Truth be told, Golden State’s former coach wasn’t sure the Warriors needed Kevin Durant.

The Warriors were already small-ball sensations, capable of piling up points with their daring drives and sizzling shooting. So rather than add another scorer, Don Nelson figured Golden State might be better off getting a dominant man in the middle to shore up the defense in the 2007 NBA draft.

Nelson thought the Warriors needed Greg Oden.

That was 10 years ago, leading up to the heavily hyped draft in which the Oden-Durant debate raged throughout basketball. And now, as Durant leads the league’s most potent team into the NBA finals while Oden is long gone from the NBA spotlight, it’s easy to forget that a lot of people agreed with Nelson.

“I think everyone felt there were two players there that were going to be prominent players, but one thing you can’t count on is injuries,” said Jerry West, a Warriors executive. “Greg really never had a chance to have a career, where Kevin’s obviously been more than advertised.”

KEVIN DURANT

The Warriors were looking like a lottery team in March 2007 when Nelson was asked what he thought they should do if they got the No. 1 pick. He’s one of the innovators of small ball, a coach who seemed more comfortable with a point forward than a power forward, so it wouldn’t have been surprising if he leaned toward Durant.

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But he favored Oden, a 7-footer who in his lone season at Ohio State was compared to Hall of Famer Bill Russell, Nelson’s teammate in Boston.

“I think it would be pretty simple for us,” Nelson said. “We would probably have to go with the bigger guy at this point.”

Nelson said he might reconsider if he thought Durant would be a superstar, and he looked like one while tearing through the Big 12 as a freshman at Texas. But with the Warriors already having Baron Davis, Monta Ellis and Stephen Jackson, Nelson saw other needs.

“With this team, the center position is one we’re looking for,” he said. “But I’d say anybody up front. Our backcourt’s pretty solid.”

The Warriors were fined by the NBA for Nelson’s comments about players who weren’t yet draft eligible. Boston, San Antonio and New Orleans also were penalized that spring when normally button-lipped coaches couldn’t help themselves when thinking about the promise of the two freshmen.

“I don’t think there could have been any more hype than there was,” Memphis guard Mike Conley said. “It was an amazing time to see two great players who have Hall of Fame potential from the beginning. You just know they could come in and win multiple championships and be All-Stars every year, and you don’t have that in every draft.”

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The No. 1 pick became a moot point when the Warriors finished the regular season with a 16-5 kick to secure the No. 8 seed in the Western Conference, then pulled off perhaps the biggest upset in NBA playoff history by ousting the 67-win Dallas Mavericks in the first round.

Later that postseason, the Portland Trail Blazers won the draft lottery and the Seattle SuperSonics were second. The Grizzlies had the league’s worst record and the best odds at the No. 1 pick but fell to fourth.

Oden’s knee injuries ended his NBA career after 105 games, long before he would have had to worry about playing away from the basket, the way traditional centers such as Marc Gasol now do. But Conley, Oden’s high school and college teammate who went to the Grizzlies with their No. 4 pick, believes his friend could have handled the transition.

“I think he’s that kind of a talent,” Conley said.

Instead, Oden himself acknowledged he goes down as a bust, which nobody could have predicted when coaches were tantalized by him.


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