Odom Improves as Season Progresses

By Mike Bresnahan

March 25, 2006 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

The question had barely begun when Lamar Odom tried to stop it.

“Here comes the jinx,” he said. “Got a black cat in your pocket?”

Odom was joking, although the superstitious part of him didn’t really want to address his torrid shooting this month. He was shooting 59.5% overall and a staggering 58.3% from three-point range in his last 13 games before Friday.

Odom was shooting 43.9% before the All-Star break.

“Just stayed with it,” he said. “I knew they were going to fall. It’s like being a home-run hitter and being in a slump. I’m not saying I’m a home-run hitter, but... “

Odom has been hitting his three-pointers and has been driving to the basket more often, recognizing that teams want him to shoot from outside. He seems fine with either.

“For Lamar Odom, teams play me arm’s-distance because I’m a strong driver,” he said. “Like Antoine Walker said, the only reason I take threes is because they don’t have fours.”

There were recent questions about Kobe Bryant’s fatigue level, but there have been none about Odom’s, even though he has averaged 43.8 minutes in March.

“He’s very tireless and he plays a little different game,” Coach Phil Jackson said of Odom. “He doesn’t do as much one-on-one type scoring where it gets to be a difficult proposition. Kobe gets a lot of bodies laid on him and hits the floor a lot more often. Lamar has many times asked me to stay on the floor and play the whole game.”

Andrew Bynum might have been playing in the NCAA tournament had he stuck with his original plan of going to the University of Connecticut. In a strange twist, he might not have played as much with the Huskies as he does with the Lakers, Jackson said.

“He probably would have been sitting on the bench,” Jackson said. “It certainly is a talented team. The growth he has had here has been beneficial. You learn about winning at a different level.”

Former Laker Caron Butler watched Friday’s game in second-row seats across from the Laker bench. Butler, averaging 17.3 points for the Washington Wizards, was in town for today’s Clipper-Wizard game.

“When you’re in L.A., you’ve got to come see Kobe play,” Butler said. “You never know when he’s going to go off for 81 points.”