The Giant Ogre has been slain. Oddly enough, this translates into “Greg Oden’s rookie season is over.”

Greg Oden required knee surgery after doctors found damaged cartilage. Maybe the cartilage got damaged becuase it can’t support a 7 ft body frame? I don’t know, but this can’t be good for Oden. “On my vacation earlier this summer i got up off the couch and remember my knee having a sharp pain in it. That was about a month ago. I didn’t tell anyone because i didn’t want to seem like i was complaining or making excuses for anything. Plus i wasn’t doing anything at the time i realized it hurt, so i figured it couldn’t be anything big.”

Trail Blazers staff thinks otherwise. “There are things about this that are positive for Greg,” Roberts said in a statement posted on the Trail Blazers’ Web site. “First of all, he is young. The area where the damage was is small and the rest of his knee looked normal. All those are good signs for a complete recovery from microfracture surgery.”

Microfracture surgery is one of the scariest surgeries an athlete can have. Either it works and you’re 100% back to normal. Or it fails and your days as a dominant player are over. There is no middle ground. It’s one or the other. In my opinion, Oden will never play a full season in the NBA. Sure I’m quick to judge, but I just have a gut feeling about this one.