Me and Marc Cuban are cool! Frank u can't lie 4 a story. Unethical Bro.
— LAMAR ODOM (@RealLamarOdom) March 8, 2012
(thanks to notnerb for sharing the tweet in the comments)
As reported here, Knicks beat writer Frank Isola was the first to mention the exchange between Mark Cuban and Lamar Odom during the game on Tuesday. The forward took exception to the tweet tonight, calling it a "lie" and "unethical." Anyway, there was an exchange of words and Rhylan Rowe, who runs the Mavericks Outsider Report alongside Mavs.com and former MMB writer @BallinWithBryan and is a season ticket holder, shared insight on the dallas-mavs.com message board:
On the Cuban/Odom interaction after Odom failed to run the floor... I just happened to be sitting three rows back, between Cuban and the basket, last night. Unfortunately, I was too involved in yelling at Odom to get back on D to catch the very beginning. But I'll relate it as accurately as I can.
[...] Where I was sitting, the basket stanchion blocked my view of the left side of the court. So I stood up to see if any other Mav was near the play, in front of Odom, as I yelled. So I turned away from the bench and Cuban. Cuban is yelling, but it's usual Cubes volume/passion so it doesn't register with me right away.
Rather than go to his right, towards the huddle, Odom walks more through the paint and towards the baseline where Al Whitley sits. He looks pissed in a simmering sort of "I'm trying to be calm but want to kick someone's ass" way. I didnt see what he was mouthing, except that it ended in, "...f***ing basketball."
About that time it dawned on me that he was directing his words to the far end of the bench, I looked over and saw that Cuban had sat down. [...] Al stood up, patted Odom on the chest, and sort of turned him back towards the huddle. Odom kinda had a head-shaking disposition about him.
That was all...the guy sitting next to me said that Cuban had yelled "run the floor!" I didn't hear specifics myself, and assume more words were likely said on both sides.
Also, and I could kick myself now for not paying better attention, but at one point, Cuban sat on the bench next to Lamar and looked to be encouraging him and having a generally positive exchange about the game. I don't know if this was before or after the other situation. It could have been either. Also, of note, Cuban had similar on-bench exchanges with Kidd, Carter, and Marion throughout the game that I saw.
You might want to agree at this point that the incident initially was blown out of proportion, like everything involving Odom. Cuban has a history of emotionally interacting with players and he also did have other exchanges with Jason Kidd, Vince Carter and Shawn Marion in the very same game. After all, this could turn out to be a non-issue going forward.