With each passing day, it looks more and more like Lamar Odom will never get over the Lakers trading him. Odom has played 13 games with the Mavericks and was traded over a month ago, but it is obvious that he is still furious with the way things ended in Los Angeles. We already know Odom was upset by the trade, as evidenced by the fact that he was nearly in tears when discussing it a while back. In case you needed any more reason to believe that he took the trade extremely personally, Odom blasted the Lakers front office a bit more over the weekend.
“For them just to [try to] trade me without communicating, it made me start to ask myself questions like ‘Why would they do something like that?'” Odom said according to the L.A. Times. “It hurt my feelings. Why would they choose to go that route? My father lives in California and I take care of my dad. They know about my family situation, everything about me, everything about Lamar.
“It was impossible for me not to take it personally. When I spoke to one of the representatives for the Lakers, the first thing he said was ‘Don’t take it personally.’ That means it’s personal if that’s the first thing someone says to you.”
While the trade was a bit puzzling, it would be tough to imagine the Lakers consciously thought about Odom’s situation with his father and chose to stick it to him anyway. Whether it upsets him or not, it is highly unlikely that his family situation factored into the decision.
“The day you get traded, you walk into the team’s office and you see people walking around and they’re acting like your name is Lazarus instead of Lamar,” he continued. “You’re looking to get an insight into somebody and they’re eating food and stuffing their mouth and saying hello and goodbye at the same time. They won’t even look you in your eye. There was a lot of things that some people in business would consider cowardly.”
Odom is obviously in an extremely tough place mentally. Between these comments and his admission that he almost took a year off from basketball, Lamar has shown he is dealing with a lot of anger issues. The bottom line is he’s a Dallas Maverick now. At age 32, he doesn’t have the luxury of youth on his side. If he has any interest in helping the Mavericks defend their NBA title, Odom has to move on and leave his Laker days behind.
Chest bump to I Am A GM for passing the story along
