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WHERE WAS ODOM GETTING HIS ADVICE FROM?
By CHARLES JAY, Editor/Publisher, TotalAction.com
June 22, 1999

As we speak, NBA commissioner David Stern is trying to formulate a plan to put an age limit on prospective early NBA entrants. Part of the reason for this is that apparently Stern thinks some of the youngsters opting out of school for early NBA entry "ruin their lives by getting bad advice", or something to that effect. We're going to talk about that at length in Thursday's column, but I just wanted to bring up a case in point of a player who very possibly got some lousy advice by some selfish people, which is going to cost him both status and money in this year's draft.

For the life of me, I can't figure out why in the world Lamar Odom would have wanted to pull his name out of the NBA Draft and return to Rhode Island for what would be his junior year there.

* Surely it couldn't be to improve his draft position. Heck, Odom, even under the worst case scenario, stood to be one of the top three selections in the draft. And in the best case, would have been #1 with a bullet. In fact, at the Total Action Draft Machine, we had Lamar as our top prospect, at least until this latest fiasco.

* It couldn't have been because he wants to finish his college education. Odom doesn't really want to go to school. In fact, that's one of the reasons it has been so difficult to get him eligible to play Division I ball. Not that he's stupid, but like a lot of players, he just never took to schoolwork that well. And it is a rare happenstance that a player would start to become a diligent student only after arriving in college. Usually, the converse is true. Indeed, Odom was hanging around with his homeboys in the days before the deadline to declare eligibility for the draft, event though classes were winding down at URI.

Odom, in fact, wanted to go into the NBA Draft LAST season, and contemplated offers from a team in Greece as well as the CBA. There is no doubt that his priority is not so much getting a degree as it is shooting the three. Know what I mean?

* It couldn't be on moral grounds. That doesn't really require much explanation, does it?

* It couldn't be because declaring for the draft was the result of getting bad advice. If anything, this was an opportune time for Odom to come out of school. In a year where there are a lot of guys who can play but no one described as a "franchise player", Odom might be the guy who comes closest to meriting that label. A 6'9" or 6'10" (depending on who you believe) player who can handle things at the small forward or off-guard position, who can shoot, rebound, and pass the ball like a genuine playmaker, Odom is just the type of player who can be the missing ingredient to improve a whole bunch of NBA teams. Not since Magic Johnson, in fact, has a guy of that size come out of school with such an ability to handle the ball.

Whoever was advising Odom to reconsider going into the draft was giving him bad advice, and I say "whoever" because his agent, Jeff Klein, resigned a couple of weeks ago, for reasons which Klein will not fully get into due to his attorney-client relationship with Odom.

I just find it hard to believe that a player who didn't show any interest in school in the first place would have such an intense interest in going back, especially in light of the "no-win" situation he would have opened himself up to.

First of all, this decision, or indecision, as it were, caused Odom to miss a physical at the Chicago pre-draft camp and to cancel individual workouts with at least a couple of teams, including the Bulls, who were considering him for their top pick. The only team he has worked out for as of this date has been Vancouver. And since, like most of the projected top picks, he skipped the pre-draft camp at Phoenix, NBA personnel people have had almost no chance to see him perform since Rhode Island's loss to NC-Charlotte in the NCAA tournament.

For some NBA scouts, Odom has started to fall into the "flake" category, and
though it's almost certain a team would still take him early, based on his sheer talent, the #1 or even #2 overall pick is no longer a certainty. And as teams with definite needs find players that fit those needs, it will become impossible to predict whether Odom would even go in the top four or five picks. Think about it - Charlotte, the LA Clippers, and Toronto would all love to have a point guard, so if that's the priority they concentrate on, and Vancouver (who likes him) doesn't grab him, couldn't Odom conceivably slip to the fifth or sixth pick, if his stock is down as a result of his indecisiveness? Not likely, but it's possible.

If Odom or whoever is advising him hadn't considered this scenario, they should have. That's because there wasn't much chance that he would have been reinstated to eligible status by the NCAA, since he signed a contract with an agent. And that left him with only a couple of choices - to stay in the draft and possibly suffer because of this situation he created, or make some kind of deal to get back into school.

If a deal was made, Odom would have been stepping back into a pressure-cooker. You see, at this point the NCAA's investigative division would like to hear Odom testify as to the kind of practices that were used in his unsuccessful recruitment by UNLV two years ago, including rumors that another student took an entrance test for him. By ending his association with an NCAA institution, Odom absolved himself of any obligation to talk to investigators. But if he had followed through with his appeal for reinstatement in an effort to go back to school, he would have had to leave himself open to whatever embarrassment resulted from his cooperation with the investigation.

And in the end they would have forced him to talk. In extraneous cases like this, the NCAA has a lot of leeway, and can summarily deny the appeal any player is about to make. If Odom played ball, that would undoubtedly have given the NCAA the grounds to grant him a reprieve based on the "mitigating circumstances" involved.

But that brings us back around to the question: why would he have wanted his eligibility back at all, and especially all of a sudden? I just hope he wasn't being unduly influenced or brainwashed by Rhode Island's new coach, Jerry DeGregorio (Odom's prep coach), or his assistant, Jim Harrick Jr. (son of the former coach), who were known to be heartbroken over Odom leaving URI. Because as much as is made of youngsters coming out of school TOO early to play pro ball, the fact remains that the financial security the move provides mitigates (there I go using that word again) most of the negatives it could possibly bring to a kid.

And when the university, motivated by its own agenda, encourages one of its students to make a decision against his own interests, that leaves us with a set of improprieties that is just as egregious as anything UNLV may have done in recruiting Odom out of prep school.

In fact, it's probably worse.

And that kind of stuff should give pause to anyone who would want to rubber stamp this proposed NBA mandate through.