A sore subject

Bowie on Oden: ‘I feel for the kid’

By kerry eggers

The Portland Tribune, Sep 18, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (16 Reader comments)

Leg injuries derailed Sam Bowie’s promising career in Portland. In five years with the Trail Blazers, the center played in just 139 of 410 regular-season games

RICK STEWART / GETTY IMAGES

Even from as far away as Lexington, Ky., Sam Bowie feels Greg Oden’s pain.

“I just hope the kid is able to handle it mentally,” says Bowie, a charter member of the Trail Blazer Injury Hall of Fame. “Youth is on his side. The kid will heal up, and his career will go on.

“Until he gets to that point, though, he’ll hear all sorts of speculation, stuff like, ‘We should have taken Kevin Durant. Oden’s another Sam Bowie coming along.’ ”

At 46, Bowie has a wonderful life with his wife of 21 years, Heidi, and their three children. He has a suite for University of Kentucky football games, raises standard-bred trotters and pacers, and counts his blessings.

But Bowie will always regret the injury-plagued career that made his name a sore spot for many Trail Blazer fans, who remember him mostly as the player the club took ahead of Michael Jordan in the 1984 draft.

And Bowie can empathize with Oden, the No. 1 pick of the 2007 draft, who will have his rookie season delayed a year after last week’s microfracture surgery on his right knee.

“I was probably the most devastated person throughout North America when I heard the news – being so close to the Trail Blazer organization, and with the situation I endured when I was there,” says Bowie, who spent the first five of his 11 NBA seasons in Portland, missing all but 139 of 410 regular-season games. “I’ve never met Greg, but I’ve always been a fan of his through high school and Ohio State. Believe me, there’s nobody pulling for him more than me. Injuries are something none of us can avoid. I feel for the kid.”

Bowie came to Portland as damaged goods, having missed two straight seasons at Kentucky following surgery for a stress fracture of his left tibia. Surgeons grafted bones from his pelvic region to the defective leg area. It worked, and the 7-1 center missed only six games during a productive rookie year in Portland.

His second season, 1985-86, he fractured his right tibia and was never the same.

Kevin Pritchard says as Oden was wheeled out of the operating room, the rookie expressed how sorry he was to the Portland general manager.

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