Monday Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak said that he wasn’t sure the organization and Lamar Odom’s representative were “on the same page.”
Now it looks as if the Lakers offer to the free agent forward has been taken off the table, according to our Elliott Teaford, who is attending the Lakers summer league game in Las Vegas.
I’ve had a few hours to process the strange turn of events that took place in negotiations between the Lakers and Lamar Odom’s agent, Jeff Schwartz on Monday.
I first got wind of the foul winds blowing in the air around 6 p.m., when I got a text message from Las Vegas, right after Mitch Kupchak arrived for the Lakers summer-league game vs. the Clippers.
After weeks of saying he was “hopeful” he could bring Odom back and indicating Friday that the talks appeared headed to a successful resolution sometime this week, Kupchak looked spent.
The negotiations with Schwartz had not gone well on Monday and Kupchak acknowledged for the first time that he could see a scenario in which the talented 6-foot-10 forward is not back with the team next season.
When asked if he was at a point of throwing up his hands, Kupchak said, “Perhaps.”
Just a few days ago, sources on both sides of the negotiations said they thought a deal could come as soon as early this week. Kupchak was so confident in the deal’s ultimate resolution, he noted in a radio interview that “there is no replacement for Lamar Odom.”
Back in Los Angeles, Odom was running late to the premier of the Lakers championship DVD at LA Live. Players were due to arrive between 6-7 p.m.. Around 7, organizers got a call saying Odom wasn’t going to make it.
Around 7:30 though, Odom showed up, apologizing for being late but clearly interested in visiting with teammates and checking out the DVD.
To his credit, he didn’t duck the media that stuck around even though there clearly wasn’t much good news to report on this day.
When I joked that we all thought he was going to bail on the premier because of the negotiations, he laughed and said, “Well then it’s a good thing I showed up.”
He clearly did not want to drive any wedge between himself and the organization. Several times he simply pointed to the footage of the championship season when asked if he felt unappreciated or regretted coming off the bench last season.
“I mean, we won a championship,” he said. “This is what it’s all about.”
Odom has enjoyed his time with the Lakers organization and genuinely wants to stay with the Lakers, which is why he and his representative have been so quiet and lowkey during the protracted negotiations.
Still, this is a business and at age 29 with 30 on the horizon later this year, Odom realizes this is likely the last long-term contract he will be able to sign.
The negotiations between Lamar Odom’s agent and the Lakers took a turn for the worse Monday afternoon, but it didn’t stop Odom from attending a celebration at the Nokia Theater for the release of the Lakers championship DVD.
Odom was about an hour and a half late, but said he wanted to attend to because “These are my brothers. We have a whole DVD about our season, it just seems surreal. You don’t ever know when or how or if you’re going to experience this again.”
It’s hard to say if it was the traffic on the way to downtown L.A. that was causing the change in mood, but it Odom certainly didn’t seem as calm or cool as he normally does.
Absolutely no one expected the negotiations to take this long and while he clearly wants to return to the Lakers, it was clear the process has worn on him.
“It’s business, you know what I’m saying,” he said. “It takes a little bit of the fun out of the game, but it’s part of it.”
Asked whether he felt at all unloved or unappreciated by the Lakers, Odom paused and said, “Ummm, it’s just the way it is. It’ll pay off.”
He did however acknowledge a bit of disappointment the negotiations haven’t gone as well as he’d hoped.
“It’s crazy because if you think about my career and playing basketball and somebody trying to do all the things to help a team win a championship, I felt like I’ve done that you know,” he said. “But it’ll pay off. It’ll pay off.”
Odom said he’d been laying low since the season ended and had made a point of not negotiating through the media because it was his intention to return to the Lakers and he didn’t want to influence the process taking place between his agent and the Lakers.
OC Register’s Janis Carr bumped into Lakers assistant GM Ronnie Lester at summer league in Las Vegas and he revealed that the Lakers offer to free agent forward Lamar Odom is now a“little north of $8 million” and he expected a deal to get done early next week.
That would seem to jibe with reports out of Portland (one of the two teams with the requisite cap space to beat the Lakers offer) that the Trail Blazers had signed Utah power forward Paul Millsap to a four-year, $32 million offer sheet. Millsap is a restricted free agent, so Portland’s cap space is now tied up for seven days, while the Jazz decide whether to match the offer.
Jordan Farmar says he’s a beginner at poker. Which means he’s great at bluffing, or a really, really quick study. The Lakers point guard, was invited to the event by PokerStars.net, has made it to the serious part of the tournament along with established pros like Phil Ivey, Phil Hellmuth and Joseph Hachem.
He’s currently in 69th place with 110,000 chips. Nearly half of the more than 5,000 players have been eliminated.
Wow, just came across this hilarious press conference with Ron Artest and Yao Ming after the Houston Rockets beat Portland to advance to the Western Conference semis vs. the Lakers.
A reporter asks Artest about a play in which his momentum from chasing down a loose ball carried him into the stands and whether he soaked in the love from the home folks. Artest quipped, “Well, I’ve been in the stands before.”
The room erupts in laugher and Yao Ming laughs so hard it looks like he’s about to fall out of his chair.
Kobe Bryant will be one of the honorary guests invited to Michael Jackson’s funeral at Staples Center tommorrow. At first I assumed it was just a courtesy invite, but it turns out Kobe and the King of Pop developed a good friendship over the years.
“I was one of the 65 million people that bought the Thriller album,” he said.
But their friendship goes a lot deeper than that.
“It’s and honor to be a part of it,” Bryant said. I think Michael was extremely misunderstood. Extremely misunderstood. He was so generous, extremely giving and caring. Aside from us talking about work and how he tried to prepare and train for things, he introduced to movies that I would never ever watch, like `American in Paris,’ or `Breakfast at Tiffany’s.’ Like I would never watch those. But he introduced those to me and opened up a whole other side of things. Appreciating Fred Astaire’s talent and things like that. Seeing how that relates to basketball. We used to have those conversations all the time. He’s just such a giver, and such a beautiful person.”
We had a chance to catch up with Kobe Bryant today as he did a media session at the start of his annual basketball camp at LMU. Unlike some superstar athletes, Kobe actually teaches at his own camp and genuinely seems to enjoy it. “I wouldn’t do it if I couldn’t be here myself,” he said.
Of course catching up with him at his camp also provided us to get his thoughts on some of the recent player personnel moves the Lakers have made. You know, that Ron Artest thing…
Asked whether the Artest signing makes the Lakers a better team, Bryant said:
“I think it makes us a different team. It’s tough to say whether we’ll be a better team or not. We haven’t won a championship with that unit yet. Trevor brought his style to us, which was very effective obviously. And Ron will bring his style to us. We’ll just be a different team. Every year we adapt and we adjust. I’m sad to see Trevor go, because everybody knows that he’s like my brother. He still is. ”
Kobe then confirmed the now infamous shower scene story, and noted that, “This is something we’ve both been trying to make happen for a while.”
“I’ve known him for a long long time,” Kobe said. “It’s one of those things, and he’ll tell you this story too… After we lost to the Celtics, he came in the locker room, and I was in there, just by myself. And he just came in the locker room and said, `This is not going to happen to you again. I’m going to come there and I’m going to help you out. He wound up being in Houston, then the next year took us to Game 7. But he’s here now.”
That said, the way it went down has been hotly debated in recent days. This columnist loved the move, thinking the Lakers showed a lot of guts, and will be rewarded with another round of champagne glory next June.
Others felt like the Lakers walked away from Trevor Ariza a bit too quickly.
Bryant said he was fine with how the business end played out, but noted he didn’t have any official input on the situation.
“I don’t think it was something where we picked Ron Artest over Trevor,” Bryant said. “I think with Trevor, we made an offer, and his representative felt like he could look elsewhere a little bit. And during that time, the Lakers talked to Ron and Ron was ready to go.
“I think it’s either/or. I think if they went with Trevor, or with Ron, either way we’d be fine this year.”
But what about that chemistry stuff?
“Where is that concern coming from?” Bryant asked. “Because he ran in the stands and kicked somebody’s (butt)? You talk to anybody that played with him, he’s a great teammate. He’s never been a problem in the locker room. He had that one incident in Detroit, which was unfortunate. But outside of that, it’s not a problem at all. ”
So much for traditional media and press conferences. So much, for Twitter.
Over the holiday weekend, Ron Artest released two videos documenting some behind the scenes footage of his whirlwind courtship with the Lakers.
Here’s a link to the first, most revealing video:
In it Artest shows us a conversation he had with his wife as negotiations with the Lakers start heating up, and a rather riveting conversation with his agent, David Bauman, who relays the Lakers interest in his services. Hard to tell exactly which night this is, but it is most likely Wednesday night, since Artest reached an agreement in principle with the Lakers on Thursday afternoon.
After getting off the phone with his wife, Artest places a call to Bauman, who asks how some of his meetings with producers and record executives have been going, then relays how the first hours of the free-agent negotiating period have gone:
Bauman: I just got back home and I have a message from the Rockets and they want to talk tomorrow. And I just spoke to Mitch Kupchak for a half hour, the general manager of the Lakers.
Ron: What’d he want?
DB: What do you think he wants? He wants to get you a championship ring next year.
Ron: Wow
DB. The only problem is money. There’s just no clean, easy way to do it. … So he understood.
What he’s going to do, he’s not going to do anything with other players right now. He wants me to figure out where the lay of the land is on Houston for you. And he wants me to call him everyday with some updates.
Artest doesn’t react much, but seems to be listening intently as Bauman goes on to give a brief survey of the free agent landscape. He talks about Detroit’s plans, how Carlos Boozer and Mehmet Okur didn’t opt out, which means Detroit won’t use its cap space on Boozer. That, Bauman says, “is good because it takes two guys off the market.”
He mentions Utah’s restricted free agent Paul Millsap, who will now “be kind of squeezed,” and that (Trevor) “Ariza will probably get some offers, Mitch thinks around 35 or 42 total for a five or six year deal, like seven (million) a year. And Turkoglu is probably going to Portland, which is the word on the street.”
“The Rockets are in a really tough spot. They really don’t know what the prognosis is for Yao, and a lot of what they offer…”
Just when it’s really getting good though, some random guy walks up to Artest’s car and starts trying to sell him some magazine or something. Artest politely tries to get rid of him, but Bauman keeps talking on a speakerphone.
Finally, we get back to the conversation.
DB: Did you ever hook up with LeBron?
Ron: I’m speaking to LeBron as we speak right now. He called me. He’s a real cool dude.
DB: Of course he is. Was he talking to you about getting you there?
Ron: We haven’t talked about no teams or anything. I’ve spoke to him periodically. My cousin was in jail with his Pops, you know. My cousin did ten years, his Pops did some years too. They was in the (Feds) together. But um. So I spoke to him periodically about, um, that. He didn’t speak about nothing (business wise), he just just said you know, `You’re a great player and he kind of would like for me to be on his team,’ and stuff like that.
DB: OK, well feel him out. Find out what’s up. And I put a call into the GM, Danny Ferry already. Things are going well. It’s going to be a very slow process, just so you know.
Bauman was right about a lot of things in the conversation, except the last part. Within 24 hours of the video being shot, Artest had agreed to terms with the Lakers.
Just got a statement from Ron Artest’s agent David Bauman.
Washington, DC (July 2, 2009) — NBA Agent David Bauman announced today that his client, Ron Artest, has agreed to join the NBA Champions Los Angeles Lakers. “I am pleased to announce that my client, Ron Artest, has reached a verbal agreement with the Los Angeles Lakers on a free agent contract. It is Ron’s intention to sign a long-term contract with the Lakers on July 8, 2009, once the NBA’s signing moratorium has expired, pursuant to the NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement,” said agent David Bauman.
“I am very excited to finally be going to L.A. For years now, the Lakers have expressed interest in having me play for them, but we could never get the stars to align. I’m finally a Laker and I can’t wait to get on the court with Kobe, Pau and the rest of the team, and play for Phil,” said Artest. “The Lakers really made me feel wanted. I had a great talk today with Phil. I’m a huge fan of his and I can’t wait to show him what I can do. I also spoke with Magic Johnson last night. In addition, my agent (David) has been in constant contact with Mitch Kupchak. I made my decision after I had lunch today with Dr. Buss, and I realized what a great organization I’m joining. I’m very, very excited to be a Laker. I look forward to helping the Lakers defend their championship, and it will be great to finally not get booed in the Staples Center.”