What would you do without Greg?

An interesting little post at the Dime Magazine blog today regarding how life in the NBA would be different if Greg Oden had stayed another season in Columbus.

... consider all the other events that would have been changed if Oden had stayed in school. Portland would have taken Kevin Durant with the first pick and probably wouldn’t have traded Zach Randolph, making for a core group of Brandon Roy, Durant, Zach and LaMarcus Aldridge. And then who would the Sonics have drafted: Al Horford? Mike Conley? Corey Brewer? Do they still do the Ray Allen/Jeff Green trade since they’re not getting an obvious building block like Durant? And without Ray in the fold, does Paul Pierce demand a trade from Boston? Does KG instead end up being traded to the Bulls or Lakers? It’s almost too much to comprehend.

Austin Burton, the fellow who wrote the post, went on to theorize that, even with microfracture surgery, Oden still would have been a Top 5 pick this season. Sounds about right, though I'd go a step farther: Greg would have been no lower than the No. 3 pick. Mike Beasley still goes first, then it's a tossup between Derrick Rose and post-surgery Greg Oden.