The two-time defending NBA champion Los Angeles Lakers have gotten their campaign for a third straight underway against the New Orleans Hornets in the first round of the playoffs. Even though the Lakers haven’t exactly started off on the right foot as they lost Game 1 in somewhat convincing fashion, the defending champs did get some good news this week as they learned that forward Lamar Odom has won the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year award.

Coming into the first-round series against the New Orleans Hornets, the Los Angeles Lakers had been struggling and were in desperate need of flipping the switch to get back into a championship form. Unfortunately, Kobe Bryant and company haven’t been able to flip that switch just yet and might be in trouble if they can’t win Game 2 before the series shifts to New Orleans for games three and four.

Despite the fact that the Lakers are now facing an uphill battle in the playoffs, the two-time defending champs will almost certainly play at a much higher level in Game 2 as it is basically a must-win situation and the team will be motivated after seeing Odom win the Sixth Man of the Year.

With 14.4 points and 8.7 rebounds per game while shooting a career-high 53% from the floor this season, Lamar Odom was more than deserving of the Sixth Man of the Year award. There was a lot of debate about the Dallas Mavericks Jason Terry winning the award yet again, but it would be hard to argue that Lamar Odom wasn’t the best bench player in the league this season.

Hopefully, this recent award will be enough to motivate Lamar Odom to rebound from a disappointing performance in Game 1 where he had just one rebound.

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