Lamar Odom Deserves One Last Chance to Salvage NBA Career
Depending on the narrative you want to push, there are an innumerable amount of reasons for the downfall of free-agent forward Lamar Odom.
From a pure basketball perspective, Odom's story is familiar. He's a 33-year-old basketball player, still on the market in August. Outside of the rare Nikola Pekovic situations, those spots are usually reserved for players barely hanging in the league—whether they're young players just looking for a shot or older guys coming to grips with their basketball mortality.
Obviously, Odom fits into the latter category. He was drafted as Bill Clinton's days in the Oval Office were winding down, a gangly 6'10" kid who somehow helped make Rhode Island basketball relevant. Having seen three presidents pass through during his career, Odom doesn't feel like he's on all that different a strata as Antawn Jamison, another aging vet without a team.
It's just strange that Odom is already there.
Just two years ago, Odom was at the apex of his then 12-year career. In what would be his final season with the Los Angeles Lakers, he played like a man who knew his role perfectly and was willing to do anything to put his team over the top.
Odom averaged 14.4 points, 8.7 rebounds and three assists per night—not career-highs by any stretch—but the effect he had on teammates and the Lakers offense was palpable. Los Angeles outscored opponents by 7.4 points per 100 possessions with him on the floor, a rate that would have bested every Western Conference foe. He was arguably the team's second-most important player behind Kobe Bryant, and though the Lakers would fall short on their bid to three-peat, no one argued one peep about Odom's place among the league's most impressive all-around forwards.
Two years. That's all it's taken for Odom to be all but ostracized from a league that would have fallen over themselves to land the 2010 version. Today, Odom might as well be sitting outside Staples Center with a mop bucket and some Armor All, offering to scrub de facto Clippers general manager Chris Paul's car for a chance to come back.
In Odom's first (and very likely only) season back with the franchise that drafted him—a season that was supposed to be his renaissance campaign after a miserable one-year stop in Texas—he failed. He averaged a career-low four points, 5.9 rebounds and shot below 40 percent from the field for the second straight season. His free-throw percentage dipped to a pathetic 47.6 percent, a drop of almost exactly 20 percent from his Sixth Man of the Year season.
It's not strange for a player to start declining in his early 30s. In fact, players Odom's age have historically seen a noticeable decline. According to Wages of Wins, a player's performance is expected to dip about 22 percent from their age 31 to age 32 season, and another 35 percent from their age 32 to age 33 seasons.
Odom hasn't declined, though. He's fallen off a damn cliff. After accruing 10.1 win shares for the 2010-11 season, he has a combined three over the past two campaigns. While using one measure to wholly judge a player's value is inherently flawed, it's at least worth noting that his combined win shares over the past two seasons are less than his 3.2 rate in his rookie season.
Suddenly, Lamar Odom is bad at basketball. Or is he? To answer that question we first must examine why Odom has struggled, and take a look at whether these are fixable concerns or ones that leave him completely unusable on a basketball court. (Spoiler: The answer is somewhere in the middle, leaning slightly more toward the former.)
The answer to why Odom has suddenly gone from SMOTY to the five-dollar bin at the NBA Wal-Mart contains multitudes. Seemingly non-related factors, personal and professional, have made Odom's life a living hell and pushed him away from the basketball court—literally and mentally.
The one most speak of and one I'm most uncomfortable discussing is his marriage to Khloe Kardashian. He linked up with the reality television star in 2009, they were married a very short time later and soon he was wrapped into something I've deemed the Kardashian Hell Vortex. Suddenly, there was no Lamar. There was just another cog in E!'s reality television deus ex machina. He appeared on Keeping Up With the Kardashians, had his wedding taped and later even starred in his own reality show, Khloe & Lamar.
For anyone looking for an easy scapegoat, there you have it. Odom is bad because he's become more concerned with cottage industry than working on his craft. And it's at least fair to point out that Khloe & Lamar was put on indefinite hiatus so that Odom could focus on his basketball career—a neon-bright sign that it did have some effect.
But that only tells part of the story. If you want to openly deride Odom's decision to bury himself in a sea of Ryan Secrest-produced faux-reality, you also have to acknowledge the personal tragedy that likely played a large role in those decisions.
As covered throughout his career, Odom's off-the-court life has been filled with trying times of strife. In a two-day span in 2011, Odom attended the funeral of his murdered 24-year-old cousin and then was a passenger in a car that killed a motorcycle rider in Queens.
"I think the effects of seeing [my cousin] die and then watching this kid die, it beat me down," Odom told Broderick Turner of the Los Angeles Times in August of 2011. "I consider myself a little weak. I thought I was breaking down mentally. I'm doing a lot of reflecting."
In that time of reflection that arguably played a larger factor in Odom's decline more than anything, the Lakers traded him in part because they feared he'd retire, a sign of just how much of an emotional wild-card Odom was at the time. And the Lakers didn't just trade Odom once; they did so twice—first in the David Stern-vetoed deal to New Orleans and the second time to Dallas.
Throughout his one-year stop with the Mavericks—one that ended with him mutually agreeing to an early departure—the entire basketball community grew disenchanted with his play. He was working his way into shape on the floor and looked aloof and completely disinterested in what was going on. Most blamed the reality show and new Hollywood lifestyle.
Odom has been franker that his cousin's death did more mentally than anyone realized. His passion for the game dipped, almost into oblivion.
It was a truly unique situation. It was one the Clippers felt fully comfortable they could fix by bringing Odom back to Los Angeles, putting him back in a happy environment with elite teammates.
And you know what? For as much as everyone has been quick to call his time with the Clippers a disaster, it wasn't as big of a mess as advertised. Yes, Odom didn't return to SMOTY form, and Los Angeles scored nearly five points per 100 possessions fewer on the floor.
That said, Clippers were exactly nine points better defensively with Odom than without. In case the math part of your brain was put away for the weekend, that makes him a net positive player for the Clippers.
That's not a fluke either. Go back and look at Odom's years with the Lakers. They were historically better with him on the floor period, but the effect was most notable on the defensive end. While some of that has to do with him playing against a decent chunk of second units, remember Odom never started fewer than 32 games in a season with the Lakers.
The numbers and the eye test paint Odom as a versatile, smart defender. Opposing players shot just 35.7 percent with Odom as their primary defender last season, including a laughable 25.7 percent rate on isolations, according to Synergy Sports. Even in Dallas, Odom proved to be a good defender, opposing players shooting 35.5 percent.
Just a reminder: Vinny Del Negro trusted Odom over DeAndre Jordan in crunch time last season. That's not a small deal—even if Del Negro is on the lower ring of the Coach Competency Scale.
Still, there are very real problems in Odom's game that make teams hesitant. He can't shoot. Like, at all. He's gone from a passable jump-shooter during his prime all the way down to Tyreke Evans territory last season at 24.7 percent. And the fact remains Odom still wasn't in the best of shape and needed a kick here and there for motivation.
That's all fair enough. But for teams still in need of veteran bench help on the cheap, where else are they going to go? Jamison is a defensive turnstile. Younger players like Austin Daye haven't proven that they can, you know, actually play basketball in the NBA. Tyrus Thomas likes screaming at his coaches, while Daniel Gibson (allegedly) likes punching people.
Every free agent remaining has their warts. Some are more obvious than others. But two years removed from personal tragedy and his livelihood now obviously hanging in the balance, this may be Odom's last chance to remove those warts and salvage his career.
Just one question remains: Does Odom want it enough to make it happen?
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