Friday, July 24, 2009

Video: More Greg Oden At USA Basketball Mini-Camp


I know the Andre Miller signing is the big news today, but there's still a USAB mini-camp going on here in Las Vegas and Greg Oden is still participating. And I've got more video to prove it. Better quality, too. Check it out here.

As expected, today's run featured a lot more scrimmaging than yesterday's. Oden looked good once again, though as was the case yesterday, we didn't get a chance to see much of what he could do on offense. If memory serves, GO got the ball five times in the post. He dunked two of those, was fouled on one, missed a jump hook and fumbled a pass out of bounds. Nothing to get incredably excited about, but efficient nonetheless.

Oden did a nice job rebounding and moving his feet on defense, while committing just one foul. Pretty much the same story as yesterday, though it didn't seem like there was nearly as much interest in taking the ball at Oden today. Quick learners, this bunch.

Speaking of learning, after some advice from Nate McMillan, Oden figured out he could use his height and proximity to the hoop to do something you can't in the NBA: take the ball off the rim.

"You saw it on one play where the ball hit the rim already and he knocked it out, saved the team two points," said Kevin Pritchard, who was again in attendance. He plays above the rim so he can do those kind of plays."

Pritchard said he was satisfied with what he had seen out of Oden the last two days, and he's hoping to see more improvement as the season approaches.

"One of the things we try not to do is watch every single second of what he’s doing but really rebounded today. He had a couple drop off dunks. Getting his wind a little bit better. We like what we see."

3 comments:

BRoyFTW said...

It was weird seeing Greg nearly dunk a defensive rebound. I understand that's legal in international ball. He would have felt dumb if that went in though lol. Thank you so much for the video, hopefully they show the game on tv tomorrow, or you can get more video on the last day.

EthanZ said...

It's so great to see Greg moving around...he's still got some conditioning that he ha's to do before the season starts...He will be the next Shaq or Dwight Howard if he works hard at it...Andre will provide the veteran leadership helping Greg, Nic, JBay, Rudy, and other youngsters on our team..I can't wait to see our team in full throttle next season PORTLAND TRAIL BLAZERS 2010 WORLD CHAMPIONS!!!!!!!!

Casey Holdahl said...

No kidding BRoyFTW. They switched the teams up at least 3 times yesterday, so I think Greg might have, for a split second, thought he was supposed to dunk that ball rather than rebound it.