Major Scoop! Late Wednesday night, ESPN’s Ric Bucher broke serious news: Portland was drafting Ohio State center Greg Oden with the top pick in the draft.

(Silence. Puzzlement.)

Let’s see here … Wednesday, ornery Sam Smith of the Chicago Tribune claimed there was hand-wringing in Portland about the top pick, and used the word ‘tossup’ and quoted ‘one of the league’s elite personnel executives’ as saying: “A few weeks ago, I would have said it was 100 percent the Trail Blazers took Oden …” but then raved about Durant, “He’s the best player I’ve ever scouted. To me, it’s 50-50 now who goes first.”

Then Bill Simmons and Chad Ford conducted a mock draft where both raved about Durant, with Simmons taking him first. The coup de grace came when another ESPN guy, John Hollinger posted his ‘evaluating the collegians’ piece that fawns over Durant, giving him a ’score’ of 870, which blows everyone else out of the water (Oden was a distant 2nd with a 667).

[Quick word about the 'evaluations': surely Hollinger means well, and it's not a terrible idea to attempt such suchery. However ... we don't think you can crunch numbers in basketball - the ultimate team sport - like you do in baseball. It just doesn't work. The popular Lenovo +/- stat is littered with Suns, Spurs and Mavericks at the top - there's a reason why Devin Harris is 6th in the NBA and Raja Bell is 10th. When erratic Houston point guard Rafer Alston is ahead of League luminaries such as Luol Deng, LeBron James, Tracy McGrady and Gilbert Arenas in anything, you know the stat doesn't mean much. How else to explain that Hollinger had Kyle Visser of Wake Forest rated 15th, Herbert Hill of Providence 16th, and Corey Brewer down at 24 and Nick Young simply in 'notables?' Clearly, Hollinger's got a hard-on for defense ... which in college tends to favor tall players. We're putting zero stock in all of this.]

So it was Bucher to the rescue, ‘breaking’ the news that Oden was going first. Congrats on the scoop, Ric. This has been the worst kept secret in the NBA since the envelope was opened.

In other NBA news …

* Nice to know Bernie Bickerstaff is drunk before the draft.
* Expect Minnesota to screw things up like they always do.
* If you see Allen Iverson’s bodyguards at a club, run the other way. They will kick your ass.
We wanted to write something along these lines the other day – Durant and Oden are the next Larry and Magic. People make proclamations like this frequently, but it actually applies this year.