Lamar Odom: Games, Changes, Fears

(Photo by Jeff Gross/Getty Images)

The game of basketball is very similar to the game of life. In both basketball and life you have to maintain several types of relationships between people in order to be successful.

The Los Angeles Lakers won their 15th NBA Championship about a month ago. It was a really great thing for the city of Los Angeles.

The players came back from Orlando with their trophies in hand, and they celebrated together. Then they celebrated with the city of Los Angeles in that huge parade.

But then something happened.

The celebrations stopped, and now it is back to business.

Back to life.

The Lakers had three free agents this offseason in Trevor Ariza, Shannon Brown, and Lamar Odom.

All three players expressed great happiness in where they are at in Los Angeles, and all three expressed that they wanted to return to Los Angeles to defend their crown.

So of course they all signed back with the Lakers and they all lived happily ever after, right?

Wrong!

Shannon Brown did re-sign with the Lakers.

Trevor Ariza signed with the Houston Rockets, though, and Lamar Odom received an offer to sign with his former team, the Miami Heat.

What went wrong?

Everything seemed so Disney, and then it all went down the super bowl.

Well, life can be a fickle...you know?

Lets examine this closely to see why things happened the way they did.

Trevor Ariza left his exit interview saying that he "felt a lot of love."

It was pretty obvious that the Lakers wanted him to stay, and they offered him mid-level exception at $5.6 million dollars, which was a generous offer.

But then Ariza's agent made a mistake that ended up costing Ariza in a big way.

He played mind games.

When you go there, you'll start to notice that the feeling of "love" to soon go away.

Mind games worked very well for Sasha Vujacic last season when he threatened to move to Europe if he didn't get the contract he wanted.

So the Lakers took the bait and over-pursued him.

But what "The Machine" forgot to tell the Lakers was that he doesn't come with rechargeable batteries.

Que?

So now the Lakers are stuck with an overpaid player that really should just move to Europe after his free ride is over because no team will want to sign him.

The Lakers are not stupid, they learn from their mistakes...so when Ariza's agent started parading him around like he was Kobe Bryant, the Lakers shook their heads and said goodbye forever.

They realize that the NBA is a numbers game, and they weren't going to waste anymore time with these games, so they called Ron Artest.

Artest basically took the contract Ariza left on the table, and in a twist of bizarre coincidences, Ariza signed a contract with Artest's former team for not that much more than what he would of gotten in Los Angeles.

Ouch!

Ariza knows he messed up here, and although he tried to play it off as if he didn't care, you could tell by the look on his face during the interview afterwards that he knows he made a mistake.

You can't hide by smiling.

Ariza grew up in Los Angeles, and also went to college here. This is his home, and now he's going to have to move to Houston to play for a lottery team rather than playing for a  team that he just won a championship with.

Well, now lets talk about Lamar.

Whether Lamar Odom signs back with the Lakers or not will dictate the rest of the Lakers offseason, and the following season for that matter.

So what happened here?

Well, Lamar wants a multi-year contract of $10 million a season. He also wants a locked-in fifth season. If you do the math, that's a five-year $50 million dollar contract, ideally of course.

Because in real life, he's not getting that contract.

The Los Angeles Lakers offered Lamar Odom two contract deals.

One was worth $36 million for four years and the other was worth $30 million for three years.

But these agents like to play games, and when the Lakers made that offer, Odom's agent, Jim Schwartz, was apparently too "busy" to reply back right away, and started negotiating with the Dallas Mavericks and Miami Heat.

The Lakers took that as a slap in the face and retracted their offer.

It's not about the money, it's about respect. If you want to maintain relationships with the people in your life, you have to respect them...because if you're selfish, they'll just leave you.

Why would anyone stick around for your BS if your only trying to get on top of them?

So then the Miami Heat offered Lamar Odom a contract worth $34 million for five years.

Ouch again!

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