Greg Oden says he's done playing basketball: 'It's over'

Greg Oden last played professional basketball in China in 2015. (VCG/VCG/Getty Images)

It’s been 869 days since the last time Greg Oden saw action during an NBA game. It doesn’t sound like there’s going to be a next time.

The Indianapolis Star’s Dana Hunsinger Benbow recently caught up with Oden, the former Indiana Mr. Basketball and 7-foot phenom once touted as the sport’s next great big man. A decade ago, he’d starred at Ohio State University, earning NABC Defensive Player of the Year honors and a consensus Second-Team All-America nod for his work in leading Thad Matta’s Buckeyes to an NCAA national championship game appearance. A decade ago, he was on his way to the pros, destined for superstardom after the Portland Trail Blazers selected him over Texas star Kevin Durant to be their center of the future with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2007 NBA draft.

Now, after seeing his seemingly limitless promise washed away by injuries that ruined his career, Oden’s back on campus as a student, a team manager and something of a cautionary tale. His story’s not over — after all that’s passed, he’s still just 28 years old — but the chapter in which he tries to play professional basketball is. From Hunsinger Benbow:

Oden is enrolled this semester at Ohio State, a 28-year-old sophomore majoring in sports industry. When asked if he’d play basketball again, he said, “I wish. It’s over.” Instead, he is back with the Buckeyes as a student coach, helping out the players and Matta any way he can.

“I wouldn’t say I regret anything,” Oden told IndyStar Thursday in a phone interview. “I would say I just wish I did things better.”

Knee injuries derailed Oden’s once-promising career, limiting him to only 82 total games over five seasons in Portland. He also struggled with alcohol during his time away from the court, an issue that reportedly “remained a concern” during Oden’s final NBA season, a comeback campaign as a member of the 2013-14 Miami Heat, “as he sat out many games because of soreness in his knees and back.”

Alcohol also reportedly played a role in the 7-foot-, 280-plus-pound Oden allegedly punching his ex-girlfriend three times in the face and breaking her nose in the summer of 2014 at his mother’s home in Lawrence, Ind., in August 2014. Oden faced trial on felony battery charges in connection with that incident, after which Oden reportedly told police, “I was wrong and I know what has to happen.” He reached a plea agreement in the case, pleading guilty to battery with moderate bodily injury. He was required to pay a $200 fine and complete 26 weeks of domestic violence counseling, Alcoholics Anonymous classes and 909 days of probation.

Less than two months after the plea deal was finalized, Matta said Oden was back working out at Ohio State with the Buckeyes’ coaches, and said “there [was] a possibility he may make another run at” a return to the NBA after playing just 219 combined regular- and postseason minutes for the Heat, averaging 2.6 points and 2.1 rebounds in 8.4 minutes per game. After visits and workouts with several teams in the spring and summer of 2015 came to naught, though, Oden headed overseas to continue plying his trade for the Jiangsu Dragons of the Chinese Basketball Association. He averaged a double-double in 25 games before his non-playoff-bound team terminated his contract with two days left in the season “so they didn’t have to pay me for February.”

After returning to the States, he linked back up with his old coach, catching on as a student manager for the Buckeyes, though he was reportedly “not fully done with his playing career” as of this past April. Now, though, Oden’s mind appears to have changed, according to Hunsinger Benbow:

 Just five weeks ago, Oden became a father to a little girl. He and the baby’s mother live off campus in Columbus.

 “I wanted to stay around basketball and coach gave me a lifeline to be here,” he said. “To give me something to do with my afternoons.

 “I’m still trying to figure out my life. Since I’ve been in fourth grade, all I’ve known was basketball. I’m just trying to better myself and work on my degree and set something up for the future of my family.”

After the decade he’s had, all the pain felt and mistakes made, it makes all the sense in the world that Oden’s still working on picking up the pieces and putting them in place. Those of us who watched him annihilate Big 10 competition, look like the best player on the floor for stretches of that national title game, and play really productive basketball for the Trail Blazers when he was able to stay on the floor will always rue the missed opportunity to watch a potentially transformational talent get the opportunity to spread his wings and soar. But accepting that such days are gone often seems to be hardest for the player himself; if nothing else, maybe we can take it as heartening to hear that Oden’s spending his time trying to do simple, stable, positive things for himself and his family.

Greg Oden will never be who we thought he’d be. With a little luck, though, he’s got a whole lot of life left to become something else. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that the road will rise to meet him on the path he travels the rest of the way.