Columnist Ron Kantowski: Odom is the real deal but …

Wednesday, Nov. 11, 1998 | 10:59 a.m.

Ron Kantowski's is the Suns sports editor. Reach him at ron @ lasvegassun.com or 259-4088.

Hopefully, most Rebel fans were getting their game faces on for the California All-Stars the last two nights and skipped the ESPN SportsCenter. That way, they would have missed Lamar Odom's NCAA baptismal.

Odom missed a triple-double against one of the WAC's best teams by a single assist Monday. He still had nine of them, along with 19 points and 14 rebounds -- and the game-winning basket -- in Rhode Island's 87-85 victory over the (Billy) Tubbs Thumpers of TCU. On Tuesday, Odom missed just one shot and scored 20 points in a win over Vanderbilt.

He's 6-foot-11 and get this -- he played the point for much of the two games, due to an injury to Rams playmaker Preston Murphy.

As far as debuts go, it was spectacular. It was like Lou Gehrig taking over for Wally Pipp. Or Sammy Hager sending David Lee Roth to Van Halen's bench.

But last year at this time, Odom thought he might as well jump with UNLV.

The Queens sensation practically was signed and sealed, and he was delivered to Bill Bayno during late summer. But Odom's chances of becoming a Rebel folded, spindled and ultimately were mutilated, by a Sports Illustrated story suggesting that while Odom's entrance exam scores were on the up and up, the method he used to achieve them might not have been.

UNLV complied with the NCAA's not-so-subtle hint that it might want to investigate Odom's test scores. But when then-UNLV compliance director Dave Chambers sharpened his No. 2 pencil, Odom wasn't accepting questions, much less answering them.

Rather than cooperate with the probe, he decided to leave town.

If Rebels fans weren't crying then, they probably are now. With Odom in the fold, one easily could imagine the Rebels cutting down the Final Four nets at Tropicana Field in March.

But that would be delusional grandeur -- March Madness, only in November.

Odom's first NBA endorsement should come from Samsonite, because he comes with that much baggage. For starters, he attended four high schools his senior year. While busing students across town is a common practice back East, Odom required a Greyhound.

Sources say he practically needs an escort to get to class. And then there is Odom's streetwise guardian aunt, who, the story goes, was expecting a little more than a basketball education from Rick Pitino, causing Kentucky to drop out of the recruiting derby for her nephew.

And remember what Odom did on his last night in Las Vegas before enrolling at Rhode Island? He was detained for -- although not charged with -- solicitation of sex from a prostitute. Then when the Rebels went back East to play Jim Harrick's bunch, when Odom should have been sitting on the Rams' bench in his civvies, he was back in Las Vegas, hanging with his homies.

There's also the matter of team chemistry. With all that talent at his disposal, Bayno might have had to hire Madam Curie as a restricted earnings coach, to prevent spontaneous combustion on the offensive end. Consider, too, that Odom probably is NBA-bound, just as soon as the buzzer sounds on Rhode Island's season.

Those negatives aside, Odom sure looks like a sweet player. But Bayno and UNLV still were probably right to sour on him.