As far as twists of fate go, this one was a doozy.

The Portland Trail Blazers got a nasty surprise yesterday when they learned no. 1 overall pick Greg Oden will miss the entire season as a result of microfracture knee surgery. While it had been known that Oden needed some work done, the microfracture diagnosis came as a surprise — an eerie similarity to the surprise microfracture surgery Phoenix’s Amare Stoudemire had two years ago.

Of course, Oden has other parallels with Stoudemire, and those are positives. Until Oden, Stoudemire was the youngest player known to undergo the procedure, and the fact that he came all the way back and made first-team All-NBA last year has to be an encouraging sign for the Blazers. And as in Stoudemire’s case, the lesion on Oden’s knee was considered quite small, improving his odds for a full recovery.

Additionally, both Oden and Stoudemire are big men, who are less likely to see their play suffer negative impacts because, regardless of what happens to their knees, they’ll still have the advantage of being really, really tall.

That said, one can’t help thinking this was an especially cruel turn for Portland. Remember, this franchise drafted Sam Bowie ahead of Michael Jordan and watched injuries ruin Bowie’s career while Jordan became the greatest player of all time. Half a generation earlier, the Blazers took Bill Walton first overall and watched injuries swallow up much of his time in the Rose City — save for one glorious season where he led them to the 1977 championship.

The Bowie comparisons are particularly stinging in this case. Both he and Oden were big-time NCAA centers who had endured injuries as collegians — Bowie with a broken leg, Oden with torn ligaments in his wrist. And as in Bowie’s case, Portland passed up a surefire star on the perimeter in order to take a player it thought could be a dominant big man.

Additionally, Oden came with some red flags. There was the wrist, of course — you’ll hear rumors that he still doesn’t have the full range of his motion in it, and that injury is to his shooting arm. In his pre-draft physical the right knee — the one that required microfracture — was said to be of concern as well, as was the fact that one leg is an inch longer than the other.

But let’s make one thing clear before the revisionist history train gets out of hand — everybody was going to take this guy no. 1 ahead of Kevin Durant. The Bowie vs. Jordan pick was so devastating because there was genuine debate about which player the Blazers should take. In this case, any executive who tells you he liked Durant better all along is lying through his teeth.

So while the Sam Bowie-Michael Jordan comparisons ricochet around the Pacific Northwest this week, let’s throw another comparison out there: David Robinson. Like Oden, Robinson was an intelligent, easy-going big man whose ability to dominate defensively was widely coveted, even as some writers questioned his commitment. And the similarities don’t stop there.

San Antonio took him with the first overall pick in the 1987 draft but had to wait two years for him to join the team while he fulfilled his commitment to the U.S. Naval Academy. The Spurs won 31 and 21 games those two seasons while waiting for their new savior to join the team, but the Spurs’ awfulness in Robinson’s absence allowed them to draft Sean Elliott — who became the Admiral’s main sidekick for most of the 1990s.

And when Robinson finally did come aboard in 1989, San Antonio busted out with 56 wins. The Spurs have been contenders every year since.

Every year except one, I should say. Because Robinson missed one other season, when back trouble shelved him for all but six games in 1996–97. The Spurs went 20–62 that year, but afterward they won the lottery and got Tim Duncan — leading to another dominant run that shows no sign of ending.

No doubt, you can see where I’m going with this. Portland already has more young talent than any team in basketball — in fact, they may have had the league’s three best rookies last year. Silky smooth shooting guard Brandon Roy won the Rookie of the Year award and will become the team’s go-to guy in Oden’s absence, while big man LaMarcus Aldridge looks to be a sane version of Rasheed Wallace and Spanish point guard Sergio Rodriguez is the second coming of Jason Williams.

There’s plenty more behind them, too. High-flying forward Travis Outlaw just started coming into his own last season and should be a quality wing, thirdyear point guard Jarrett Jack is one of the best backcourt defenders in the league, and 22-year-old Spanish wing Rudy Fernandez should be a stud when he comes over from Europe — probably next year. Portland also owns the rights to promising Finnish point guard Petteri Koponen and nabbed a second-round sleeper in Duke forward Josh McRoberts.

So if you take all that young talent, and add another lottery pick on top of it once the Blazers take their lumps again this year, then it’s easy to imagine Portland making a Robinson-esque leap in 2008-09. This depends on Oden making a healthy recovery, of course, but adding him, Fernandez, and the lottery pick to an already-exploding talent base figures to make the Blazers a very good team extremely quickly.

Speaking of which, that’s the factor being overlooked in all this — that Oden’s odds of a healthy recovery are extremely strong. Consider that five players have been known to have the operation at age 26 or younger, and all five — Amare Stoudemire, Jamal Mashburn, Eduardo Najera, Zach Randolph, and Kerry Kittles — made full recoveries. Mashburn and Kittles started having more trouble a couple years down the line, and that will always be a concern with Oden too.

So instead of having Oden lead a renaissance in 2007–08, Portland has to stay patient and accept the silver lining of a high lottery pick that could make the Blazers even more of a threat in 2008–09.

But if Oden’s knee recovers, this week’s developments won’t change the long-term analysis at all unless they’re part of a larger, persistent injury pattern. And while Oden certainly has had a few nicks and scrapes the past couple years, he’s got a long way to go to catch Sam Bowie in this department. Thus, as shocking as the news of Oden’s microfracture was, it’s just a wee bit premature to start writing off his career because of it.

jhollinger@nysun.com