DEFERENTIAL TREATMENT

Walking toward the dozens of bodies bumping around in front of his locker Sunday night, Lamar Odom did what he seemingly always does.

He deferred. Instead of shouting for space, he stood there. Instead of driving up the middle, he hung around outside.

Instead of stomping through the maze of power cords and stepladders and sweating humanity that is the NBA Finals media, he simply shrugged.

“Hey, Lamar, why don’t you do your interviews over here?” said a Lakers official, pointing to an empty space in front of Sasha Vujacic’s locker.

After this kind of loss -- a 103-94 embarrassment against the Boston Celtics in Game 2 -- some stars would have refused to speak in front of someone else’s locker. After a performance like Odom’s -- one basket in 15 minutes -- some stars would have attempted to quietly slip away without talking to anyone.

What happened next is one of the things about Odom that I find so cool. It is also one of the things that drives me absolutely crazy.

He went with the flow. He politely stood where Vujacic once stood. He generously answered every question with class and grace. No show of anger. No declarations of revenge. Seemingly no idea that at that moment, from the locker-room offices to the Figueroa corridor, foils everywhere were screaming for him to start fighting back.

Lamar Odom is not only one of the most genuinely good guys in all of Los Angeles sports, but also one of the most maddening. The Lakers need him, but, even after six years here, they don’t really know him. Even this spring, while he’s finally wearing one of their rings, they haven’t figured him out.

Is he the guy who finished so well against Oklahoma City, or who had trouble getting started against Utah? Is he the guy who went for 19 points and 19 rebounds against Phoenix or was he, as the Suns’ Amare Stoudemire said, just lucky?

So far in the Finals, he’s been neither. So far, he’s been less involved than Dustin Hoffman. With the series tied at one game apiece, he’s averaging four points and five rebounds in an average of 18 foul-ridden minutes per game.

From the moment one of Kobe Bryant’s passes bounced oddly off his chest in Game 1, Odom hasn’t been able to match the moment. Is his cluttered head there? Is his bruised body there? We know the Kardashian family is there, and that’s enough to make anyone lose his marbles.

The foul issue has hampered him -- five in each game -- but he didn’t pick up his fourth and fifth fouls until the final 27 seconds Sunday, so he can’t blame his play on the officials.

Coach Phil Jackson is seeing more than fouls, because, even though Odom had only three fouls, he was removed from the game with 5:58 to play and the Lakers leading by three. By the time he returned in the final minute, it was over, and everyone surrounded the kindly giant to ask what had made him so small.

“I couldn’t really contribute much, just in spirit,” he said. “That’s the way the ball bounces sometimes.”

Obviously, the officials don’t think he is exercising enough body control, and Jackson thinks he is not showing enough mind control, and something is up, and Odom needs to figure it out, fast.

In last year’s Finals against Orlando, he averaged 13 points and eight rebounds, and did the little things that have helped the Lakers grow large. For Odom, it’s always about the little things.

In games during this regular season when he collected at least four offensive rebounds, the Lakers were 12-3 . . . and in the postseason, 7-1. So far against the Celtics, he has one offensive rebound.

In games in which he has at least four assists, the Lakers were 21-9 during the regular season and are 4-0 in the playoffs. Against Boston, he has two assists.

“He’ll get a chance later on in the series to redeem himself,” Jackson said.

Writers aren’t supposed to write these things, but I hope so. Odom is such a regular-guy star, he’s difficult to criticize, and impossible to dislike.

Who else on the team admits to pregame meals of giant bags of candy? Who else on the team would meet a celebrity wannabe at a summer party and, against all advice, marry her a month later because he sheepishly claimed he loved her?

And I’ve never seen anyone else spend an entire season (2006-07) with a T-shirt hanging in his locker bearing the likeness of one of his children -- Odom’s way of remembering his 6 1/2-month-old son, Jayden, who died in his crib in the summer of 2006 of sudden infant death syndrome.

It’s so easy to cheer for Lamar Odom. If only it weren’t so darned hard to watch him.

bill.plaschke@latimes.com

twitter.com/billplaschke

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Pain by numbers

Lamar Odom’s production has dipped during the first two games of the NBA Finals against the Celtics. A look at his season averages, his averages from the first three rounds of the playoffs and his statistics against Boston:

SEASON AVERAGES

*--* MIN FG% RPG PPG 31.5 46.3 9.8 10.8 *--*

VS. OKLAHOMA CITY

*--* MIN FG% RPG PPG 26.3 41.7 6.8 7.8 *--*

VS. UTAH

*--* MIN FG% RPG PPG 28.0 50.0 10.0 9.5 *--*

VS. PHOENIX

*--* MIN FG% RPG PPG 34.3 48.0 11.8 14.0 *--*

GAME 1 VS. CELTICS

*--* MIN FG R PTS 21 2-6 4 5 *--*

GAME 2 VS. CELTICS

*--* MIN FG R PTS 14 1-3 5 3 *--*

Source: nba.com