I am not sure how many professional sports games I have been to, but it is a lot. I must admit, as I get a little older I not only watch where the ball or puck is, but what the players are doing and where they are moving when they aren’t in play. Over the past few months I have been doing this a lot for the Dallas Mavericks and focusing on a few players, especially Lamar Odom.
Let me start by first saying I have never disliked him, thought about him a lot, or even focused on his career when he was in college or playing for the Lakers. In fact, I knew very little about him until he became a Maverick. Because I like the team I typically will like most, if not all, of the players.
During the past few months I have never ever seen a player who cared any less than Lamar Odom. He rarely moved on the court and clearly was never engaged with the team. It was almost like he wasn’t trying. He appeared to have the attitude like, “Hey, I have won my NBA championship trophies, won the 6th man of the year award for the 2010/2011 season, and I don’t have to prove myself at all.”
It’s interesting because the Dallas Mavericks are an overachieving, blue-collar, hardworking bunch. Think about the nickname of one of their players Brian Cardinal – ‘The Custodian.’ He cleans things up with his blue collar style.
Watching Lamar Odom over the past few months was almost like watching a reality show with someone stealing money in front of you. Funny – perhaps that is his next reality show with Khloe.
I realize that Lamar has had to deal with a lot of things. The death of a daughter, his cousin getting murdered, and being a passenger in a car accident that resulted in a fatality, is a lot to handle. I won’t even focus on his marriage being under a microscope, their reality show, and some of the other stuff he is involved with. While I can sympathize with what he is going through, I can’t accept the fact that he was late for meetings, didn’t try on the court, and disrespected his teammates, the NBA, and the city of Dallas. Everyone goes through their own stuff. I wish he would have been smart and mature enough to take a leave of absence from the team and the NBA; take whatever time he needed to clear his head and resume his career.
Of course that could never happen with an 8.5 million dollar salary!
- What are your thoughts about my position?
- Have you witnessed other athletes who cared as little as Lamar did?
I look forward to reading your comments.
Tal Shahar says:
I completely agree. It is hard to believe that Odom was within walking distance of practice and still managed to show up late a lot.
A lot of athletes deal with tragedies and personal issues, but usually these athletes use their sport as a much needed distraction from their personal problems.
Odom should have taken a year off since he neither had the mental strength nor cared to focus on basketball.
There are other athletes that are unprofessional because of circumstances. This year Carmelo didn’t care to play hard defensively while D’Antony was the coach. Once D’Antony was fired, Carmelo decided to play harder defensively. Very unprofessional, but that was his attitude. However, I can’t recall any athletes in any sport caring as little as Lamar did.
eric brall says:
Absolute disgrace. Especially coming from where he did..he always said when he was with LA how much he respected Kobe. And say what you will about Kobe, there isn’t a harder worker in the game…and the adversity that he’s played through (at a super high level) between flying back and forth for court cases, drama with his coach, feuds with his co-superstar in the Shaq days… should prove that you can use your personal problems to FOCUS on the court, rather than as an excuse like Odom did.
Jeffrey Adler says:
Odom is reminiscent of Dennis Rodman when he was with the San Antonio Spurs (maybe it is a Texas thing?). If I recall correctly, Gregg Popovich, who is likely a Hall of Fame coach, had to deal with Rodman sitting on the bench consistently without his shoes and socks on. Effectively, Popovich could not put him in the game without shoes and socks. Eventually, he did with Rodman what Dallas did with Odom — sent him home.
Rodman went on to play for Phil Jackson with the Bulls, and won championships. I guess that is another similarity — since Odom did well playing for Phil Jackson. Phil is done, so Odom will have to find somewhere else he will be happy playing. Whoever signs him next, and someone will, had better make sure in advance he will be happy — because Odom has made it clear he will only go through the motions if he is not happy.
Joe Baldi says:
Merrill, he’s just one example of a pampered athlete. I don’t know how they dealt with this contractually, but I’m sure if you had an employee who showed the same indifference as he did, you would fire them for cause and not have to pay their salary. I doubt this was the case with the Mavs Who’s to blame? I suggest the owners who sign these ridiculous contracts and somehow get locked into guarantees share most of the blame. When a guy ( not Odom ) sitting at the end of the bench is making millions of dollars and has more DNP’s than minutes played there’s a message there and it’s not a good one.
I want to share a positive sports story that happened last week. Here’s a short synopsis:
Jeff Francouer while playing for Kansas City last year was in Oakland for a road game and the A’s bleacher fans were riding him on Beer and Bacon night. They finally convinced him to taste some bacon during the game. The next inning he came out to right field with a baseball wrapped in a $100 bill with a note telling the fans to buy themselves some more bacon and beer.
Move to this year, sometime last week. Again Bacon and Beer night in Oakland and the Royals are playing. Francoeur goes out to right field and notices the Oakland Bleacher fans have on Jeff Francoeur Bacon and Beer tee shirts on. After sharing pleasantries the next inning Francoeur has 20 pizzas delivered to those fans along with an autographed bat. How great was this for baseball? The owners should demand that kind of behavior as part of the standard contracts for all of these pampered babies.I was a big Francoeur fan when he was with the Mets. That just validated my good judgement.
Hey you guys had him in Texas.
Thought I’d share a great story. You can probably get the whole story on yahoo sports.com
Joe
Merrill Dubrow says:
Joe,
Those are amazing stories. I hadn’t heard either one of them and I am so happy you shared them. I wish more athlets were like Jeff – class act!
Merrill