Ted Green: Lamar Odom can’t afford to tread a foolhardy path

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Trevor Ariza, you’ve got a problem. You’re now in Houston.

Lamar Odom, you’ve got a dilemma. You’re now in limbo.

I was not surprised, but pretty disappointed, that inaction or posturing or disrespect, call it what you will, by Lamar’s agent, Jeff Schwartz, resulted in Jerry Buss ordering his latest and best offer of $28 million to be pulled off the table late Tuesday night.

[UPDATED] Lamar, real quick here: If this thing is blowing up in your face as we speak, and you’re going to wind up with egg on it because your agent only gets you a midlevel exception ($5.8 million) from someone else, and how is anyone going to be able to feed their family on THAT?...you had better go A-Rod on this guy and fire his butt, and I mean today! Then get into your Silver Cloud or whatever you’re driving these days, head over to the Toyota Center in El Segundo, knock politely on Mitch Kupchak‘s door and tell him the bluffing and blustering and game-playing is over, you’re ready to do the deal and be a Laker again. Otherwise, it could be adios, muchacho, see you in Miami, and you will have made the professional blunder of your life.

It seems like it should be hard to believe that Odom and his peeps could be about to make the same mistake Ariza and his commission-driven rep made when they wrote themselves a one-way ticket out of town, immediately becoming a little wealthier but a whole lot more irrelevant in the NBA.

But maybe it isn’t so hard to believe, after all.

Maybe you and I, as fans, become much more attached to our favorite teams than most of these players do.

Maybe it really is just business to them.

And, sad but true, maybe money matters more than winning.

But at the end of their respective careers, what is going to be more important to the Lakers’ two free-agent forwards, one with one foot out the door, the other already gone?

Will it be the few extra million they squeezed out, money they shouldn’t be able to spend in their lifetimes, anyway? Is that REALLY what they care about?

Or should it be being part of something great, something special, something that will leave a lasting legacy?

Re-read that last sentence and if it sounds corny and old-fashioned, for these athletes in today’s world, it probably is.

I do understand the Odom perspective. Lamar is thinking:

The Lakers gave Andrew Bynum $52 mil and they offer me just 28? A klunk like Anderson Varejao gets 50 mil and I’m worth 28? Sheesh, the Lakers gave Vladimir Radmanovic $30 mil, more than my 28, and he’s now in Charlotte or the mayor of Kazakhstan, replacing Borat, I forget which. Even my friend Luke Walton, who needs to lock himself in a gym to learn how to shoot, did better than me, getting 30 million Buss dollars. Here I play four positions, sometimes all five, I bail Bynum out night after night in the playoffs, we win the title, and this is how they treat me? What am I, chopped liver?

All true, perhaps, except for this: You already made 60 mil on your LAST Laker contract, L.O, and how much was the preceding contract in Miami worth, I forget? $90 million? C’mon, L.O., you’re already richer than Rockefeller. $28 mil ain’t peanuts. At the 10-year mark of your career, it should really be about winning and leaving your mark, not just accumulating Benjamins.

At the end of the day, then, Trevor Ariza made a smaller-minded decision with no great thought given to the bigger picture. Now, a Laker who REALLY matters, Lamar Odom, seems to be following the same foolhardy path.

Today, Laker fans are still hoping Lamar doesn’t let them down by leaving for a few extra million, which for him will be relative pennies.

Unless some team steps up and gives him his 50 mil, I hope L.O. comes to his senses today, takes control of his career and decides that being a big fish in the biggest pond in the NBA is far better than being a flounder in Nowheresville.

-- Ted Green

Green formerly covered the Lakers for the L.A. Times. He is currently Senior Sports Producer for KTLA Prime News.