If you were still undecided whether or not it was a mistake to draft Greg Oden over Kevin Durant, it's now safe to side with the answer yes. And what a loud yes at that.

On Saturday, I heard news on television that Oden had fractured his patella tendon and got carted off on a stretcher. If you follow sports long enough, you will eventually come to learn that the words "patella tendon" are two of the most toxic and frightening words that can possibly be associated with an injury. Needless to say, Oden is out for the year. He'll need to have surgery on his left knee -- the second such surgery he'll have had in the span of three years.

When Oden was first drafted by the Blazers, people were immediately referencing Sam Bowie -- who the team foolishly drafted ahead of Michael Jordan back in 1984. At first those references were merely people's way of saying that Durant would be the better selection. But now the similarities between Bowie and Oden are becoming jaw-dropping. By most accounts, the Blazers are only one piece away from becoming a contender in the NBA -- in the past they could have used Jordan to get over the top, and in the present there's no telling how good they'd be if Kevin Durant played in place of Martell Webster and Juwan Howard.

Now let's be fair with the Bowie comparisons -- Sam Bowie, by all accounts, was actually a really solid player. But he just couldn't stay healthy and lost whatever potential he initially had after a few short years. And no one who watched Bowie back then is going to tell you that Oden is in any way more skilled offensively than he was. So what does it say that Oden -- with terrible knee injuries in his freshman year in college, freshman year in the NBA, and junior year in the NBA -- will begin his fourth season in the league with only marginal improvements and two microfracture surgeries under his belt?

It means he's done.

Could he make a comeback like Zydrunas Ilgauskas and finish the rest of his career with relatively no health issues? The odds of that are slim, but are possible nonetheless. Could he possibly stay healthy the rest of his career and develop into a star? HELL NO. Greg Oden wasn't drafted for his delicate footwork and gorgeous bank shot -- the Blazers drafted him because he was a 7-foot behemoth who had the body to possibly mimic Shaquille O'Neal or Dwight Howard. But Oden now has more serious knee injuries than Shaq and Howard combined, and he hasn't even developed his offensive game in the slightest. If you think for a second that having a pair of microfracture knee surgeries under his belt isn't going to marginalize his progression down to a crawl, you're nuts.

It's sad, because so much of sports is about blind optimism. But with Oden, it's just impossible to expect him to become a 20-and-10 guy anymore. Look at what knee injuries have done to Jermaine O'Neal and Elton Brand -- and they only had microfracture surgery after they were already superstars. Would I love to believe that Oden can develop into something great in spite of his injury toll? Absolutely. It'd be one of the greatest stories in NBA history. But when you rob a bigman of his legs at such an early stage in his career, and it happens not only once but twice in a matter of years... it's hard to be optimistic.