OtB is counting down the days 'til the NBA 2009-10 season tips off by ranking the top 50 players in the league. On Friday there are/were 25 days left.
Forget that no one really wanted him this summer, and he had to set up the whole Kardashian angle to get Miami to even take a sniff. Forget the whole Kardashian angle. Forget the candy rumors fiasco (Battier has Michael Lewis and Lamar has...the whole rest of the blogosphere). Forget that star he had shaved into his head a few years back. Forget that he goes missing for whole games at a time. You need to remember two things about Lamar Odom: 1) He is a beast; and 2) he absolutely makes this Lakers team click. In a sense, he's a kind of missing link, lately found.
It all started around the time Pau Gasol came to town. As has lately been evident, preeminent players bring out the best in other wunderkinds, superlative talents, all world athletes. The question, of course, when a guy like Gasol comes to a team like the 07-08 Lakers is how he'll fit in with the big star. Meaning Kobe. What is not questioned is how he'll fit in with the number two with whom he'll either share co-star credits or ultimately supplant. That, as evident of course in the way I've brought it into the discussion, is the proper question to ask in such incidences.
Odom, who played LA's whipping boy to Kobe's golden god for three seasons prior, made all this a moot point. Kind of. If you consider gorgeous basketball and more perfect than pictures post passing any kind of moot point. Yeah, I thought it was awesome too, and it was Odom's chemistry with Pau that made the Spaniard's transition so successful. Odom, hopefully will play the same role this season with new comer Ron Artest. The obvious question is how Artest and Kobe and Artest and Gasol will fit in together. The factor not being considered in such dynamics is LO, who hails from the same Queens area of NY as does Artest. Why do you think the whole Kardashian thing went down? It's not for love (LO, and any wide-eyed romantics, if you're reading this, I don't mean it. Love conquers all. Yay!), and it's not for publicity. Nope, it was to take away from all the gossip that would otherwise surround the start of the Lakers' first training camp with Ron Ron. Didn't you get that memo?
Odom isn't exactly the leader on this ridiculously stacked Lakers team. He does, however, gather the wood that makes the fire burn. Not only is he the spirit that this team can sometimes seem to lack (Kobe should've been a business man...), Lamar is wildly versatile, can seemingly get from the three-point line to the basket in a single non-crab step, and he's often the team's best rebounder. There was a stretch last season when he recorded 17, 18, 19, and 20 rebounds in consecutive games, a run that began just over a week after Andrew Bynum went down with an injured knee. That first game where Odom kind of broke through and started rebounding everything in sight (I saw him bring down a bird's nest from the vicinity of the back board) was against the behemoth regular season Cavs. Odom was all over those rebounds in Cleveland, and his scream after pulling them in was primal.
In this way, Odom is the perfect complement to Kobe. Fiery where Kobe is cool, passionate where Kobe is practiced, spontaneous where Kobe is methodical. He is able to be the things his team needs him to be, without going all Tim Thomas or Josh Howard on us. And that, my dear and illustrious friends and peers, is why Lamar Odom is #25 on my still-pre-season-but-at-least-it's-training-camp-now count down of the top 50 NBA Players.
