Mavs Continue to Defend Lamar Odom
It’s hard to believe that acquiring (Lamar) 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 (Rick) 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.”
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