Odom yet to live up to expectations with Mavs

Jerome Miron-US PRESSWIRE

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DALLAS — The Dallas Mavericks have one of the most unique charities in the NBA. His name is Lamar Odom, and he somehow won the Sixth Man of the Year award last season.

After perhaps his most pitiful outing of the season in Sunday's loss to the Knicks, Odom was 2 of 8 in the Mavs' 89-73 win over a Celtics team that was missing starters Kevin Garnett and Rajon Rondo on Monday.

It's gotten so bad that Mavs coach Rick Carlisle spent a good portion of his postgame news conference explaining why everyone's expecting too much from Odom. He even challenged reporters to search for the "nuances" in the power forward's game since there's nothing redeeming to the naked eye.

Carlisle has been extremely supportive of Odom in public, although he would later remind me that reporters have "no clue" what goes on behind closed doors.

It was impossible for the Mavs coach to look past the careless turnover Odom had late in the third quarter against the Knicks on which he set up Jeremy Lin for an easy layup to pull his team within three points. Carlisle said he took Odom aside and instructed him to "eat the ball" next time he was in that situation.

It's hard to believe that acquiring Odom from the Los Angeles Lakers for virtually nothing seemed like highway robbery before the season. Now his new teammates find themselves defending him after bad games.

At this point, Odom's main purpose is basically to give Dirk Nowitzki a breather. But as we saw Sunday in New York, even that can be a dicey proposition.

"One of the curses of our situation for [Odom] is that unless we have a guy like Dirk out, he's not going to get the 30 to 35 minutes where he can go out there and eventually roll up stats," said Carlisle. "I don't think it's fair to look at a 1 for 6 yesterday and a 2 for 8 tonight and say the guy's not doing anything. That's not true. If we didn't have him, Nowitzki wouldn't be averaging 30 or 31 minutes a game. There's value in that."

Point guard Jason Kidd, who passed Michael Jordan on the NBA's all-time steals list Monday, said that he constantly tells Odom to "let it fly" in an effort to encourage confidence.

"Change is hard," said Kidd. "Especially when it comes from the blindside like it did with the Lakers. We all know that he's talented. He keeps everyone's minutes down. He's got to keep taking those shots."

If Carlisle really wanted to get Odom's attention, he'd bench him against the Lakers on Wednesday. Perhaps the embarrassment of not getting off the bench against his former teammates would cause him to make some changes.

But at this point, it looks like the Mavs will continue to roll him out there for 20 minutes and see if he has any interest in playing.

Everyone knows that Odom dealt with tragedy this offseason followed by the Lakers basically dumping him for cash. A slow start to the season was to be expected. But this appears to be a player who's lost his desire to compete. There's no excuse for that.

Carlisle will point to a 15-game trend that suggests gradual improvement for Odom. But that seems more like wishful thinking.

The Mavs' most intriguing addition at the start of the season has been a bust through the first 33 games. To think that will change after the All-Star break seems like a stretch.

"I would love for Lamar to be the kind of high-impact player that he is supposedly advertised as being, but the truth is his career has been a career of being a consistent player," said Carlisle.

Mavs fans are waiting on that last part.