Few know what Victor Wembanyama is facing as projected No. 1 NBA draft pick; Greg Oden does
INDIANAPOLIS -- Greg Oden's high school basketball games at Lawrence North were televised on ESPN. It seemed so strange at the time, at 16 years old, to have people Oden didn't know but had seen him on TV, asking for autographs.
More than strange, Oden said, it was "embarrassing." He was, after all, just a kid who fell in love with basketball in the fourth grade, was 5-10 in the fifth grade and 6-6 in sixth grade. But he was a kid the sports world couldn't get enough of who, by high school, was a 7-0, 245-pound teenage beast with agility that doesn't usually come with that sort of towering height.
The pressure was intense, Oden said. As he played out his senior season of high school, not only did he have the student cheer block watching his every move, he had the nation watching and the pundits making predictions.
"Experts say he'll be the first selection in the NBA draft in 2006, which would mean he would skip college," the Indianapolis Star reported after Oden's sophomore season. "He's been called the next Shaquille O'Neal."
Oden remembers that time all too well. It was a high, realizing a childhood dream of being great, and it was a low. There was no way to really navigate going from an awkward, gangly kid to a guy people were certain was headed to the NBA.
And so, Oden knows. He knows what 18-year-old French basketball phenom Victor Wembanyama, who is widely projected to be the first overall pick in the 2023 NBA Draft, is battling.
All 92 games of Wembanyama's season with the Boulogne-Levallois Metropolitans will be aired on the NBA app. He will have, and already has, faced the onslaught of people asking for autographs, the pundits making predictions.
At 7-2, and with the same athleticism and agility Oden had and the ability to hit 3-pointers, Wembanyama was recently called out by LeBron James as "a generational talent."
As Oden sat inside Hinkle Fieldhouse embarking on his first season as Butler's director of basketball operations, he talked about the connection he feels to Wembanyama.
"I know he's got a lot of people giving him advice. I just know it's a little crazy time for him, people coming up to him like, 'You're going to be the No. 1 draft pick already.'" Oden said. "What should you do? It's tough to really answer that."
Oden feels for him. Oden knows what that is like, to have the weight of the basketball world on your shoulders when you're 18 or 19 years old. And he has advice for Wembanyama.
"Still try to be a kid in some way," Oden said. "That's the only advice I would give him because it's maturing you a lot quicker than you think and now you don't want to do kid things because everybody knows who you are and you feel like you've got to be more mature."
But if Wembanyama likes to play video games, Oden said, keep playing video games. If he likes to hang out with his friends or go on a date, do that. If he wants time alone, to meditate or shut out the social media frenzy, do that.
"Try to find a little bit of you," Oden said. "Because throughout this process, it's going to be about basketball and what you can do for so many more people other than yourself."
'Pressure to live up to all this'
The agents, the media and the scouts, they started calling. They found out about Oden at the start of his freshman year when several well-known recruiting analysts named him the No. 1 player in the Class of 2006. Oden was 14 and 6-11 at the time. He became the first freshman starter for Lawrence North, and the first points in his first game came on a dunk.
Superstar was written all over Oden and his future.
As a sophomore, he averaged 14 points and 10 rebounds, shot 70% and led Lawrence North to the Class 4A state championship. Along the way, he added an inch and bulked up to 245 pounds, making him taller and heavier than then-Pacers star Jermaine O'Neal.
"People are putting a little pressure on him to live up to all this, and I certainly believe he will. But he has to go through the process," Jack Keefer, Oden's high school coach, told IndyStar in 2004. "He's just trying to grow up and have fun with his buddies." That wasn't always easy.
After his sophomore season the other talk began, the talk about Oden being the No. 1 NBA Draft pick in 2006, out of high school. The Indianapolis Star ran a front page article on Oden with the headline "Shadowed by Fame."
"Defense is Oden's strong suit. With his shot-blocking and rebounding he has drawn comparisons to NBA great Bill Russell," the newspaper reported.
"He's the best prospect in high school basketball right now beyond a shadow of a doubt, and he's got room to grow," recruiting analyst Dave Telep told IndyStar. "It'd be a huge upset if he's not the top pick in the 2006 draft."
Oden wasn't the top pick in 2006 -- but that was his choice. After leading his high school team to two more state championship titles as a junior and senior, Oden decided to play at Ohio State for then-coach Thad Matta.
"You know that recruiting time is a little strained and, for a lot of guys, it's coaches selling their programs, selling themselves," Oden said. But for some reason it didn't feel that way with Matta. "He was just genuine."
In a single season at Ohio State, Oden led the team to a Big Ten title and the championship game of the NCAA tournament in 2007, where Ohio State lost to Florida 84-75.
Two months later, Oden was picked No. 1 in the NBA draft by the Portland Trailblazers, ahead of Kevin Durant. The basketball world was sure Oden was the next superstar. Matta declared Oden "would be one of the greatest to every play in the NBA."
Oden's NBA career didn't play out as he had hoped or as people had expected. After a career plagued with injuries, playing just 82 games in four seasons with the Trailblazers, another season at Miami and then a season with the Jiangsu Dragons of the Chinese Basketball Association, Oden retired from basketball.
Oden looks back on that kid in 2007 in New York City beaming as the No. 1 pick in the NBA Draft, a kid who had the world at his feet, but who also had so much pressure to be what people thought he should be.
He remembers that kid and he thinks of Wembanyama. And he thinks of how he should just try to enjoy life right now because the pressure is only going to rise.
"Find something that you enjoy doing and stay with that and always keep that a part of you," is Oden's advice to Wembanyama. "Because this journey is going to mature you a lot faster than everybody else."
Follow IndyStar sports reporter Dana Benbow on Twitter: @DanaBenbow. Reach her via email: dbenbow@indystar.com.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Victor Wembanyama, projected No. 1 in NBA Draft, gets advice from Greg Oden
