At present, the top four centers on the Blazers roster are missing time due to injury. Tread softly, Dante Cunningham.
Just so the basketball gods can rub it in, three of those four centers options have already been ruled out for opening night, with the fourth being merely probable. Greg Oden and Jeff Pendergraph weren’t going to make their returns to kick off the NBA season, but Marc Spears of Yahoo Sports reported via Twitter that Joel Przybilla, who had previously highlighted opening night as his target return date, won’t be back on the court for the Blazers until mid-November.
Marcus Camby, who missed Monday’s preseason game with a hip bruise, seems like he should be a part of Portland’s starting lineup for their opener next Tuesday. Camby has yet to return to practice, according to Joe Freeman of the Oregonian, but it seems unlikely that a mere bone bruise would hold Camby both off the practice court and stop him from kicking off the season.
I wish I could say that the Blazers’ luck with injuries over the last few seasons could be deemed comical, but at this point it’s more of a fact of life than a punchline. The sun rises, seasons change, and another Blazer big man goes down with injury. Pendergraph was the latest example, but Greg Oden’s slow recovery from knee surgery is the bigger blow. Compound that with Przybilla’s knee injury and a few dings for Marcus Camby, and the big man epidemic starts to take shape. Here’s to hoping that this season, they can overcome the empirical evidence. Injury history be damned.