and have covered it extensively on four different blogs, including Canzano’s own. At the end of today’s post he says he just might have a scoop, or, at least, some sharp opinions based on fresh new information.

Want to know what they are? You can’t, at least not for five more hours:

I’m a little disappointed in how the Trail Blazers have handled some of the fallout from the Oden injury. I’ve learned some things in the last 10 hours that are disappointing. And I’ll talk more about this, and Oden’s recovery, on “The Bald-Faced Truth” radio program tonight from 6-8 p.m. on KXL 750-AM.

File that under “The Death of Newspapers and the Written Word, Part 18 trillion.” Of course, it’s also just good marketing. And maybe he’s paid more to be on the radio than he is for writing. Certainly the guy who owns the station has more money than the guy who owns the paper.

Update (because I’m keeping my promise): I listened to about half the show, in between looks at the Phillies, and have no clue what this information was. Good chance I missed it, but then again, Canzano’s interview with Kevin Pritchard was entirely non-adversarial.

Also, I want to address this, from Dime, as they are certainly not the only ones to bring it up:

One thing that immediately jumped out at us: The team had to know that Oden™s knee was bad enough for microfracture well before Thursday. So was the whole œexploratory thing a smokescreen? Was it an outright lie?

No, not really. The fact that the MRI was unclear enough to put him into surgery already meant that anything could happen. And the disappointment you could see on Pritchard’s face during the press conference suggests he clearly had his hopes up (as did Oden). The Blazers consulted three doctors – their own, Richard Steadman in Colorado and James Andrews in Alabama. According to Pritchard, Steadman predicted that the surgery was going to be needed. Andrews (and presumably the Blazers’ doctor) wasn’t sure. So does it really matter that they didn’t bring this 33% worst-case scenario to the public? As it was, the team did not comment at all between Monday and Thursday, and the doctors certainly weren’t going to (Steadman still hasn’t in any detail, citing confidentiality).

The main thing people ought to realize is that doing both is normal – why crack open (arthroscopically speaking) someone’s knee two times if you only have to do it once? Same for general anesthesia.

Oh, and I continue to be amazed that there are a handful of people in this town who really feel like they should get their money back on season tickets. Yeah, Oden was the linchpin of the Blazers’ marketing, but did Sixers fans get season ticket refunds last December? Maybe the NBA should take a page from minor league hockey and have “Guaranteed Win” nights. But otherwise, caveat emptor.