The Big Ticket

Yet Oden hates to disappoint anyone, and his date and many others were counting on him.

So the junior walked into the dance as if going to the gallows. The quiet, earnest kid - the one who craves a sense of normalcy and sometimes escapes by going to movies alone - stood in front of gathered friends and classmates and allowed them to place a crown on his head.

People don't blink much around Greg Oden, but they whisper a lot.

They ask to put their hands against his for comparison, and inquire about his shoe size (18). Most of the time, they stare, as if hypnotized by his immense size: 7 feet and 280 pounds.

"I just want to be a regular person," Oden said. "It's hard to be 7 foot and be around. I just can't go any place and do regular things like other people. I try to be discreet when I go places and do regular things."

The Ohio State freshman basketball player has always left strangers gawking, whether as a 6-4 sixth grader, a 6-8 eighth grader, or a high school junior at his current height.

When Oden first played organized basketball, in the fourth grade, he was the only black player on his Amateur Athletic Union team, the Terre Haute Stars. They played games in small Indiana towns, and strangers stared.

"People thought he was older because he was so tall," said Jimmy Smith, the team's coach. "People kind of thought he was a freak."

So Oden, 18 looking like 40, arrived in Columbus heralded as the best big man in college basketball in decades, and people who have never met him are certain he will leave Ohio State after this season to turn pro. Philadelphia fans certainly hope so as the Sixers, in last place in the Eastern Conference, vie for the top spot in the NBA lottery.

"Just because he's tall, people think he should be about basketball, basketball, basketball," said his mother, Zoe.

Oden does love the game, so much that he returned two games earlier than expected from the surgery on his right wrist six months ago.

He made a triumphant return to Indianapolis on Dec. 16, when the Buckeyes played the University of Cincinnati for the first time in 44 years, winning, 72-50.

Indianapolis is where Oden was twice named the national high school player of the year, and where he and teammate Mike Conley Jr. led Lawrence North to a 103-7 record and the Indiana state championships in the final three of their four seasons. Oden and Conley have played together since 2000 on AAU teams, in middle school, at Lawrence North, and now at OSU.

Indianapolis is also where those who know Oden best appreciate him for who he is, not what he does.

"I don't think of him as an athlete first; he's Greg," said Grant Nesbit, the Lawrence North athletic director.

Oden towered above everyone else, but his smile, humble nature, impeccable manners, and witty sense of humor mixed easily with the school's diverse student body.

"His personality, not his play, filled our gym," said Jack Keefer, Lawrence North's coach since 1975. "He's not just a jock's jock. He's a person who plays basketball. He's got other interests in life."

Those interests - school, cartoons, movies, dancing, walks in the park, going to the zoo - aren't why thousands of fans stood in Value City Arena to stare at Oden during warm-ups before his Dec. 2 debut against Valparaiso.

They aren't why a grown man once took off his shoe in a restaurant, approached Oden, and asked him to sign it.

"He doesn't want to be a superstar," Oden's mother said. "He wants to be normal like everyone else. He doesn't want to be thought of as a freak. If it were up to Greg, he'd be somewhere in the corner, quiet, hiding. He doesn't really like to stand out."

Yet he's always going to stand out, and carry the expectations of others.