Ledesma: Durant proving Blazers wrong

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The Los Angeles Clippers have had the worst karma of any NBA team hands down.

That became official when rookie sensation Blake Griffin went out with season-ending injury earlier this year.

The guy probably felt a twinge of pain in his knee the second L.A.'s ping-pong ball was drawn for the No. 1 lottery spot last season. That's some pretty powerful voodoo working there.

And with plenty of other examples like the one above, it's easy to chalk up most of team's misfortunes to the exceptionally bad mojo surrounding it.

But to me, the Portland Trail Blazers are giving the Clips a run for their money when it comes to teams perpetually caught in a running gag.

Remember that in the 1984 draft, the Blazers took Sam Bowie with the No. 2 pick after passing on some guy from North Carolina named Michael Jordan. You know the rest of the story from here.

Jordan wins six titles with Chicago on his way to becoming the greatest player of all time. So it's probably fair to say Portland wished they had a do-over on that one.

So now let's fast forward to the year 2007 -- ironically 23 (Jordan's number) years after that destiny-altering decision.

Portland had the first pick in the draft this time and two equally talented candidates to choose from -- Texas' Kevin Durant and Ohio State's Greg Oden.

The Blazers had a 50-50 shot at getting things right this time around.

Again, you know the rest of the story from here.

Portland goes with Oden who has missed nearly all of his three seasons since.

Durant, picked by the then Seattle SuperSonics, becomes an NBA all-star and helps rebuild the team after the relocation to Oklahoma City.

Last week, Durant's streak of 29 consecutive games with 25 points or more finally ended on when San Antonio held Durant to 21 points in a 95-87 win over the Thunder.

I'm not sure what Oden was up to that night, but hopefully he wasn't busy working on any more home snapshots.

Maybe it's still too early to judge, but at this point Portland is probably looking at owning two of the worst draft decisions in the history of the league.

Yes, the team has still managed to amass a talented group of young players able to make them a playoff contender in the West.

But with those kinds of bad-luck draws hanging over its head, you really have to wonder what kind of evil hex was placed on the city of Portland.

(Matt Ledesma writes for the Wichita Falls Times Record News.)

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