Re: Lamar Odom

[opi@unesco.org]

Ellie Cutler wrote:

> Oh man, did you see that pass? Hello, Magic Johnson!
>
> Really, what a talent this kid is.  If he keeps his act
> together, he'll be the best player in the league before
> all is said and done, period.
>
> Compared to Antoine, Lamar plays much smarter. Sure I
> love Antoine's potential, but he can be such a blockhead,
> which is not necessarily the same thing as immature,
> and it remains to be seen if it's something he'll grow out of.
>
>  --Ellie

Hello Ellie:
Compared to Antoine, John "Hot Plate" Williams and Danny Manning also
played much smarter and had nearly similar tools out of college. Lamar
Odom comes across as stunningly articulate and bright for what turned
out to be a sub-800 SAT guy plus he seems nice and well-principled. But
he is also the Webster definition of a "flake" if you followed his
career through Las Vegas to Rhode Island to the NBA to Rhode Island and
back again and so forth. Hence it's a shame he went to the Nail-Clippers
and not elsewhere (is anyone home, Charlotte and Chicago?) because this
will help reinforce the at least 50-50 likelihood that he will not live
up to his god's gifts.

The guy you should ambitiously compare Lamar to is Grant Hill (who BTW I
believe has nothing to lose changing addresses to Orlando next year).
Antoine is such a different character from either guy. He is not nearly
as athletically gifted, but more single-minded and psychotic under
pressure and (at his peak) just as capable of all-around productivity.
But there is a lot of ugly downside and rough edges with Toine that you
don't have with similar players on similar perpetual loser teams like
Shareef, Grant Hill, Goog and Lamar.

Toine can will a team to win, but he can also totally disappoint and be
consistently clueless compared to other multi-skill players of his
height and weight (even his age).

In any other "creative" field of work, you have such a thing as pure
"cripes, this is so naturally easy" level talent like Lamar has, but
that's only part of the equation. My sister is a mathematician who has
taught at Harvard, Stanford, Brown, Haverford etc. But as an
undergraduate, she felt too intimidated to take a math course until her
sophomore year. She didn't study calculus until her sophomore college
year, something I already did as a freaking retard junior in high school
(not something at all to boast about either).

Joe

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