Few stories in NBA history are as dramatic, painful or as improbable as that of Lamar Odom. He was a two-time NBA champion, sixth man of the year, and one of the most naturally gifted players of his generation. He was also, for much of his adult life, fighting a battle with addiction that most people around him either didn’t know about or were working hard to conceal. It cost him his career, nearly cost him his life and played out, in many ways, in front of the entire world.
Netflix’s latest installment of its “Untold” docuseries digs deep into the full arc of Odom’s life — from his whirlwind marriage to Khloé Kardashian and the reality TV empire that came with it, to the trade that sent his drug use into a tailspin and his near-fatal overdose at a Nevada brothel in October 2015. Odom, Kardashian and those closest to them speak with a candor that is, at times, startling — about the drugs, the lies, the enabling, the media circus that descended on a Las Vegas hospital, and the unlikely moments of grace that somehow brought him back.
It is, above all else, a story about survival. Below is everything we learned from “Untold: The Death & Life of Lamar Odom.”
Lamar and Khloé Kardashian fell hard – and fast – for one another
In 2009, Odom met Kardashian, his future (though now ex) wife, at a “Welcome to LA” party thrown by fellow NBA player Ron Artest (formerly known as Metta World Peace). She’d been hired to host the party alongside Artest, who paid her just $5,000 for the appearance (he jokes that her rate is much higher now, while she says she only agreed to take the gig because her brother, Rob Kardashian, loved the Lakers). Both Odom and Kardashian maintain they had no idea who the other was at the time. “You know, the first night, I’ll be honest, I was trying to fuck her,” said Odom in an NSFW confession. “(I) got with her the next day, and then the next day turned into the next day.”
Thirty days later, the couple was engaged. As Kardashian explains, a tabloid wanted to run the exclusive on the wedding — but only if they could also get the exclusive on the divorce, she recounted. “Falling in love the way we fell in love, as quickly as we did, is so not my personality,” she says. “But he’s so charismatic. He’s fun and silly. And then he also is a very vulnerable person. He’s very honest about his life.” The reality star admitted that Odom was her first love — and that this was one of the reasons she rationalized so much of his behavior throughout their relationship. “I was fighting every single day to either project him or not let him get caught.”
Lamar’s wedding to Kardashian was to ‘try to better his future’
Odom’s fast engagement to Kardashian didn’t just come as a surprise to the press, but to his family, too. In fact, the news was so shocking that his previous partner, Liza Morales, didn’t let their two children attend (the pair had been high school sweethearts before breaking up in 2006). “I never even met her. I don’t think he told me he was marrying her,” said LJ, Odom’s son. Because the wedding was a star-studded, televised event, Destiny, Odom’s daughter, remembers not wanting to be a “show pony, or anything like that.”
During the wedding, Odom spoke to his childhood friend Anthony “Pumpkin” Booker for two hours, explaining that “the moves he was doing, he was doing it to try to better his future.” At the time, “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” was one of the hottest shows on television, while Los Angeles practically revolved around the Lakers. “I’m just watching how she lived and their lifestyle, and I’m like, ‘I know this is where I want to be. This is how I want to live,’” reflects Odom. “I think that was like a power trip for me. Because you took the power that I had, and then the Kardashian power… I wasn’t really ready for all that power.”
‘Khloé & Lamar’ was his idea
While Kardashian was a reality TV superstar by the time the couple tied the knot, it was actually Odom who championed their short-lived show, “Khloé & Lamar.” The show debuted in 2011, giving audiences an inside look into their lives, home and relationship. For Odom, it was a chance to do something outside of basketball — and he loved the cameras, says Kardashian, who was more nervous given the intimate nature of the show. It was filmed almost entirely in their own home, as opposed to a rotation of locations like on “Keeping Up.”
“He did love Khloé, but he’d wanted to be on reality TV for a long time,” says Destiny. When discussing the show, Odom admits that “part of the deal was that, If I’m gonna marry you, fuck it. I want in too.’” Still, Kardashian reflects on it as “the coolest, coolest time of my life.”
Lamar would disappear for days at a time while using, leaving Khloé to ‘cover this up’
When Odom first began using cocaine and other drugs, it “seemed responsibly done,” says Kardashian. That quickly ceased to be the case, though, as Odom began to “disappear” for hours, then days at a time while using — unfindable and unreachable by phone. One of the first instances of this came in June, around the anniversary of his youngest son, Jayden’s death. (Jayden passed away from SIDS at just six months.) He’d “escape rehab and go on a drug bender and nobody could find him,” says Kardashian. “I was either looking for him in alleys, looking for him in motels. He would have tinfoil cutouts or spoons and freebasing things, and leaving things everywhere. I remember needing to go to hotel rooms to clean up after him so that housekeeping didn’t sell a story. I was such an enabler without knowing I was an enabler. But I just felt such a responsibility to cover this up.”
One night, Odom remembers getting high in Big Bear. A woman he was cheating on Kardashian with took his phone and called her and Kris Jenner, explaining that “he just keeps wanting money and drugs.” That’s when Kardashian learned he was being unfaithful, she remembers. “I never knew for sure that he was sleeping with other people. Of course, I had suspicions. But I never had anything tangible.” From there, word began to get out about Odom’s drug use.
Lamar’s trade from the Lakers to the Mavericks was an inflection point
Odom was driving to the Lakers’ practice facility when he found out he was being traded to the Dallas Mavericks on the radio. “I’ve given you guys so much, and I’m finding out this way that I’m being traded somewhere else,” reflects Odom. The drug use that transpired from that trade was “monstrous,” says Kardashian.
“I’ve just never seen so many drugs,” she adds. “(There was) just such a dark aura around us. They weren’t testing for certain painkillers, and he knew which ones they weren’t, and he was freebasing painkillers.” Right before Christmas, Kardashian says, Odom locked himself in their hotel bathroom for four days, doing drugs. “He was horrible at practice, because he was so fucked up and high,” she says. But the move didn’t last long; Odom was cut from the team after only a few months.
Khloé had to pump Lamar’s stomach at home
Kardashian says he got “kicked off” the Mavericks and joined the Clippers in 2012. He was overweight from all of the drug use, so much so he had to check himself into a rehab. “Whenever the Clippers’ season ended, he spiraled again and did crazy drugs,” she says. “He overdosed a few times. I had to pump his stomach,” she says. “We had at-home detox centers. We did everything we could.”
This led to an intervention. Kardashian was advised to give him an ultimatum: go to rehab for a three-month program, or you’re getting a divorce. “He was like, ‘Ok, all I want Is my passport and let’s get the fucking divorce,’” she says, “I was looking around like, ‘Wait. I don’t want the divorce.’ Lamar left immediately.”
Their divorce was awaiting final legal approval in October when she found out he’d overdosed in Nevada. he suffered brain damage, had 12 strokes and six heart attacks.
Lamar’s overdose triggered a media circus and bidding war
Richard Hunter, the former manager of the Love Ranch and one of the men who helped drag Odom’s unconscious body out of the brothel, says that as a professional athlete, “there are a lot easier ways to do this” when reflecting on how Odom had been contacting the ranch’s girls on Instagram. That cynicism proved warranted.
Dennis Hof, the Love Ranch’s owner, created a bidding war on details of the overdose and sold exclusive footage and signed receipts to the “Today Show,” using the entire situation as publicity for his book “The Art of the Pimp.” “If I didn’t know it before, I knew after that — in terms of what we were gonna do or willing to do for publicity, there wasn’t a limit,” Hunter says upon reflection.
Meanwhile, drug dealers were showing up the hospital and rummaging through Odom’s bags for money. Kardashian put the entire floor on lockdown, funneled who was allowed in and made everyone sign NDAs before they could enter. That also meant Odom’s children and their mother were stopped and checked every single time they tried to come see him. Morales notes how an already devastating situation was made even more painful by the circus and security surrounding it.
Kobe Bryant flew to Vegas to help Khloé make life-or-death decisions
With Odom unconscious and his body failing, Bryant got on a plane and flew to Las Vegas to sit with Kardashian and help her work through one of the hardest decisions of her life — whether to risk surgery on Odom’s collapsed lung. They decided to move forward and the surgery worked, but Odom remained in a coma for three to four days. When he woke up, he reached up, ripped the tubes out of his own neck (which he still has the scars from), looked at Kardashian and said, “Hey baby,” then passed back out. Kardashian recalls never leaving the hospital, making sure she was there through every step of his recovery. “We were determined to get him walking and moving again.”
Lamar faked how bad his condition was so Khloé would keep taking care of him
When Odom came home from the hospital, Kardashian rented him a house in her neighborhood, hired a full-time caretaker, a private chef and nurses to manage his around-the-clock care. However, it didn’t last because Kardashian soon discovered he was still using drugs. “I’ve just put my life on hold to fucking take care of you,” she said. “How did you get this? You don’t have a fucking phone. You can’t talk.”
In reality, Odom did have a phone and was far more functional than he had ever let on. “He was better than I knew,” Kardashian says. “He was playing me so I could continue this lifestyle for him.” Kardashian recalls walking in on him while using, punching him and telling him to pack his bags and leave the house by Monday, adding that she would “never speak to him again.” She filed for divorce a second time shortly after.
A dream about Kobe Bryant is what finally made him want to get better
It wasn’t an intervention, a brush with death or a stint in rehab that pushed Lamar to actually change; it was a dream about his former teammate and friend. Kobe ryant appeared to him and said, “L-O, the afterlife is not what people make it out to be,” Odom shares. For a man who had just nearly died and spent years destroying himself, those words from his friend landed differently. That was the turning point. “Right now is go mode,” Lamar says, reflecting on where his head is today. He wants to go back to school. He wants to coach basketball. And after everything — the addiction, the overdose, the lost years — he’s still standing. “Lamar’s had an extraordinary life,” says Kardashian. “Yes, bad and good. But fuck, it’s extraordinary.”
