Odom Gets the “Point”

LA Times: Lamar Odom, playing his second position in as many seasons, is discovering the nuances of life at the top of the key, as the facilitator in Coach Phil Jackson’s triangle offense.

There are nights such as Sunday, where the 6-foot-10 point guard hit Kobe Bryant in stride for an alley-oop, found Smush Parker on the fastbreak for an easy basket and went coast-to-coast for a layup, all in the first quarter.

Odom, at his new position, remains a metaphor for the team — a work in progress.

“He’s struggling,” Jackson said before Sunday’s 98-97 Laker exhibition victory over the Charlotte Bobcats.

“He still has a ways to go and some recognition of what it takes.”

A power forward last season, Odom is now fighting off guards while bringing up the ball and has sometimes found himself drifting from the basket after making the first pass to initiate the offense.

He is averaging 10 points in six exhibitions and has made only 15 of 43 shots (34.9%). He has a team-high 26 assists but also a team-high 20 turnovers.

“We’re a long ways from saying you’ve got to throw the baby out with the bath water in this situation,” Jackson said. “We really think that the upside of our team is with him at that position. We could go back to Kobe playing that position, but that’s going to take a lot of leg out of him, put a lot of pressure on the rest of the team. This is a situation I think that we all look forward to trying to experiment with.”

Said Odom: “I feel like I have an IQ for the game and a nice little learning curve as far as learning the offense, but trying to put yourself in position to score all the time I guess is my most difficult part.”

Making Odom the facilitator in the triangle is something that drew Phil to re-sign and coach the Lakers again. Does it have the same appeal to you too? Will Odom master the triangle and make it look as good as Pip made it in Chicago? Sound off on our CL.com Forums!