{"id":3488,"date":"2015-10-15T08:03:14","date_gmt":"2015-10-15T15:03:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/odoms-spiral-leaves-ex-nba-star-fighting-for-his-life\/"},"modified":"2015-10-15T08:03:14","modified_gmt":"2015-10-15T15:03:14","slug":"odoms-spiral-leaves-ex-nba-star-fighting-for-his-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/odoms-spiral-leaves-ex-nba-star-fighting-for-his-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Odom’s spiral leaves ex-NBA star fighting for his life"},"content":{"rendered":"

LAS VEGAS<\/strong> \u2014 Lamar Odom didn\u2019t last long at the glittering intersection of championship success and Hollywood celebrity.<\/p>\n

Cut loose by his beloved Los Angeles Lakers, followed everywhere by reality television crews, the humble kid from Queens who married into the Kardashian clan saw his life spiral out of control, and so did everyone else.<\/p>\n

Khloe Kardashian tried to hide his addictions, then told the world she couldn\u2019t save him. The two-time NBA champion landed on Skid Row, a regular tabloid target.<\/p>\n

Then he seemed to drop out altogether before he was found unresponsive in a brothel and hospitalized, bringing his estranged wife, his former teammates and the world\u2019s attention back to his side Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Hospital authorities would not comment on the condition of the 35-year-old former NBA forward, but the Rev. Jesse Jackson was among his visitors. Jackson said Odom was on life support and improving.<\/p>\n

\u201cApparently from what the doctor said, he was much better off today than yesterday. He at least has some responsiveness now,\u201d Jackson said. \u201cHe\u2019s got tubes in him now but we felt inspired by his presence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re just holding hands and hoping he can bounce back,\u201d Jackson added.<\/p>\n

Odom, who was embraced by teammates and television fans alike for his Everyman approach to fame, was found face down and alone Tuesday after spending four days at the Love Ranch, a legal Nevada brothel.<\/p>\n

Odom started \u201cthrowing up all kinds of stuff\u201d after a 911 operator told them to turn him on his side, Love Ranch owner Dennis Hof told The Associated Press in a phone interview. Odom had \u201cspent time socializing with some of my girls,\u201d but wasn\u2019t seen taking any illegal drugs, Hof said.<\/p>\n

Nye County Sheriff Sharon Wehrly said at a news conference that a brothel employee who called 911 reported Odom did cocaine Saturday and had taken up to 10 tabs of a sexual performance enhancer over the past three days. She said he was found unresponsive with blood coming from his nose and mouth.<\/p>\n

Wehrly earlier said investigators were seeking a blood sample to determine if Odom overdosed on drugs or alcohol.<\/p>\n

Odom spent most of his 14-year NBA career in Los Angeles with the Lakers and Clippers, becoming a fan favorite before he sought even more fame with the Kardashians.<\/p>\n

His one-month courtship of Khloe before their huge 2009 wedding was taped for the E! network, and Odom appeared on nearly two dozen episodes of \u201cKeeping Up with the Kardashians\u201d as well as other family spinoffs, including his own \u201cKhloe & Lamar\u201d show in 2011 and 2012.<\/p>\n

Khloe Kardashian called him \u201cLam-Lam\u201d and worried openly about him on the show. Even after they split up in 2013, cameras recorded her calling him and checking on his welfare.<\/p>\n

People always seemed to root for Odom, whose prematurely weathered face wore the impact of his personal tragedies in a friendly way. And news of his hospitalization brought an outpouring of dismay and encouragement from his friends and family.<\/p>\n

Kobe Bryant joined Kardashian and some of Odom\u2019s childhood friends at his bedside after a Tuesday night Lakers game in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n

\u201cLamar Odom is one of the greatest people I\u2019ve ever known,\u201d said Derek Fisher, the New York Knicks coach and Odom\u2019s longtime teammate with the Lakers. \u201cI don\u2019t view him through the prism of choices that he\u2019s made … I\u2019m obviously hoping that he can pull through this, and that in some fortunate way this becomes the beginning of a different ending.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even his estranged father, Joe Odom, was there at the hospital, according to his grandmother, Florence Odom, who told the AP Wednesday that Lamar was \u201cin God\u2019s hands.\u201d<\/p>\n

Authorities were called to the brothel in Crystal, Nevada, about 3:15 p.m. Tuesday. The 6-foot-10 Odom was too tall for an available helicopter, so he was driven by ambulance to Sunrise Hospital & Medical Center in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n

Hof told the AP that his staff had picked up Odom from a home in Las Vegas on Saturday, and he seemed \u201chappy, he was sleeping every night.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe largely kept to himself, and at no time did he engage in any drug use in the presence of anyone in the house. He did drink alcohol from our bar, and was taking some herbal sexual enhancement capsules,\u201d Hof\u2019s statement said.<\/p>\n

Odom emerged as one of the most promising basketball talents of his generation after a difficult childhood in Queens, where his mother died of cancer when he was 12 and his estranged father was addicted to heroin. Drugs and crime were rampant in his South Jamaica neighborhood, and he never forgot where he came from, writing tributes to his mother and grandmother on his sneakers before games.<\/p>\n

Tall enough to play center and skilled enough to be a playmaking guard, the rangy kid with a beautiful shot and exceptional ball-handling skills drew comparisons to Magic Johnson when he played on a traveling youth team alongside Ron Artest, his future Lakers teammate.<\/p>\n

Despite an abbreviated college career marked by scandal and an arrest in Las Vegas, Odom\u2019s talent was so coveted that he was picked fourth in the 1999 NBA draft by the moribund Clippers. Suddenly, he was \u201cliving like a 19-year-old rock star,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Soon after, he was suspended for smoking marijuana.<\/p>\n

Odom had two children during those years, Destiny and Lamar Jr., with an ex-girlfriend, Liza Morales. The 2006 crib death of another infant son, Jayden, attributed to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, prompted Odom to consider quitting basketball. He played the next season displaying a T-shirt bearing his son\u2019s photo in his locker.<\/p>\n

Odom loved wearing purple and gold, and his selfless play won him the NBA\u2019s Sixth Man of the Year award in 2011. He won a second straight NBA title in 2010 while playing alongside Artest, now known as Metta World Peace.<\/p>\n

But his basketball career faded as his life became a spectacle. He was heartbroken in December 2011 when the Lakers attempted to trade him; he eventually landed in Dallas, where reality TV crews followed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe year he got traded people wanted to say, \u2018Oh, it\u2019s because of the show.\u2019 No one wanted to bring up the accomplishments he had when we were filming,\u201d Khloe Kardashian told the AP in a May 2013 interview. \u201cLamar loves doing the show and he\u2019s the one who wanted to do \u2018Khloe & Lamar\u201d more than I did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, Odom\u2019s behavior increasingly worried family and friends. He pleaded no contest to drunk driving after an arrest in August 2013. Kardashian filed for divorce four months later and has been dating Houston Rockets star James Harden. The divorce has not yet received final approval from a judge.<\/p>\n

When cameras caught up with Odom on a sidewalk in August, he blamed the media for his downfall.<\/p>\n

\u201cY\u2019all have discredited me, beat me down, took my confidence, took everything away from me. You will not do it again,\u201d Odom told TMZ in an interview. \u201cTo everybody that I know and that supports me, I\u2019m sorry but it\u2019s just it. The dog has to bite back.\u201d<\/p>\n

____<\/p>\n

Contributors include Ken Ritter in Las Vegas, Andrew Dalton and Beth Harris in Los Angeles and Alicia Rancilio in New York.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LAS VEGAS \u2014 Lamar Odom didn\u2019t last long at the glittering intersection of championship success and Hollywood celebrity. Cut loose by his beloved Los Angeles Lakers, followed everywhere by reality television crews, the humble kid from Queens who married into the Kardashian clan saw his life spiral out of control, and so did everyone else. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-3488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3488\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3488"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=3488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}