Quite a lengthy and interesting thread over at Lakersground.net regarding my column about Lamar Odom, Phil Jackson and the Lakers’ loss to Detroit. It’s definitely worth clarifying a few points here, but especially my first point — because I certainly don’t want readers to feel as if I’m overstepping my bounds based on how I did my job in the past:

• I noted this earlier this season, but for anyone who has noticed more opinion in what I’ve written about the Lakers compared to previous seasons, you are absolutely correct. We reconfigured our coverage here for this season to have more writers covering the Lakers and hoped that readers would be better served by a shift in my role. Instead of writing standard notebooks and game stories (and occasional columns), I am writing almost exclusively columns — which fundamentally involve greater opinion and analysis rather than objective reporting of facts and events — with the hope that readers will get much more out of them than run-of-the-mill recaps. It is my job to offer a strong take on what’s really going on with the Lakers, whether people agree or disagree. There is a lot of Lakers coverage out there these days and inevitably you run into a lot of the same sort of stuff. I am, bottom line, working harder than ever to deliver consistently interesting pieces on the team.
• Lamar Odom is a great guy. I’ve said this many times here. He is wonderful with the media but far beyond that he is simply a nice person … and actually a very unique sort of team leader. It is my opinion that he lacks focus at times on the court, detracting from his tremendously versatile game, and my latest column was intended to be a reflection of that and also straight reporting of Phil Jackson’s displeasure with Odom (and Odom’s overall displeasure with what happened to him in the game). Given how much attention was generated by Odom’s initial negative attitude about coming off the bench, I thought it was hugely relevant to the team’s future to discuss Odom’s problems with this game, even though this game certainly (as I said in the column) wasn’t lost by him more than others.
• Regarding the much-discussed line late in the column about Jordan Farmar (”It’s Farmar’s little-man complex emerging once Iverson bested him a couple of times”), that was what I believe to be a sound commentary on Farmar, Allen Iverson and Farmar losing his team focus in the game because of the individual matchup. One of Farmar’s favorite words to describe himself is “feisty.” Iverson is as feisty as they come. Neither guy has let his height stop him from playing with incredible confidence and determination in a big man’s game. When they went head to head Friday night and Iverson was getting the better of it, there was no doubt that Farmar was driven to overdo some things. There are plenty of people I know who believe Farmar is too cocky for his own good, but anyone who has read what I’ve been writing — check out last season’s columns addressing Farmar’s phenomenal improvement and his deep connection with Derek Fisher that was so key to the team’s success – should understand that I see Farmar’s grit, fight and work ethic to be the qualities of a winner.

Overall, this seems a relevant time to mention that I am very glad readers care this much about the Lakers and about what is written about the Lakers. Operating in those two realities is a big part of why it’s so fun and rewarding to do what I do.

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