As for Odom, hockey assists are one of those things on basketball that don't occur often enough over a large enough sample size to be of importance to efficiency, at least compared to other offensive factors. Assists leading to the assist are certaintly important at times, but they can be overvalued and also cumbersome to track and assign appropriate credit for. Scorers have come under fire a little bit for being too generous with the DIRECT assist on a player's home court in recent years - I'd rather see them work on that instead for now.

Odom had basically 0 assists because of how basketball does assists. He had a whole lot of plays where he'd have gotten assists in hockey, and let's be clear: Odom was the one creating the offense on those plays.

Odom was not great in the group stages (true of a lot of Team USA, they all got better as they got more used to international rules, and the FIBA ball. They went from being called for traveling a couple times a quarter to not at all in the finals), but was excellent in the semi-finals and finals. Anyone who thought he didn't play well didn't watch the games.

Iggy was almost as good on D as Durant was on O. He shut down the other team's best player in every important game.

Of the guys who played in this tournament, I'd consider taking Durant, Iggy, Love, Odom and Westbrook to the Olympics over Miller, Jamison, Brand, Hinrich, and either Johnson or Battier. Only Durant would start, mind. Of course, new guys could come in, and you never know who will be healthy come 2012.

Odom, you have to remember, was constantly going against larger opponents on defense and offense. I think he played quite well and was probably 3rd most valuable behind Durant and Iggy on the team. Who would have thought he would have played so well pre-tournament holding down the center position the whole tourney?

Rose had a very low TS%, 20+% TOR, and mediocre defensive stats. Odom had basically 0 assists and 15%+ TOR, with a relatively low TS%.