duncan228
06-07-2009, 02:36 PM
Lakers' Odom keeps focus on now, not future (http://www.ocregister.com/articles/odom-people-life-2448269-big-doesn)
Lamar Odom's free-agent future might be tense, but his present is all he wants to discuss.
Kevin Ding
The Orange County Register
EL SEGUNDO - Spray sweet champagne with this family of teammates one day. Revel in a rockin' parade with this adopted homeland after that.
Then suddenly, immediately, weirdly stand alone the next day.
It's a funny sort of thing that likely awaits Lamar Odom, on track to win his first NBA championship in his 10th season not that many notice how much that would mean to him compared to how Kobe Bryant and Phil Jackson haven't won recently.
As meaningful as that championship validation looms for Odom, he soon will be staring at a limbo-hanging, life-twisting free agency this offseason.
Odom has made it abundantly clear all season he wants badly to remain a Laker. However, the club has major payroll and luxury-tax-penalty challenges with mega-deals already committed to Bryant, Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum for next season and beyond.
The Lakers fundamentally want to re-sign up-and-coming Trevor Ariza to play the small forward position they don't believe Odom can play.
Yet Odom is willing to accept less money to stay, and he doesn't make much sense for any rebuilding team out there with salary-cap space. Maybe Atlanta or Detroit could work as a decent team looking for a big boost into title contention maybe but who knows what offers this recession-beaten free-agent market will hold?
Odom said Friday: "Most likely, hopefully, I'll be wearing a Lakers uniform." On Saturday, he stood at the lip of the Lakers practice court and said: "Who knows if I'll be out here playing?"
The landscape is murky, the footing out there insecure and the situation therefore is one geared for pacing in circles all the more if you let yourself.
In Odom's case, after all the turmoil and tragedy in his game of life, he is experienced at trying to compartmentalize and concentrate on what he can control.
That doesn't mean he's good at it, though. Odom is simply a scattered sort of dude, from the clothes and socks and stuff left strewn on the floor in front of his locker to the way he roots for just about every sports team under the sun.
Yet in this particularly case because of what Odom knows is within his immediate grasp he gets it. June is his only month of the year. To put it in his candy terms, if he could just eat the Now and not the Later, he would.
"No matter what happens here or now, we can't take care of that now anyway," Odom said of his next contract. "It's not even a thought. It doesn't matter what I do. We can't get to that right now. That won't happen till the summer."
Asked about playing better now and earning more money, Odom said: "Right now I'm detached from the business of basketball. You can't think like that. If that was the case, I'd just try to shoot and try to get 20 points; I wouldn't really care.
"That part of the business will be taken care of over the summer. That's when both sides will try to come together and do what's best for both of us. Right now, it's not really what's important. What's important is for us to win a championship, and then everybody's happy after that."
Odom called it "easy" to set his future aside. For a profoundly versatile player who has had 34 points, 22 rebounds, 12 assists, five steals and nine blocks in various NBA games, Odom is setting a more noteworthy career high:
He never has been more focused.
It's not that he doesn't understand what a big deal or maybe even the last big deal, contract-wise, of his life awaits him next month. He's 29. He's only a kid at heart these days.
But that is the context for the present and past, too. He said more than five years ago when he was trying to turn his career around in Miami that he just didn't want to be considered a "loser." If he can become a champion, no one can ever say that about Lamar Odom.
"This is it," he said. "I've been playing basketball for a long time."
Odom is such a wonderful people-person that he's not just in this for himself, either. It was said to me recently that no matter how much more money Odom makes, he might well be broke the day after he retires. That's how big-hearted and giving he is, and he's much more forthcoming about what a title would mean to his beloved than to him.
"That's really why it means so much," he said. "There are so many people since I was 8 years old, so many people who have experienced life with me through basketball. It means a lot to a lot of people, to people I consider family that I met through basketball.
"There will be a lot of people crying if I win."
Lamar Odom's free-agent future might be tense, but his present is all he wants to discuss.
Kevin Ding
The Orange County Register
EL SEGUNDO - Spray sweet champagne with this family of teammates one day. Revel in a rockin' parade with this adopted homeland after that.
Then suddenly, immediately, weirdly stand alone the next day.
It's a funny sort of thing that likely awaits Lamar Odom, on track to win his first NBA championship in his 10th season not that many notice how much that would mean to him compared to how Kobe Bryant and Phil Jackson haven't won recently.
As meaningful as that championship validation looms for Odom, he soon will be staring at a limbo-hanging, life-twisting free agency this offseason.
Odom has made it abundantly clear all season he wants badly to remain a Laker. However, the club has major payroll and luxury-tax-penalty challenges with mega-deals already committed to Bryant, Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum for next season and beyond.
The Lakers fundamentally want to re-sign up-and-coming Trevor Ariza to play the small forward position they don't believe Odom can play.
Yet Odom is willing to accept less money to stay, and he doesn't make much sense for any rebuilding team out there with salary-cap space. Maybe Atlanta or Detroit could work as a decent team looking for a big boost into title contention maybe but who knows what offers this recession-beaten free-agent market will hold?
Odom said Friday: "Most likely, hopefully, I'll be wearing a Lakers uniform." On Saturday, he stood at the lip of the Lakers practice court and said: "Who knows if I'll be out here playing?"
The landscape is murky, the footing out there insecure and the situation therefore is one geared for pacing in circles all the more if you let yourself.
In Odom's case, after all the turmoil and tragedy in his game of life, he is experienced at trying to compartmentalize and concentrate on what he can control.
That doesn't mean he's good at it, though. Odom is simply a scattered sort of dude, from the clothes and socks and stuff left strewn on the floor in front of his locker to the way he roots for just about every sports team under the sun.
Yet in this particularly case because of what Odom knows is within his immediate grasp he gets it. June is his only month of the year. To put it in his candy terms, if he could just eat the Now and not the Later, he would.
"No matter what happens here or now, we can't take care of that now anyway," Odom said of his next contract. "It's not even a thought. It doesn't matter what I do. We can't get to that right now. That won't happen till the summer."
Asked about playing better now and earning more money, Odom said: "Right now I'm detached from the business of basketball. You can't think like that. If that was the case, I'd just try to shoot and try to get 20 points; I wouldn't really care.
"That part of the business will be taken care of over the summer. That's when both sides will try to come together and do what's best for both of us. Right now, it's not really what's important. What's important is for us to win a championship, and then everybody's happy after that."
Odom called it "easy" to set his future aside. For a profoundly versatile player who has had 34 points, 22 rebounds, 12 assists, five steals and nine blocks in various NBA games, Odom is setting a more noteworthy career high:
He never has been more focused.
It's not that he doesn't understand what a big deal or maybe even the last big deal, contract-wise, of his life awaits him next month. He's 29. He's only a kid at heart these days.
But that is the context for the present and past, too. He said more than five years ago when he was trying to turn his career around in Miami that he just didn't want to be considered a "loser." If he can become a champion, no one can ever say that about Lamar Odom.
"This is it," he said. "I've been playing basketball for a long time."
Odom is such a wonderful people-person that he's not just in this for himself, either. It was said to me recently that no matter how much more money Odom makes, he might well be broke the day after he retires. That's how big-hearted and giving he is, and he's much more forthcoming about what a title would mean to his beloved than to him.
"That's really why it means so much," he said. "There are so many people since I was 8 years old, so many people who have experienced life with me through basketball. It means a lot to a lot of people, to people I consider family that I met through basketball.
"There will be a lot of people crying if I win."