DALLAS — The Dallas Mavericks have one of the most
unique charities in the NBA. His name is Lamar Odom, and he somehow won the
Sixth Man of the Year award last season.
After perhaps his most pitiful outing of the season in Sunday's loss to the
Knicks, Odom was 2 of 8 in the Mavs' 89-73 win over a Celtics team that was
missing starters Kevin Garnett and Rajon Rondo on Monday.
It's gotten so bad that Mavs coach Rick Carlisle spent a good portion of his
postgame news conference explaining why everyone's expecting too much from
Odom. He even challenged reporters to search for the "nuances" in the
power forward's game since there's nothing redeeming to the naked eye.
Carlisle has been extremely supportive of Odom in public, although he would
later remind me that reporters have "no clue" what goes on behind
closed doors.
It was impossible for the Mavs coach to look past the careless turnover Odom
had late in the third quarter against the Knicks on which he set up Jeremy Lin
for an easy layup to pull his team within three points. Carlisle said he took
Odom aside and instructed him to "eat the ball" next time he was in
that situation.
It's hard to believe that acquiring Odom from the Los Angeles Lakers for
virtually nothing seemed like highway robbery before the season. Now his new
teammates find themselves defending him after bad games.
At this point, Odom's main purpose is basically to give Dirk Nowitzki a
breather. But as we saw Sunday in New York, even that can be a dicey
proposition.
"One of the curses of our situation for [Odom] is that unless we have a
guy like Dirk out, he's not going to get the 30 to 35 minutes where he can go
out there and eventually roll up stats," said Carlisle. "I don't think
it's fair to look at a 1 for 6 yesterday and a 2 for 8 tonight and say the
guy's not doing anything. That's not true. If we didn't have him, Nowitzki
wouldn't be averaging 30 or 31 minutes a game. There's value in that."
Point guard Jason Kidd, who passed Michael Jordan on the NBA's all-time steals
list Monday, said that he constantly tells Odom to "let it fly" in an
effort to encourage confidence.
"Change is hard," said Kidd. "Especially when it comes from the
blindside like it did with the Lakers. We all know that he's talented. He keeps
everyone's minutes down. He's got to keep taking those shots."
If Carlisle really wanted to get Odom's attention, he'd bench him against the
Lakers on Wednesday. Perhaps the embarrassment of not getting off the bench
against his former teammates would cause him to make some changes.
But at this point, it looks like the Mavs will continue to roll him out there
for 20 minutes and see if he has any interest in playing.
Everyone knows that Odom dealt with tragedy this offseason followed by the
Lakers basically dumping him for cash. A slow start to the season was to be
expected. But this appears to be a player who's lost his desire to compete.
There's no excuse for that.
Carlisle will point to a 15-game trend that suggests gradual improvement for
Odom. But that seems more like wishful thinking.
The Mavs' most intriguing addition at the start of the season has been a bust
through the first 33 games. To think that will change after the All-Star break
seems like a stretch.
"I would love for Lamar to be the kind of high-impact player that he is
supposedly advertised as being, but the truth is his career has been a career
of being a consistent player," said Carlisle.
Mavs fans are waiting on that last part.
