Lamar Odom

A team source confirmed that Odom will miss out on about a $14,000 playoff share.

“If the Lamar thing would have worked out and if he would have played like the year before when he was the best sixth man, I think we would have had a shot,” Dirk Nowitzki said of going deeper in the playoffs. “It would have given us another playmaker, another guy that’s long, that can defend and rebound.

“But for whatever reason the stuff he was going through off the court was just too much. He couldn’t help us the way he wanted, the way we wanted, and we had to move on without him.”

Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said Saturday in retrospect he would still have made the trade for the versatile veteran forward.

“I’d do the exact same thing all over,” Cuban said. “You go for it. You hit on those things sometimes, and sometimes they don’t work. … He wasn’t the first player that didn’t work, and he won’t be the last.”

The defending champions were swept out of the first round of the playoffs Saturday night by the Oklahoma City Thunder and cleaned out their lockers Sunday afternoon.

Odom hasn’t been with the team since Cuban dismissed the forward from the team at halftime of the Mavs’ game at Memphis on April 7. Cuban didn’t appreciate Odom’s sullen body language in the locker room, or his response to a question of whether he was in or out.

Odom was placed on the inactive list and soon after returned to Los Angeles with reality TV star wife Khloe Kardashian.

“I think we were hoping he would be able to come in and contribute and help us win this year, but it just didn’t work out that way,” Shawn Marion added. “I think it is what it is, it’s (losing in the first round) not his fault and it’s not nobody’s, it’s all our faults collectively. You can’t put it on one person.”

The Mavs acquired Odom in a December trade from the Los Angeles Lakers, where he had played seven seasons, won two titles and the Sixth Man of the Year Award last season.

Odom was upset that the Lakers had included him in a trade to the New Orleans Hornets for Chris Paul.

When that deal was quashed by NBA commissioner David Stern, Odom asked the Lakers to trade him. Odom’s agent, Jeff Schwartz, reached out to the Mavs and Cuban made the deal.

But Odom arrived in Dallas out of shape and reeling mentally from leaving Los Angeles and a difficult summer that included the death of a close cousin.

Odom averaged career lows of 6.6 points and 4.2 rebounds with the Mavericks. He shot a career-low 35.2 percent from the field and averaged just 20.5 minutes a game, by far the fewest in his 13-year career.

The Mavs will attempt to trade Odom. Any team that has him on its roster as of June 29 must buy him out by that date for $2.4 million or otherwise accept responsibility for the full $8.2 million that he is scheduled to make in 2012-13.

Jeremy Lin

Lin’s availability for Wednesday night became even more crucial because starting point guard Baron Davis suffered a series-ending knee injury in Game 4′s 89-87 win at Madison Square Garden.

The Knicks don’t have an official practice Monday, but Woodson said Lin will have a three-on-three scrimmage this afternoon and again Tuesday before the team flies to Miami trailing 3-1 in the series.

Woodson said he plans to start veteran Mike Bibby at point guard. Bibby, who played under Woodson in Atlanta, was solid Sunday after Davis went down.

Woodson sounded apprehensive because Lin has not played since March 24 and had surgery on his torn meniscus five weeks ago.

“It’s going to be the doctors and Jeremy who makes that decision, it won’t be my decision,” Woodson said. “I’m going in as if he’s not going to play. That’s how I’m preparing.”

Woodson said he will have to give some minutes to Toney Douglas, who has been out of the rotation in the playoffs and in the season’s stretch run.

Baron Davis - Photo by : Alex Mateo, www.mateophoto.com

The Knicks said Davis will have surgery this week and is expected to be out a year after an MRI on Monday also revealed a partial tear of the patella tendon.

Davis was hurt Sunday in the Knicks’ 89-87 victory over Miami, crumbling to the court when his knee gave out as he dribbled upcourt on a fast break in the third quarter. Teammates quickly waved for help, and some players looked away as replays of the gruesome injury were shown on the overhead video board.

”I didn’t want to watch,” Heat forward Chris Bosh said. ”I kind of heard the reaction and then when they were playing it back on the Jumbotron like 80 times everybody could hear the reaction of the crowd. You never want to see guys go down like that. I just hope that everything’s OK for him and he recovers well.”

Davis was taken off the court on a stretcher, with LeBron James and Dwyane Wade offering the popular veteran words of encouragement as he was wheeled away.

Davis has battled injuries in recent years and said he wasn’t sure if he would play again after a herniated disk in his back last year kept him out until February.

He became the starter after Jeremy Lin needed surgery to repair torn cartilage in his left knee, and becomes the second Knicks guard to be lost for the season during this series. Rookie Iman Shumpert tore his ACL in Game 1.

Interim coach Mike Woodson said earlier Monday that Davis was in good spirits after the game, calling him a ”trooper.”

”The one thing he did say is, ‘Man, hey, I tried to give you all I could,’ and I have a great deal of respect for players that work for me and work for the organization and try to do the best they can to help us win ballgames,” Woodson said during a conference call.

Davis joined the Knicks this season and averaged 6.1 points in 29 games while also dealing with a hamstring injury. In his 13th season, he has averaged 16.1 points and was twice an All-Star.

His injury leaves Mike Bibby as the starting point guard for Game 5 on Wednesday, with the Knicks trailing 3-1 in the series.

Mayweather defeated Cotto by unanimous decision following an arduous battle that left him with a bloodied nose and mouth. He was forced to rely on the stamina built up during a grueling training camp.

That camp was scheduled to begin at the start of March but instead Mayweather opted to start his preparations a week earlier in the middle of the night during NBA All-Star weekend. 50 Cent, Mayweather’s rapper friend and business partner, told how the boxer cancelled plans to head to a nearby night spot and embarked upon a spur-of-the-moment run.

“He did six miles that night,” 50 Cent said to Y! Sports. “I thought he was crazy. I thought he was joking. I have never before just seen a person start randomly training like that. We were so far away from the gym, we weren’t even close. Before that, we were going to a strip club.

“That is what he is all about, working hard and showing that kind of extreme work ethic no one else has. He showed a lot of spirit and determination. Everyone understands what it takes to be successful but he does it better than anyone.”

Cotto came to fight at the MGM Grand Garden, attacking Mayweather and landing heavy blows with both fists. The Puerto Rican busted Mayweather’s nose and lip during the middle rounds and deserved better than the judges’ scorecards of 117-111, 117-111 and 118-110.

Mayweather’s stamina has rarely been tested as strongly as it was on this night and the 35-year-old pound-for-pound king took well over an hour to appear for his post-fight press conference as he mixed celebrations with receiving treatment for his wounds.

But he traced his eventual success to that night in Orlando and the base of endurance he built up over the course of a camp that spanned more than two months.

“The first day back I ran six miles,” Mayweather said. “I hadn’t done anything for nine months and I just went out and ran six miles. Cotto had fought not that long ago, so I had to get my endurance in. Training camp started right then. I was running a lot, 5:45 or 6:00 minute miles. It all set me up.”

Mayweather is headed to Clark County Detention Center for an 87-day jail stint on June 1 and the physical punishment he received from Cotto may mean he does not fight again this year. He even hinted he could walk away from the sport, but given his love of attention and multi-million dollar paychecks, that must be considered unlikely.

He did, however, insist that boxing’s dream bout between himself and Manny Pacquiao was doomed to go down in history as perhaps the sport’s greatest “what if.”

“The Pacquiao fight is not going to happen,” said Mayweather, who cited the Filipino superstar’s financial demands, disputes over the style of random drug testing and clashes with Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum as the reasons for the impasse. “I don’t have a boss. I called him direct. I offered him $40 million straight. I told him I would wire him $20 million within 48 hours. But it is not going to happen. There is too much standing in the way. He keeps changing it.”

That all remains to be seen, but if a bout with Pacquiao is ever scheduled, there’s no doubt Mayweather would be serious about his training – even if it begins on a whim in the middle of the night.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the acquisition in a post on his Facebook Timeline Monday.

The sale is expected to close later this quarter, and will bring the 8-person staff of Instagram to the social network.

“For years, we’ve focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family,” Zuckerberg said in the post. “Now, we’ll be able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests.”

Zuckerberg went on to say that the company will be building on Instagram’s strengths and features and growing the app independently rather than “just trying to integrate everything into Facebook.”

Facebook plans on keeping features within the app that allow photos to be published on other social networks, and the ability to have followers and follow people who are not necessarily your Facebook friends.

“We will try to learn from Instagram’s experience to build similar features into our other products,” Zuckerberg said. “At the same time, we will try to help Instagram continue to grow by using Facebook’s strong engineering team and infrastructure.”

Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom echoed Zuckerberg’s statements on the Instagram company blog adding “We’re psyched to be joining Facebook and are excited to build a better Instagram for everyone.”

Instagram launched its iOS app in October 2010, and came to Android for the first time last week.
This is the first time Facebook has acquired a company or product with so many users. “We don’t plan on doing many more of these, if any at all.” Zuckerberg said. “But providing the best photo sharing experience is one reason why so many people love Facebook and we knew it would be worth bringing these two companies together.”