The Tragic and Triumphant Journey of Lamar Odom: From NBA Star to Surviving the Ledge

Lamar Odom played fourteen seasons in the NBA.

Lamar Odom has always lived on the ledge, walking the thin thread that sometimes divides life from death. A coin that sometimes fell one way and sometimes the other. Literally. As a boy he first lost his mother to a terminal illness, his father became involved in drugs and he was raised by his grandmother, who would also pass away, leaving him alone in the world. Then, already being an NBA figure, he lost his daughter Jayden, due to a sudden death while she was sleeping in her crib when she was barely six months old… Six years later, a very beloved nephew was murdered in street gang duels and the next day the truck that I was carrying it around New York and ended up killing a 15-year-old boy. A star that had no peace, neither before nor after. And when it seemed like he had it, he immersed himself in lack of control and drugs until he ended up with an overdose that had him on the ropes. He survived 12 strokes and six heart attacks and is alive today at 44 years old. Along the way he did them all, parties, excesses, women and, in the meantime, to do what he liked so much, play basketball, he became a specialist in cheating anti-doping controls, as he himself specified in detail. He did it in the NBA and in the run-up to an Olympic Game. Odom’s is truly a Hollywood story worth unraveling.

Lamar was born on November 6, 1979 in the New York borough of Queens and grew up in a difficult, spicy neighborhood like South Jamaica. His childhood was not easy, with a father addicted to heroin and a mother who would die of colon cancer when he was 12 years old. His grandmother Mildred would take care of him but, 11 years later, she would also die, making it clear that, unfortunately, his life would be marked by tragedies.

By the time he was practically alone in life, Odom was already a figure, although, as would be a constant in his career, with conflicts and problems off the court. During his university days, for example, his desperation for money, in order to access privileges and lead a poor life, caused him to accept “financial compensation” and he was expelled from the University of Nevada, before even making his debut. He would end up in Rhode Island, where he would serve a one-year penalty without playing. But, of course, his talent was such that nothing affected him and in the only season that he wanted to stay with the Rams he shone. He averaged 17.6 points, 9.4 rebounds and 3.8 assists but, above all, he was the hero of a team that won the Atlantic 10 Conference, precisely with his three-pointer at the buzzer against Temple. The bow to close the campaign and make the decision to jump to the NBA.

He entered the world of showbiz much more after his marriage to Khloe Kardashian

The Clippers selected him fourth in the draft and in his first season he averaged 16.6 points (including 30 in his debut), 7.8 rebounds and 4.2 assists, which would earn him inclusion in the best rookie quintet in 99-00. But, of course, problems would not take long to arrive. In November 2001, the NBA announced that he had violated its anti-drug policy and was suspended for eight months. He admitted that the substance had been marijuana…

His life off the court, which was already beginning to be a problem, was not noticeable on the court, as Odom stood out in his four years with the Clippers and Miami gave him a $65 million contract when he became an agent. free. In the Heat he shone again, but Pat Riley was presented with the chance to add Shaq O’Neal and Odom had to enter the package that ended up in the Lakers for the big man. There is no evil that does not come with good, the saying goes. And Odom, upon his return to LA, found his home in the Lakers, a team that sheltered him and needed him. There he became a Kobe hillside. His versatility, polyfunctionality and intelligence earned him recognition and allowed him to achieve two rings (2009 and 2010), being a luxury worker who generally started from the bank (in 2011, for example, he won the Best Sixth Man award), although closed the games.

In the middle of his journey in LA and the show generated by the closeness of Hollywood, it was not surprising that he rubbed shoulders with celebrities and met, for example, Khloe Kardashian, whom he would marry in 2009 after months of courtship. There he would begin another chapter in his life, in the center of the media scene, something that was always difficult for him to handle, especially because they left him exposed to not being able to “cover” his other life. Between them they even starred in a reality TV show called Klhoé & Lamar. The couple began to crack when she discovered infidelities, she told them on TV and even Odom himself admitted in a video with friends that was leaked to the press. The paparazzi’s permanent harassment of his private life ended one night, in the middle of the street and with several people as spectators, when the player destroyed a team of reporters’ photos.

Lamar Odom in one of the transfers to the hospital.

The trade to Dallas, in 2011, was the beginning of the end. “It ended my career and my purpose. I was never the same again. Being in Los Angeles, in that structure of the franchise, the people I met… It hurt me to leave all that. It was a very special time,” he said recently. Odom lived in fits and starts and his life ended up falling apart with his retirement from the NBA, in 2013, at the age of 33. So much so that weeks later, in August, he was missing for more than 72 hours without giving any clue as to his fate. It was later learned that he had been locked up in a hotel with his friends seeking to escape his drug addictions. Khloé had already kicked him out of his house when she saw him fall apart and the teams had given up on hiring him after knowing in depth about his delicate situation. A few weeks later, he was arrested for drunk driving and seemed to hit rock bottom, so his inner circle convinced him to check into a detox center in Los Angeles. There he spent the end of the year and it seemed that a light of hope appeared.

It was not so. Odom quickly returned to his “adventures” and his life would end up spiraling out of control in 2015. Although the beginning of the end had happened in 2004, when the athlete admitted to having tried cocaine for the first time on a vacation in Florida, a moment he regrets for having opened the path to self-destruction. It was not surprising, then, that on October 14, 2015, Lamar was found unconscious in the Love Ranch brothel in Nevada, 70 miles from Las Vegas. Lamar had stayed on a Saturday and spent two days consuming cocaine, opiates and Herb Viagra pills until a call alerted 911 and the police, along with medical personnel, found him on the verge of death, with fluids coming out of his mouth. He was hospitalized at Desert View in Pahrump and then taken to another, more specialized, private clinic in Las Vegas.

The prognosis was “reserved”, very discouraging, but little by little Lamar overcame the condition that included 12 strokes and six heart attacks in the first 72 hours, with at least three organs seriously compromised (heart, kidneys and lungs). “The doctors who see me say I’m a walking miracle,” admitted Odom, who can relive little of those fateful hours. “I remember I was lying in bed with two women and then I fell asleep. That’s all. When I woke up four days later, I was trying to expel tubes from my mouth,” he revealed.

Odom is a survivor. And a guy who walked on the ledge all his life. That’s why it’s not surprising that he told how he passed two drug tests despite having used drugs days before. The first was when he was on the Lakers. “I remember that Gary Vitti, our trainer, came and he told me ‘Lamar, tomorrow we have surprise control, I want you here at 8 o’clock’”, he began his story. It was the much-feared moment: in the NBA, every season, there are at least three routine checkups and he had never stopped using cocaine and ecstasy pills. He then called his trusted doctor, Robbie Davis, to find out what to do. He knew that he would need between 24 and 48 hours to evacuate the substances, when he did not even have 12 to wait for control. Missing the appointment was not an option because when a player skips it, the NBA regulations take it as a positive. And he had no margin: he had already tested positive twice before, both for marijuana, and the third would mean a two-year sanction of expulsion.

Lamar Odom on the Clippers

It was then that he called his agent to outline a plan. It occurred to them to declare a family emergency, as common as drugs in Odom’s life. In this case they decided to say that Lamar had to urgently travel to New York. The death of his daughter was too fresh and he could believe the excuse… She told his wife not to take the kids to school, implying that something important had happened in the family. He had his agent call general manager Mitch Kupchak to tell them the bad news in the family and he flew to the Big Apple.

“I spent the flight drinking a mixture of cranberry juice and water in a desperate attempt to purge my body of any traces of drugs. We arrived in New York at 5 in the morning and headed straight to Liza’s house, where I was going to take care of the imaginary family problem. The idea was to spend two days and return in time for the next game. The problem was that the NBA did not buy the story and sent a doctor to Liza’s house to obtain my sample,” the anecdote continued according to Lamar.

How did he get away? “I was so nervous that it took me two hours to refill the container. Thanks to my efforts to purify the body, the urine came out as clear as water. The official carried out a quick examination, but the results were inconclusive, so he asked me for a second sample. The last thing we wanted was for him to wait in the apartment, so we sent him to wait downstairs until I was ready to pee again. I then continued drinking the cranberry juice and only four hours later was I ready to urinate. The NBA doctor remained there, on the ground floor, without eating and practically without sitting. The second urine flowed again as clear as water and the official reported that the process was complete. The first step. Now I needed the results to come back inconclusive, which is effectively what happened. A result sufficient to acquit me,” he completed the first big story in this respect.

The second occurred years before, in the run-up to the 2004 Olympic Games. “The joy at having been named among the 12 quickly turned into anxiety and concern when they informed me that I had to pass a test before being confirmed in the team. And, to be honest, I knew there was absolutely no way I could get through it.” This is how Lamar Odom started another of the many confessions he made in his biography From Darkness to Light.

It was then when the power forward, a talented player who won two NBA rings with Kobe Bryant’s Lakers (2009 and 2010) and was world champion with his team in Turkey 2010, began to think about a strategy to pass control. It was not the first time that he tried to mask his addictions, although that time he reached the limits of the implausible. “I had spent the entire summer smoking marijuana and I knew I couldn’t test negative. So, I started looking for fake penises on the Internet and studying how to use it in the test. I remember I got a big, black one… When the time came, the anti-doping officer went into the bathroom with me and stood half a meter away from me, I unzipped myself and carefully slid the fake penis through the zipper. I had to squeeze it several times but the urine (which had been made free of substances) came out and filled the jar… I remember that the officer took his temperature to check that it was mine and it passed. “That’s how I passed the test and was able to play in Athens,” he said with shocking coldness. Of course, his presence on the team would not be enough to win gold in 2004, because Argentina would be his executioner in the semifinals.

Two anecdotes that summarize a career in which, incredibly and for 14 years, addictions and craziness off the court coexisted with high levels of performance that allowed him to be a valuable piece of each of the teams he joined.

2024-02-10 03:35:00
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