PITTSBURGH — As the Ohio State men’s basketball team warmed up before its first-round NCAA tournament game against Loyola-Chicago, a group of five men watched the proceedings a few feet behind the baseline.
At the end of that line was one member of the group who stood out – quite literally – at least a head taller than everyone else.
If he looked familiar to any of the 19,000 fans gathered inside the arena, there’s a good reason for that. In a sea of largely anonymous faces that sit behind a college basketball team’s bench, Greg Oden isn’t your average staffer.
The former Buckeyes star and No. 1 overall NBA draft pick is in his first season as a graduate assistant on coach Chris Holtmann’s staff, a role he holds as he pursues a masters degree in sports coaching at the university. Fifteen years after the seven-foot phenom led Ohio State to the national championship game as a freshman, Oden is back in the NCAA tournament and in a position few would have imagined for him at this stage in his life.
Once upon a time, a long and extremely lucrative NBA career awaited, the kind that usually precludes the toil that goes into making the machine of a major college basketball program hum.
Those hopeful visions of where basketball might take him never quite materialized, largely due to a slew of factors well outside of his control. But now at 34 years old, the sport he loves has helped forge a new, exciting path for him.
“It’s tough to transition,” Oden said. “When all you do is one thing and that thing is taken away from you, it’s hard. I had to look at myself and be like ‘What do I even like to do?’ That’s a weird question to ask, but I promise you there are so many guys who played this game that never asked themselves that. When it’s done, they’re out here lost a little bit. That’s what Ohio State did for me. When I didn’t know what I wanted to do or was lost, they gave me that road I can go down to.”
The Oden who’s reinventing himself on the Ohio State staff is far different from the one who first joined the program 16 years ago.
A two-time national high school player of the year and the No. 1 prospect in the 2006 recruiting class, Oden’s arrival in Columbus elevated the Buckeyes to levels they hadn’t reached in decades. Along with former AAU teammates Mike Conley, Jr., and Daequan Cook, he helped lead Ohio State to a 35-4 record and the school’s first national title game appearance since 1962. Though his team lost to Florida, Oden had his way with a Gators frontcourt that featured future NBA all-stars Joakim Noah and Al Horford, scoring 25 points, pulling down 12 rebounds and blocking four shots.
At seven feet and 250 pounds, Oden was less a player than he was a phenomenon. The combination of his skill, power, and raw size drew comparisons to Bill Russell and David Robinson. He was described as a once-in-a-decade player. Naive as it may have been, Oden had come to Ohio State with the mindset of being a four-year player. As the surefire No. 1 pick in a draft that also featured Kevin Durant, Conley, Horford, and Noah, life had other plans.
“It didn’t work out that way,” Oden said. “Two days after the national championship, I tried to walk to class and cars were stopping me in the middle of the street. It wasn’t too good.”
The lofty expectations that greeted Oden in the NBA would never be fulfilled. After being picked No. 1 overall by the Portland Trail Blazers, his professional career was derailed by a series of injuries. Microfracture surgery on his right knee sidelined him his entire first season. He had to leave his first-ever NBA game in 2008 after just 13 minutes with a foot injury. A fractured left patella cut his 2009-10 season short after 21 games and microfracture surgery on his left knee ended his 2010-11 season before it could even begin. By the time his NBA career ended in 2014, he had played in just 105 games across seven seasons.
Without the sport to which he had devoted his life, he struggled to find a sense of identity. He languished mentally and emotionally. To numb the pain, he regularly turned to alcohol.
Still living in Columbus, Oden received a call in 2016 from Thad Matta, his coach at Ohio State, about coming by a Buckeyes practice. It marked a personal turning point. Fulfilling a promise to his mother, he re-enrolled in classes at Ohio State and earned an undergraduate degree in 2019. During those three years, he worked as a student manager for the program for which he once starred.
“Being around them kind of had me lift my head up a little bit,” Oden said. “I saw the light. I haven’t left the program really since. It brought me up when I was in a down spot.”
After graduating, he spent time as an advisor to athletes for a company that provides financial education and consulting services, but his dream of coaching remained strong. As Holtmann experienced some shuffling on his staff last year, Oden approached him about the possibility of coming back to his alma mater. Holtmann jumped at the chance.
“I think that initiative that he took and that hunger was obvious,” Holtmann said. “He can obviously bring a lot of things just in terms of his knowledge and his experience, but he wants to coach, he wants to build a career in coaching. We kind of felt like an obligation this year. We need to help him find something this offseason to where he can go get some recruiting experience. That's what we're going to try to do.”
Oden’s job title comes with a myriad of roles. He’s around the office for anything coaches might need. He puts together video clips for players to watch, primarily for out-of-bounds plays. He’ll stand near the basket as a defender during practices.
“It’s easier for me to put my hands up than those guys to get one of the sticks and try to do that,” Oden said. “I know a couple of the bigs, I’m not going to say they were in a slump, but I’m always pushing up on them. When we go to work for a couple of days, you can see it in the games. It’s like ‘Well, I can go up against [Illinois big man] Kofi [Cockburn] because I go up against G.O. every day.’ It’s just trying to get them to understand that if you can score over me, you can basically score over anybody.”
It’s a low-level position, but Oden is as recognizable as anyone on the Buckeyes’ bench. At road or neutral sites like in Pittsburgh, he said he’ll get more shoutouts from fans than Ohio State’s current roster, much to his amusement and confusion. The reminders of what could have been are unavoidable for Oden. Inside the arena Friday, multiple fans were wearing the jersey of Durant, the 12-time NBA all-star who was taken one spot behind Oden in the 2007 draft. In most interactions with fans, Oden doesn’t hear how he was a bust. Instead, he’s asked for autographs and photos, with many passing along fond memories from his playing days.
With a wife and a young daughter, he carries that proud-yet-complicated past with him as he tries to shape lives through coaching in the way that so many once did for him.
“My injuries took the game away from me,” Oden said. “I want these guys to take advantage of this game while they can and as soon as possible. That’s where my mind is being around the game – how can these guys get better so they can make some money one day and see the world playing a game that we love.”
First Published March 20, 2022, 5:41 p.m.
