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NFL

Sunday, December 5
Odom, Garnett have lot in common

By David Aldridge
Special to ESPN.com

It is a measure of where we are these days in the NBA, agewise, when Kevin Garnett is somebody's idol.


	Odom is fitting in very well in the NBA, leading the league in minutes.

But he is Lamar Odom's idol.

"After hearing so much about him in high school, and only being able to see highlights, him jumping out of high school, and watching him develop in the NBA," the Los Angeles Clippers' first-round pick told me last week.

"Right now, he's probably the best all-around player in the NBA, the way he can handle the ball. Guys have to double-team him or he's gonna score. He got 20 rebounds against us in the flow of the game."

Odom is flowing, himself. Straight down the road to Rookie of the Year honors. A month into the season he's looking like a 10-year veteran, watching instead of reaching, anticipating instead of guessing. And staring down his idol in the guts of the game, dropping a sweet jump hook over KG in the final seconds to secure a rare road win for the Clips a couple of weeks ago. Not to mention the requisite woofing ("Everybody thought he was talking to me," Odom said of KG's barking. "But he was really getting into it with Tyrone Nesby.")

He hasn't been Clipperized yet. It still stings when he doesn't win.

"I bleed on the inside when I lose," he said. "I'm grumpy on the plane. I don't talk for about 20 minutes until somebody cracks a joke or something like that. I'll never get used to losing. I want to win every game. I want to win every sprint, every race. But you do have to get used to it in a sense. I guess it's the way you go out and play the game ... this is us, right now.

"We've got so many new guys here. We've got guys like Derek Anderson, who played for the University of Kentucky and won a national championship. Maurice Taylor, he played for the University of Michigan. He's used to winning. Myself, I'm used to winning. Whether it's been baseball in the past, football, peewee football, I've always been a winner." He's also got the savvy of a GM. He didn't mention Anderson and Taylor by accident. He's putting the onus on Donald Sterling to put some oil on his creaky wallet and break out some funds for the two free agents-to-be.

"Hopefully, they can re-sign Maurice, and re-sign Michael Olowokandi, and re-sign Derek Anderson, and keep this team together," he said. "I think that's key. If they don't, they make it hard for a player like me. To let all these guys go and start over, I don't want to do that. We always say on this team that we have the collegiate atmosphere, and what we mean by that is that we're young guys, growing together. And that's what we want to do. We want to keep growing."

I asked him if all the changes he put everybody through before the draft were, in retrospect, a planned act. If he disappeared and blew off a workout on purpose so he could avoid the Bulls' mess and the Grizzlies' moshpit to wind up in L.A.

"Definitely not," he said. "I would have put a stamp on it that Vancouver would have chose me. Because I had heard through the rumor mill that Steve Francis had expressed himself how he didn't want to play for them. So I thought it was a definite that they would have picked me and maybe traded me to Miami. That's what I was guessing on."

Hoping for?

"A little bit. But it didn't happen. Maurice Taylor was pushing for the Clippers to pick me, and that really helped me in the transition."

He'll play wherever Chris Ford wants him to play. But have no illusions. He wants to be your Clipper point guard. He wants the ball in his hands with the game on the line, just like it was against KG.

"It's something I think I always wanted," Odom said. "Always wanted to play against the best with time running down. I think that's every kid's dream. Every kid that ever played basketball in the park, thinking he's Magic or Michael with time running down, playing in the NBA world championship, game seven, and your shot counts. It was just like a dream."

No All-Star process
My colleague Jeffrey Denberg, one of ESPN.com's NBA columnists, takes issue with the all-star selection process, deriding the "celebrity media" that select the players that go on the all-star ballot. As a member of that body, I can only say this: now that I'm a celebrity, maybe I'll get better tables at The Palm.

Denberg called the process silly in part because Miami's Jamal Mashburn isn't on the ballot while Orlando's Matt Harpring and Indiana's rookie, Jonathan Bender, are. He says it was "common knowledge" that Bender wouldn't play this season, while Harpring was injured in the preseason and thus, I guess, shouldn't have been considered.

Let's take 'em one at a time:

1) Last season, Jamal Mashburn played in 24 of Miami's 50 games and averaged 14.8 points per game on 45.1 percent shooting. He averaged a little less than three assists per game and a little more than two turnovers per game. The year before, he played in 48 of 82 games and averaged 15.1 points per game on 43 percent shooting. The year before that, he averaged 11.9 points per game on 38.5 percent shooting. In the past two postseasons, he averaged six and 10 points a game.

God, what were we thinking, to ignore numbers like that?

Besides Bender and Harpring, which I'll get to in a minute, here are the other Eastern Conference forwards on the roster: Elton Brand, P.J. Brown, Marcus Camby, Vince Carter, Dale Davis, Danny Fortson, Alan Henderson, Grant Hill, Juwan Howard, Shawn Kemp, Toni Kukoc, Christian Laettner, Danny Manning, Anthony Mason, Lamond Murray, Charles Oakley, Bobby Phills, Theo Ratliff, Glenn Robinson, Latrell Sprewell, Keith Van Horn and Antoine Walker.

Maybe I'm nuts, but I think Camby, Carter, Fortson, Hill, Howard, Kemp, Kukoc, Mason, Murray, Oakley, Phills, Robinson, Sprewell, Van Horn and Walker are mortal locks, given their stats the last three years, over Mashburn. The others? Who's done more to win more games over that period, Mashburn or Manning? (By the way, this isn't personal; Mashburn is a solid young player, always accessible, having a great season, and I'm happy for him. And by the way, fans can still write in Mashburn's name on the ballot via Internet voting.)

Ask Larry Bird if he'd rather have Mash or Davis (12 points, 9 boards on 60 percent shooting through last week). Ask Larry Brown if Ratliff's shot blocking and boards do more for the Sixers than Mash's shooting and passing would. (If you say Davis and Ratliff are primarily defensive players, I wouldn't argue. Are you then saying that scorers are the only people who should be on the ballot? Are you saying offense is the only important consideration to an "all-star" season?)

Ask Lenny Wilkens if he'd rather have Mashburn or Henderson (12.9 points, 9.9 boards through last week). Brown averaged fewer points (11.4) than teammate Mashburn last season, but obviously had more rebounds, and, because he played twice as many games as Mashburn, had more steals. Ask Pat Riley if Brown or Mashburn is more valuable to his team.

Some say rookies shouldn't be on the all-star ballot. It's worth arguing. But as long as they're eligible, why wouldn't you put Brand (or Lamar Odom, for that matter) on the ballot? Are you saying Larry Bird or Magic Johnson or Tim Duncan weren't already among the best in the league at their respective positions as rookies?

2) Denberg must have been talking to different, more knowledgeable people in Orlando and Indiana than the members of the selection panel over the summer and fall. To a man, we all had been told the same thing -- Harpring would play, and play big minutes, once he got over an injury that no one said would keep him out for a month, much less the season. As for Bender, the Pacers were raving about him, comparing his skills to Kevin Garnett's.

By the way, we do the selecting in September, at the league meetings -- not the end of November, when everybody has had a month to see who's playing well and who isn't. Obviously, you have to finalize the choices as early as possible to give fans the most time possible to vote.

The rules we worked under said we were to nominate 24 forwards, 24 guards and 12 centers per conference. (If you think it's easy to find 12 centers worth a damn in either conference, try listing them sometime. It's why Shawn Bradley is on the ballot.) We also have to nominate at least three players per team, to ensure that good players from good teams don't dominate the ballot (which is why the Blazers have six players on the ballot), and to prevent good players from bad teams from being excluded from the ballot.

Denberg should name the "scouts" that are more qualified to make out the ballots. I'll be glad to give up my seat.

News & Notes

Hot Seat Updates: Nets will give Don Casey time to coach his entire roster (Jayson Williams will not be back until January) before deciding his future. While it's not likely Case will survive after this season, he'll probably get most of the year because Nets may be loath to pay another coach (or bump up either assistant, Eddie Jordan or Jim Lynam) that they wouldn't retain after the season.

	ALDRIDGE'S RANKINGS
	THE TOP 10 1. Portland 2. San Antonio 3. Miami 4. L.A. Lakers 5. Sacramento 6. Phoenix 7. Toronto 8. Utah 9. Seattle 10. Charlotte THE BOTTOM FIVE 25. Washington 26. Dallas 26. New Jersey 28. Golden State 29. Chicago

Warriors are in free fall. P.J. Carlesimo is hanging on by a thread, though GM Garry St. Jean points out Golden State is trying to get by with three starters -- John Starks, Donyell Marshall, Erick Dampier -- out of action. Keep in mind that Carlesimo was hired before St. Jean, which will make it a little tougher for St. Jean to recommend firing Carlesimo. But not impossible.

Brian Hill's future in GrizzlyLand has to be in jeopardy. GM Stu Jackson went ballistic after Vancouver blew a seven-point lead in the final minute last week against Seattle. Jackson wouldn't talk about Hill's job status when I asked him about it this week.

Damon Stoudamire sees the difference between the Blazers of last spring and the Blazers of this fall: "If you look back at us, (when) we beat Utah, we were taking our shirts off," he said. "I bet if we played that series over again, with this team, if we beat Utah, we'd walk off the court, walk in the locker room and say, 'We've gotta get ready for San Antonio. This one's over.' That's the whole difference."

The Raptors have benefited from putting Dee Brown in the starting lineup at point guard. His three-point threat opens up the floor for Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady. But Raps know that Brown isn't a long-term solution at the point. Still, they have no interest in dealing for Rod Strickland and have not contacted the Cavaliers about either Brevin Knight or Andre Miller.

Speaking of the Cavs, the team is growing increasingly concerned about Shawn Kemp's girth. They tried to ignore it as long as Kemp put up numbers, thinking that not obsessing about it would motivate Kemp to lose the extra pounds. That hasn't worked either. The name being bandied about in Cavs circles now is John Williams, the former Washington Bullet who ate himself out of the league a few years ago.

Scottie Pippen has no sympathy for the Bulls' plight. "Every team in the league is enjoying the opportunity of coming into Chicago and beating them now," he said. "I didn't want to be on that side of taking that beating. I was used to giving the beatings in Chicago. They're really suffering right now, but hey, they got what they asked for."

Quote of the Week
"I just put up roadblock after roadblock."
-- Spurs Coach and GM Gregg Popovich, on his efforts to keep anxious Sean Elliott from coming back and playing too soon after receiving a kidney transplant last summer.


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