Joel Myers, who’s an idiot (on a side note, how do the Lakers go from the best play-by-play man ever, to this shmuck?) and Stu Lanz both called the play as a hard foul, but not a dirty one. Flip up Youtube and watch the play again, and you hear Mike Rice and even play-by-play man Mike Barrett say things like “cheap shot,” “flagrant 4” and Rice even mentions a time (not sure if it’s real or not) when Odom apparently came into the Blazers huddle last year.
Does Odom get mad sometimes? Sure he does. Everyone does. But you could tell after the play that Odom felt really bad about the foul. He’s not out to hurt people. Rice instead insinuated that Odom was talking trash to the understandably angry Blazer players. Looked more like LO was telling them he didn’t mean to. Plus, if you listened into the Lakers huddle, Kobe, Phil and the rest of the team were telling Odom to shake it off (as if he were the one who got hit) and to not lose confidence? That doesn’t sound like malicious intent to me.
To his credit, Barrett backs off his proclamations after watching the replay. In slow motion, it’s obvious that Odom went straight up, and even had the sense of mind to swipe the ball out of Roy’s hand. Roy and Odom just collided in air and Roy fell backwards on his hip. That’s what happens when you have a speedy (all right, not that speedy) wing colliding with a big (all right, not that big) while both are in motion. It’s called physics.
Sure, I’d have been mad if it had been Kobe on the other end. But Kobe doesn’t put himself in situations like that too often. Plus, depending on who was delivering the blow, I’d have to reconsider my anger based on the evidence provided.
Rice never backed down and should be reprimanded for escalating a situation, at least verbally on air, that didn’t need to be. There’s no place for homers.
Keywords: Brandon Roy, Joel Myers, Lamar Odom, Mike Barrett, Mike Rice, Stu Lanz
