Fanfare muffles reality for those who make leap

Kevin Durant and Greg Oden have arrived in town for the Wooden Award ceremony this weekend, two freshmen blissfully unaware that this is probably as good as it will get for them.

They’re still at the stage where potential outweighs results. They’re brand-new checkbooks. Unwrapped presents.

They can’t live up to the hype. So few do. In October, Oden was on a magazine cover. By April he’d finally played a college game worthy of one.

Coming off that 25-point, 12-rebound performance in Ohio State’s NCAA championship-game loss to Florida, Oden looms as another Patrick Ewing. Durant keeps drawing comparisons to Kevin Garnett.

Couldn’t we wait for Oden to dominate opponents night in and night out? Could we see Durant get his college team to the Sweet 16 at least?

It’s not the players’ fault. Blame the other folks with agendas. There are publications to sell, reputations to be made for getting the jump on the Next It.

When are we going to learn? I wish more people would think like Indiana Pacers Chief Executive Donnie Walsh, who years ago came to the realization that “there’s never ‘another.’ ”

Instead we rush to find the “Next Jordan” or dub someone “Baby Shaq.” (In reality, there hasn’t been someone even worthy of being called “Embryonic Shaq”).

Not even the original Ewing could live up to the expectations of Patrick Ewing. After he led Georgetown to three Final Four appearances and was the unquestionable prize in the first NBA draft lottery in 1985, New York fans were giddy when the Knicks’ envelope came out as the No. 1 pick. Except they never got the multiple championships they all expected. Not even a single parade.

For that reason, Ewing is one of the NBA players with the greatest disparity between entry hype and career results.

Put Ralph Sampson on the list too. Remember when Lakers fans were dying for him to enter the 1982 draft so Sampson could be the heir apparent to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar? Sampson stayed at Virginia, James Worthy came to L.A. instead and as it turned out, Kareem was more productive in his late 30s than Sampson was in his 20s.

The most memorable thing Sampson ever did in the NBA Finals was sock Jerry Sichting of the Boston Celtics.

Who else couldn’t meet the hype? Pretty much every point guard from New York City. From Kenny Anderson to Stephon Marbury to Sebastian Telfair, they’re all flashy ballhandling and minimal results. Their NBA postseason success amounts to winning two playoff series: both by Anderson when he was with the Boston Celtics in 2002.

The list of players who met the huge expectations from the last 30 years is a short one. It includes Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Shaquille O’Neal. LeBron James gets a passing grade for now. But if he doesn’t win championships (yes, plural) he switches over to the other category.

You’ll notice I didn’t mention Michael Jordan. That’s because he wasn’t even the first player taken in his draft. And he didn’t enter the league with a trumpet fanfare and decrees that he would rule the game. He wowed everyone in the Olympics the summer before his rookie season, but it didn’t generate outlandish predictions. A typical understated take on Jordan came from Digger Phelps while doing color commentary on ABC’s Olympics broadcast: “The Chicago Bulls are going to like him.”

The NBA greats don’t always start from the pole position. My first team All-NBA squad this season would have Kobe Bryant, Steve Nash, Yao Ming, Dirk Nowitzki and LeBron James. Yao and James were No. 1 overall picks, but the other three weren’t even selected in the top eight.

Dwyane Wade was the fifth pick in the 2003 draft, but zoomed past the more celebrated James and Carmelo Anthony in the race for a championship. Who could be lurking in this year’s class? I like Acie Law. He might not be as good as Wade, but his smart and fearless play will make him a better-than-expected pro. He’ll go a couple of picks lower than he should, and we’ll look back and wonder what the GMs were thinking.

When Bryant came to the Lakers, it wasn’t even the big story. The news was that the Lakers had cleared Vlade Divac’s salary off their books to make room for signing O’Neal (and by the way, they got the rights to the high school kid Charlotte drafted).

Bryant wasn’t immediately billed as the next Jordan; he just played in a way that inevitably forced the comparisons.

You know Bryant has moved the meter for greatness when he scored 39 points the other night and it wasn’t mentioned until the next-to-last paragraph of The Times’ story. Guess that’s what happens when you average 40 points for a month.

The only person around L.A. who sets higher standards is Jack Bauer. Bauer already has prevented two nuclear bombs from exploding on this season of “24,” yet it still feels as if he’s having an off day.

Bryant as the next Jack Bauer? There goes the hype machine again.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Adande, go to latimes.com/adande.