Lamar Odom
(BBR: #144)
That's right. The 99th best player of all time has never even made an All-Star team. The greatest honor he has won in his professional career is the Sixth Man of the Year Award in 2011. So what makes him so great? Is he really good enough that he should be ranked ahead of a man who was the best player on a championship team?
That's right. The 99th best player of all time has never even made an All-Star team. The greatest honor he has won in his professional career is the Sixth Man of the Year Award in 2011. So what makes him so great? Is he really good enough that he should be ranked ahead of a man who was the best player on a championship team?
What helped Odom climb this high on the all-time list was that he has been a solid player for 8 straight years, which includes being the 3rd best player on an NBA Finalist, the 3rd best player on an NBA Champion the next year, and the 4th best player on yet another champion in 2010. That's 3 straight years of being a solid starter on a championship-caliber team.
When Odom was a senior in high school, he was named the top high school prospect in the country by Parade Magazine, and after a solid freshman season, he jumped to the NBA, where he was immediately a starter. His career has been very up and down, with numerous injuries hampering his effectiveness early in his career, but with 4 straight healthy seasons behind him now, he appears to have found his niche in Los Angeles.
The ups and downs of Odom's career are immediately visible in the above chart. He finally broke the pattern in the 2009 playoffs, when he improved upon his previous playoff appearances and helped the Lakers win the title after losing in the Finals the previous season. He may not have ever reached the level that Hagan achieved at his peak, but he has remained relevant for longer than Hagan's entire career lasted, and he may not be finished, as the upward slope of his career over the past few years shows. The career averages of the two are not even that far apart.
Odom - 14.6 pts, 8.9 reb, 4.0 ast, .469 FG%, .699 FT%
Hagan - 18.0 pts, 6.9 reb, 3.0 ast, .450 FG%, .798 FT%
Odom holds a slight edge over Hagan in 3 of these categories, while Hagan has a decent advantage over Odom in the other two, which makes then pretty much even. As far as championships go, Odom has the advantage 2-1, while Hagan holds the edge in Finals appearances 4-3. I give the slight edge to Odom because he has remained a very good player for longer than Hagan was.
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