Stoudemire: Odom had 'lucky game'

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EL SEGUNDO, Calif. -- Can Lamar Odom's 19 points and 19 rebounds in the Los Angeles Lakers' 128-107 win in Game 1 of the Western Conference finals be attributed to something as trivial as his uniform number, lucky No. 7?

Phoenix's Amare Stoudemire seems to think so.

Stoudemire

Odom

"I'm not giving him no hype right now; he had a lucky game in Game 1," Stoudemire said after Suns practice Tuesday at Staples Center. "We just got to make sure we box him out. I think I focused so much on [Pau] Gasol and [Andrew] Bynum to where he snuck in there and got 19 boards, so now we just got to make sure there's three guys out there that can rebound well [when] adding Odom. So, we got to do a better job on them."

Odom barely batted an eyelash when told about Stoudemire's claim after the Lakers finished practice.

"So be it," Odom said. "Hopefully I can have another lucky one."

Odom hit his first three shot attempts and finished 9-for-15 in the game. When he entered the contest midway through the first quarter the Lakers were down by five, and after his seven points and four rebounds to finish the quarter, L.A. led by nine heading into the second.

"I just go out there and play whatever the matchup is," Odom said. "I just try to be as efficient as possible in a run-and-gun game. Do all the small things, catch the ball near the basket, put it in."

Lakers coach Phil Jackson said that Odom created his own good fortune by being aggressive on the floor.

"You make your own luck we say, that's what sports people like to say," Jackson said. "I think he was just aggressive when he came in and tried to feel out where he could help us in the game. He hit a couple open shots and then everything started opening up for him -- drives, offensive rebounds and his whole game kind of came forward.

"That's a lot of times the way basketball is. A guy starts playing well and just things fall in his hands. It certainly did for him last night and we hope it continues that way."

Stoudemire's comments made Lakers captain Derek Fisher recall recently watching Larry King interview Mick Jagger.

"They were asking Mick Jagger about why he felt like the Rolling Stones have been so great for so long," Fisher said. "Obviously, he talked about talent, working hard, blah, blah, blah. But he said there is some luck involved in being good. When you're great for a long time, you have to be lucky sometimes. So if he wants to call Lamar lucky last night, I'll take 19 and 19 as luck any day of the week."

Andy Kamenetzky of the Land O' Lakers Blog and Beto Duran of 710 ESPN contributed to this report.

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Dave McMenamin

ESPNLosAngeles.com

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Dave McMenamin spent five seasons as a staff writer for NBA.com in New York and Los Angeles before joining ESPNLosAngeles.com to cover the Lakers and the NBA.