Derek Fisher, who is under contract with the Lakers through the 2009-10 season, and Dwyane Wade, who has publicly stated he'll only stay in Miami beyond next season if the team contends for a championship, pulled out all the stops Tuesday in trying to recruit Odom, stopping just short of mailing him a note with "Do you like me? Y/N" scribbled on it.
“We want him back badly, and I hope we can accomplish that in the next couple days," Fisher said to an Orange County Register reporter, who noted that Fisher chose to speak into the camera, as if to speak to Odom directly.
Wade felt the same way.
“Come home! Come back!” Wade pleaded. “I know he’s got a tough decision to make with L.A., but our door is open. Lamar right now is our big focus. We want to make sure we get Lamar and then go from there.”
Not to be outdone, Fisher gushed about what Odom brings to the Lakers, both on and off the court.
"As much credit as sometimes I get — probably more than I should — as far as my importance to the team from a spiritual perspective in our locker room and whatnot, I think Lamar is equally important," Fisher told the L.A. Times. "His personality and the way he carries himself. . . . Lamar is a very caring person and a lot of times he cares more about other people than himself. To have a guy like that in the locker room, a lot of times he's an example for a lot of other guys on our team.
"And what he went through this past year, going to the bench — and I mean he's an all-star caliber player — and in a contract year to come off the bench and he'd never done it before in his career, he did it as well as anybody could ever do it and his team won a championship at the same time."
