http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/sports/basketball/8514427.htm Posted on Sun, Apr. 25, 2004 LAMAR ODOM Elbow sends Odom (and Heat) reeling Just as he's finding his rhythm in the fourth quarter, Lamar Odom is hit by an elbow, gets six stitches near his eye and misses a crucial stretch. BY STEPHEN F. HOLDER [email protected] NEW ORLEANS - Lamar Odom could tell after the first half this would not be a career day. The unmistakably obvious 2-for-6 stat line and his four turnovers at that point made this clear to him. But undaunted, Odom kept hammering away, hoping things would improve -- and soon. They did. Odom scored six of the Heat's first seven points to open the final, pivotal quarter, in which this highly contested game would be decided. And right then, just as Odom began feeling his blood surge as he found his stroke, it all came to an ugly, nasty conclusion. Odom absorbed an inadvertent shot to the face from the elbow of New Orleans guard Baron Davis and went tumbling to the floor, and by the time he collected himself and made his way to Miami's bench, his left eye was a bloody mess. Six stitches and more than five agonizing minutes later, Odom finally returned for the Heat. By then, he had missed some of the game's most critical moments and, to make matters worse, could hardly see through his blurry, bloody left eye. The Heat wound up losing 77-71. This was the ugliest game of the series so far, and Odom could do little to change the tempo. "I was feeling great, and to go out with that type of injury [after] I had just hit a shot and gotten my team back in the game," Odom said, shaking his head. "I was ready to stay out there." ODOM: 'I WAS MAD' This was a fate Odom would have to accept, however difficult it was for him. "I was mad," said Odom, looking like a losing heavyweight after 12 rounds. ". . . I was frustrated because I started to feel myself getting in a rhythm, my team was starting to feel it, Caron Butler was playing awesome, then I have to come in here and get stitches in my face. I wasn't too pleased about that. But it's part of the game. It happens." After team trainer Ron Culp tried to sop up some of the blood on Odom's eye, Odom was taken to the Heat dressing room, where team doctor Harlan Selesnick began the delicate process of applying stitches near Odom's eye. Odom left the game with 7:04 remaining and the Heat down by six, 63-57. He didn't return until the 1:47 mark, when Miami trailed 73-70. All the while, he sat in the locker room feeling every slow tick of the clock. "I knew [the game] was close," he said. But the Heat only made three field goals in the 5:17 Odom was out, and that's something it couldn't afford. "Lamar's our best player, so when the game's on the line and we're trying to make a comeback, we definitely want the ball in his hands," forward Udonis Haslem said. "He can make things happen for us. But at the same time, if he goes out, the beat [doesn't] stop. Other guys have to step up." SO-SO PERFORMANCE Across the room, Odom couldn't justifiably sit by and let others take all the blame for this one. His injury notwithstanding, he had a mediocre performance at best, shooting 5 of 18 to finish with 18 points. But Odom's ugliest stat was his turnover total: seven, nearly as many as all his teammates combined. "We turned the ball over a lot, especially with Lamar," coach Stan Van Gundy said. The Hornets' defense had a lot to do with that. "It wasn't like we had clean, open looks," Odom said. "We were trying to force threes and things like that. We give credit where credit is due. They played well enough to win the game, and we played well enough to win the first two." Round 4 of this fight gets under way in 48 hours. --

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