Lamar Odom picked four former teammates to join him.
Lamar Odom was fortunate enough to play with some incredible players during his 14-year NBA career. During a recent appearance on the Knuckleheads Podcast, he was asked to pick four of them to join him in a starting five, and Odom went with some big names.
“I’ma say D-Wade, Kobe (Bryant), Pau (Gasol), and not including y’all, I’ma say, Udonis Haslem,” Odom said.
Co-hosts Darius Miles and Quentin Richardson had played with Odom but told him not to pick them just because he might have felt obligated to do so. The 43-year-old then revealed why he chose Haslem.
“When I think about Udonis Haslem, I think about his last run with the Heat,” Odom said. “I think about damn, how his players look at him. I know how they look at him. They respect him… I want to be there when they retire his number.”
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Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol were almost guaranteed to be on there. Odom won back-to-back championships with them in 2009 and 2010 for the Los Angeles Lakers. Prior to joining the Lakers in 2004, Odom played with the Heat for one season, where he teamed up with a rookie, Dwyane Wade.
Odom’s first impression of Wade was that he was going to be a real headache for his opponents to deal with, and he wasn’t wrong. Odom also got to play with Haslem that season.
Who Missed Out Here?
Haslem was certainly the most surprising pick of the lot here. You understand why Odom picked him, but there are some notable names that did miss out due to his inclusion.
The very first name that comes to mind is Dirk Nowitzki, with whom Odom played in the 2011-12 season for the Dallas Mavericks. While some might say it was just one season, his time with Haslem and Wade on the Heat lasted just that long as well.
What could be a factor here is that Odom’s stint with the Mavericks was quite rough. There were questions raised regarding his commitment, and the franchise listed him as inactive toward the end of the season. It’s probably a chapter of life that he doesn’t look back upon too fondly.
At the start of this episode, Odom did mention Dirk and Kevin Garnett as the two players who busted his a** when he came into the league, so he does respect him. Some other notable missing names here would be Blake Griffin and Chris Paul, whom Odom played with on the Clippers in the 2012-13 season.
He signed with the New York Knicks later on, but never played a game and ended up finishing his NBA career with averages of 13.3 points, 8.4 rebounds, 3.7 assists, 0.9 steals, and 0.9 blocks per game.
Lamar Odom Shared His List Of The Five Greatest Players Of All Time
In 2022, Odom also picked his top 5 greatest players of all time. He went with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and LeBron James but was split over his final pick and said he’d go with either Magic Johnson or Larry Bird.
That’s a pretty good list in all honesty. Abdul-Jabbar, Jordan, and LeBron would be on basically every top-five list, as they’re generally considered to be the three greatest players of all time.
As for the rest, you’d find Bryant, Johnson, and Bird in a lot of these kinds of lists as well. Odom rather smartly didn’t rank them, as that certainly would have caused some kind of controversy.
