LAT Sports Review - Saturday, April 24, 2010

T.J. Simers is disappointed with Lamar Odom. He admits that he really likes the Lakers player, saying that in the eleven years he’s known him Odom has always been a great guy. I respect that, but then he said that Odom has extraordinary talent but isn’t living up to it now, and he lost me. Is he wondering when Odom became mediocre? The answer is: when he was traded away from Miami in 2004.

Odom has always been a difficult player to evaluate. He appears to be a perpetual underachiever, but his numbers have been respectable with 14.6 PPG and 8.9 RPG. Somehow, it always seems better for an overachiever to average 15 points a game than for an underachiever to average 15 points a game. But Simers is correct. Odom seems disinterested right now and his team is really suffering because of that.