Columnist Dean Juipe: Odom takes his money and runs

Dean Juipe

Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2003 | 9:18 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4084.

Being young, naive and easily led has always been a handy excuse.

It's an effective whitewash, minimizing, as it does, such qualities as responsibility and commitment. It covers a lot of bases while subliminally asking for forgiveness.

But Lamar Odom will never be forgiven in Las Vegas, short of offering a public apology for the harm he caused the UNLV men's basketball program a few years ago. That being unlikely, the next best thing he can do is return for a weekend and lose all or part of his newly found millions gambling in a local casino.

"He owes us," any and all UNLV fans might claim. "He owes us big."

But Odom was young, naive and easily led when he drifted through Las Vegas in 1996 and got the Rebels in hot water (once again) with the NCAA. Despite never playing a game for UNLV, he made the type of impact on the program that is not easily forgotten.

Probation, recruiting restrictions and the eventual firing of head coach Bill Bayno followed Odom's brief association with the Rebels. He was to Bayno what another here-today-gone-tomorrow recruit, Lloyd Daniels, was to Jerry Tarkanian.

As grim as NCAA sanctions can be, they're doubly depressing when they're at least partially the result of a versatile, 6-foot-10 player who never played. And that was the case with Odom, whose aunt had an improper contact with a UNLV booster and whose ACT standardized test score had such a fraudulent look to it that it caught the NCAA's wary eye.

As UNLV's internal probe gave way to a formal NCAA inquiry, a most daunting threat loomed: the death penalty. Real or imagined, there was a well-publicized fear back then that the NCAA -- which was on campus for at least the fifth time in four years -- would not only find UNLV guilty but would shut down the school's basketball program in the ultimate, Southern Methodist-football-like fashion.

Odom, who refused to cooperate with the UNLV and NCAA investigations, was long gone by the time the somewhat softer penalties were handed down. Yet he was no less naive or easily led.

A year later he was sitting out a season as academically ineligible at Rhode Island, his ACT score having been ruled invalid. A year after that he played for Rhode Island and then hired an agent, which immediately ended his collegiate career.

Then he said he had second thoughts about turning pro and said he had signed with the agent on an impulse. His school president went so far as to appeal to the NCAA to see if Odom could be reinstated, but the plea was futile and quickly rejected.

Not that Odom hasn't profited every step of the way. Coddled as a prodigy, spoiled as a teen and now enriched as a young adult, he has no need for a rear-view mirror.

No doubt you caught his name in the news again this week. A restricted free agent coming off a decent season (14.6 points, 6.7 rebounds, 3.6 assists) with the Los Angeles Clippers, he signed a six-year, $63-million contract with the Miami Heat and immediately expressed the hope that the Clippers would not match the offer, as they have the right to do.

Odom, 24, wants to be done with the Clippers, wants to move on. He used 'em and now it's time to use someone else.

And there's always someone else willing to be used.