At this point in his career, Greg Oden throwing down a dunk in a game should not be newsworthy. Oden was, after all, projected to be the second coming of Bill Russell just a few short years ago. So he should be throwing down dunks on the regular.
But because of a slew of knee injuries, Oden hasn't done much dunking in recent years. In fact, we haven't even seen him out on the court in an NBA game since December 2009. So it was nice to see him get back into the swing of things last night and throw down this dunk during his debut with the Heat. If he can do this—or even anything close to this—on a consistent basis during the 2013-14 NBA season, then the rest of the NBA is in trouble. The Heat don't need Oden to be Russell. But they do need a big man who can patrol the paint. And they're hoping that this Oden is the Oden that they get night in and night out.
Stay tuned to see if that actually happens.
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[via The Big Lead]
