Odom’s Role May Still Be Evolving

If Phil Jackson has his way, chrysalis will happen a little more rapidly for Lamar Odom.

A week ago, the Laker coach compared Odom’s chances of becoming a scorer to the slow, delicate process of a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. He has since told Odom to shoot more often, reversing his season-long mantra of letting the game come naturally to the Laker forward.

“He just said, even if it’s not going to be in the offense, make my own play,” Odom said. “He’s giving me the green light. I’m going to do that. It’s my coach telling me just to go, don’t worry about nothing.”

Odom, averaging 11.4 shots before Wednesday, didn’t seem overly worried against the Hornets.

He took 14 shots, made six and scored 18 points in the Lakers’ 113-107 victory.

Assistant coach Brian Shaw has told Odom to shoot at least 14 times a game, Odom said he would aim for 14 to 16, and Jackson has signed off on either.

“We’re encouraging him to take an active, proactive role in this,” Jackson said. “In games we played that have been exceptional games, where we look like a quality team, a challenging team -- the Sacramento game, obviously the Detroit game -- Lamar’s played an important role in figuring out those games. The times that we’ve struggled and not come up to the mark measured, he hasn’t had the same kind of success.

“I think some of it has to do with not taking on some of the responsibility about scoring. In others, it’s allowing the game to kind of come to him too much.”

Jackson’s words signified a sharp turnaround from earlier in the season.

Jackson shot down Odom’s declaration that he would average 20 points over a four-game stretch in late November, saying he was the only Laker who would “give the ball up.” More recently, Jackson said it was tough to make a scorer out of a player who wasn’t even thinking about it.

“We have to face facts,” he said after the Lakers lost to Portland on March 1. “We can’t anticipate that suddenly chrysalis is going to happen, he’s going to become a butterfly.”

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Devean George, initially diagnosed with a sprained right wrist after a fall Monday against San Antonio, also has a slight fracture in the wrist and will be out about a week.

“My fingers feel like fat hot dogs, like fat ‘Nutty Professor’ fingers,” George said. “It ain’t going to be healed in a week, but good enough for me to get out there.”

With George out, Jackson said he would extend an “open-door kind of invitation” to Jim Jackson to step into George’s spot.

Jackson checked into his first game as a Laker at the start of the second quarter and checked out shortly thereafter.

He had the ball stolen by Speedy Claxton and was a little long on a three-point attempt, but he also made a long jumper, for two points in three minutes.