My first thoughts:

• First of all, remember this: for you and me, the NBA is playland. Our entertainment. This might hurt YOU. But it's nothing, really. This is a blow to Greg Oden, who I have heard is really pretty down about the whole thing, as you'd expect. For us fans? This season will be surprisingly good. Just not as good as we had thought.
• Greg Oden is a nice guy, and this is a really hard day for him and his family. The funnest year of his life so far just became likely the worst. They still have the new salary, I guess, but not as much as they would have had: some of his endorsement deals are not signed, and could now be lost. Not to mention instead of blocking Shaquille O'Neal's shots, now he'll spend weeks on the couch fighting depression (everyone I have ever known who was confined to a bed for a long time got depressed), followed by days and days riding stationary bikes. Be tough, young man. It'll get better.
• Praise be to Amare Stoudemire. And Zach Randolph. And Jason Kidd. And the many other players who have played well after microfracture knee surgery. The only downside of what we have learned from them: a year isn't really enough time to get back to top form, typically. (The team says full recovery typically takes six to twelve months. Name me a player who has played well six months after microfracture surgery.) I think it's good to plan on two years, and then be pleasantly surprised when it only takes 18 months.
• Yes, we all have to worry about his longevity. That's the worst thing to me. I have him pegged for 15 years of high-level contributions. I'm no doctor, but doesn't it feel like today a year or two came off both the beginning and the end of his career?
• Don't even talk to me about Sam Bowie.
• Resist the urge, Blazer fans, to feel all sorry for yourselves. This is not a cursed franchise. This is a young and promising franchise. If you ever start to feel blue, read Mike Barrett. He's a human Blazer happy pill, and I thank him for it every day.
• This has nothing to do with Kevin Durant either. Portland could have had him. You know what? One time when I was a kid, I almost got hit by a truck. But I didn't. Life goes on. Don't tally the things that almost happened. Oden and Durant were both amazingly good choices. The Blazers made a good pick. There's nothing to learn from second-guessing. And I'd way rather be a Portland fan than a Seattle fan, because they may have a player they're not so worried about, but we have a team that's certainly sticking around.
• UPDATE: The Steadman-Hawkins clinic runs a site about microfracture surgery that is full of information, including: "Patients must not resume sports that involve pivoting, cutting, and jumping for 4 to 6 months after a microfracture procedure."
• Thank goodness he's not still in college. Then who knows who would pay for all of this. I have heard from attorneys that those disability policies many top college athletes are covered by often won't pay out unless you're out for 18 months or more. The resources he has at his disposal -- the team's and his own -- will make this easier. UPDATE: Along those same lines, did the Blazers MRI this knee before the draft?
• Wonder if this means he'll have a lot of time for his blog.
• Something I'm sure people will ask about at the press conference the Blazers are holding this afternoon: why the rush? You see he needs this surgery, and then you just do it? No shopping for the best surgeon? No second opinions? Also ... what happened to people with this problem before microfracture surgery?
• Excellent and apparently thorough list of players who have had microfracture surgery, and how productive they were before and after.
• Dave from BlazersEdge: Blazer fans were like kids who had been promised a Ferrari for their sixteenth birthday. It was the stuff of dreams. We had gone to the showroom, picked out the color ... we even had a test drive. Then as the car was being delivered for our birthday party a big old dump truck backed over it ... from an overpass. It seems to me there are a couple responses here. One would be to lament, which is proper for a while but ultimately unsatisfying. The other would be to admit a few things: We were lucky to even get a Ferrari at 16. Most people can't even sniff at that chance. We're not any farther behind than anybody else. We're just farther behind what we dreamed would be. And we're all going to be 17 someday. There will be other birthdays. And Ferrari is not going out of business anytime soon. You don't give up driving and you don't give up hoping. Instead you drive an Oldsmobile for a year and enjoy it. You work, you save, and you say, 'That Ferrari is still going to be there at 17 and 18 and someday it's GOING to be mine.'"
• Brian Robinson of SonicsCentral: "On draft day I was one of the few who simply could not shake that crazy feeling that Portland would draft Kevin Durant and the most celebrated center prospect since Shaq would fall to the Sonics. Now Greg Oden will reportedly miss his entire rookie year. With my involvement in Save Our Sonics and the unshakable feeling that momentum is starting to build for the Seattle SuperSonics I have to ask, what would this blow have done to our franchise? I'll go on record and say that, if Oden were a Sonic, and if this gigantic momentum killer occured it would have taken the air out of our sails and likely resulted in the franchises departure."
• Yahoo's Adrian Wojnarowski: "Just this week on the telephone, there was an Eastern Conference executive studying Greg Oden's pre-draft physical in his office. Even now, this report still didn't look like the body of a 19-year old prospect, but that of an older, worn veteran. 'From our (trainers and doctors), there were red flags everywhere,' he said. The executive started listing the troubled spots – the bulging disc in the back, wrists, the ankles, the hands, a right leg that was an inch longer than the left, and yes, the knees. He wasn't alone. Several pulled files this week with news of impending knee surgery, and kept wondering if maybe the breakdown of his body was just a matter of time. Despite it all, this executive believed the Blazers had done the right thing drafting the 7-footer over Kevin Durant. Then again, he never had a practical need for his medical staff to pour over Oden like Portland did. No one else but Seattle did. 'It wouldn't have stopped us from drafting him but it would've probably made us pause about making a deal to move up and get him,' the Eastern Conference executive said."