Lamar Odom Struggles With Questionable Officiating

During the Lakers' loss on Sunday to the Phoenix Suns, Lamar Odom struggled with the officials for a second straight game. He fouled out of the game when he was whistled for his fifth and sixth in a 12 second span early in the fourth quarter, and left his teammates to battle without him for the game's final eight and a half minutes.

Odom was frustrated after the game, probably more by his own inability to help his team than by the loss itself. He talked about the officiating and how it took him out of his game.

"I felt like I made one mistake, the foul on Grant Hill," Odom said. "But that just kind of put the exclamation point on this game for me, I never really got to play. I went to the bench with my fourth foul, 75-70 in the third quarter. It's tough.

"There were a couple of plays before that one, that just took me out of the game. I can't play. You know, it takes the aggressiveness sometimes out of the player."

Phil Jackson commented on Odom's tough day, but also didn't seem to feel that this would be a long-term problem.

"Lamar really just had an awful day, I mean there were a couple really bad calls against Lamar that limited his time," Jackson said.

"He'll be okay, he'll get it back," Jackson said when asked how Odom could reverse the two-game trend. "It was tough, I thought that he kind of carried some of that with him in the timeout. I tried to talk him a little bit out of it. That third quarter just got him out of it with that foul situation."

Kobe Bryant was asked about Odom's "two game funk" with the officials, and after Bryant's tone when repeating "two game funk?" revealed his view of the silliness of the question, he offered up this advice for his teammate to get back on the referees' good side.

"Send the refs a bouquet of flowers or something, I don't know," Bryant said.