Lakers' Lamar Odom takes the blame for Game 3 loss
BILL PLASCHKE
'I put this one on myself,' the powerless power forward says, and he reels off his statistics to prove his point. He says he will practice and do better in Game 4 against the Spurs.
SAN ANTONIO -- The media crowd pours into the cramped Lakers locker room, looking for the goat, braying for the bum, loaded for Lamar.
He calmly buttons his black-checked shirt and beats them to it.
"I put this one on myself," Lamar Odom announces. "I take the blame, totally, for this game."
The Lakers had just lost Sunday to the San Antonio Spurs in Game 3 of the Western Conference finals, a 103-84 whipping that doubled as a three-hour embarrassment for their powerless power forward.
Who calmly wipes the sweat from his bald head and keeps the heat on.
"There is no way I can play like that," he says. "I've got to play better than that."
A TV network asks him for a live interview, and he says sure.
"You were two for 11," the interviewer says.
"I also had five turnovers," he says.
A writer asks him whether he can describe what happened, and he says of course.
"I got to the free-throw line and didn't make free throws. . . . [I] turned the ball over," he says. "That's not good enough. Especially on the road with this type of atmosphere, this type of intensity."
Another writer asks whether he can talk about what happens next, and he says certainly.
"I don't sleep tonight," Odom says. "I keep the TV off. I don't read the newspaper. I get out to practice tomorrow and get my butt to the free-throw line."
Yet another writer crosses the room and explains the entire conversation to Derek Fisher.
For the first time in this dreary postgame closet, somebody chuckles.
"There is no way on this good green earth that Lamar Odom cost us that game," Fisher says, smiling. "But you know something? That is why we keep growing as a team. Because everybody in here makes themselves accountable. Nobody points fingers, everybody looks at themselves."
Indeed, if the Lakers eventually win a championship, Odom's postgame confessional Sunday will rank as one of the important playoff moments.
If they don't, well, this awful loss will do all of the talking.
The Lakers had a chance to put the final crushing squeeze to the Spurs on Sunday, but they just didn't seem excited about squeezing.
The Lakers could have easily finished the Spurs on Sunday, but they didn't seem ready to finish.
A two-games-to-none lead could have easily led to the start of a sweep, but it was as if the Lakers just didn't have the energy for the dirty work.
