Sports Editor column
I will not pretend to know Lamar Odom. He is a man that plays basketball and plays it well, although the correct verb may actually be “played.” Odom, a product of Christ the King High School in New York had a remarkable 15-year NBA career, punctuated by two NBA Championships alongside Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles. However, ever since Odom left L.A. in December 2011, he has not shown the promise of the first ten years of his career. Odom has unceremoniously dropped off the face of the NBA landscape and has been unemployed since his departure from the Knicks in Summer 2014.
Odom’s story is a unique one. He is an exquisite talent and has been an essential part of some great teams, but his personal life has cast a long shadow over his NBA career. It is important to note that Odom has ascended to the upper echelon of the NBA despite being born to a heroin-addicted father and losing his mother at the age of twelve. Odom was mostly raised by his grandmother. From the time that Odom was a 6-foot-10 prodigy at Christ the King, he has been dogged by personal tragedy and as of late by both the sports media and the poisonous world of tabloids such as TMZ.
These are all facts about a complicated and enigmatic man. Facts are harder to come by when talking about Odom, especially as of late as the internet has exploded in a cacophony of voices surrounding Odom’s hospitalization due to a drug overdose. A week ago, Odom was found unconscious in a Las Vegas brothel. Chemical testing at a Las Vegas area hospital found that a cocktail of drugs had been in his system, including cocaine. The incident has catapulted the life of Lamar Odom back into the spotlight. Odom’s relationship with Khloe Kardashian, which lasted for four years, adds an entire other dimension to the coverage of the most recent digression in Odom’s life. Odom’s entanglement with Khloe Kardashian has resulted with a hefty archive of TMZ reporters harassing Odom on the streets of L.A and Las Vegas.
Lamar Odom’s precipitous fall from the N.B.A has occurred against a backdrop of media frenzy, but his fall is at its core a story of human fragility. In a 2013 Twitter and Instagram spree, Odom posted this message in regards to his father: “He is my downfall! His own demons may be the ONLY thing he gave 2 me.” Odom is struggling with the realities of an absent father in a very painful and sadly very public manner. It almost seems as though Odom’s prowess on the basketball court has acted as a curse in many areas of his life. Stories like Odom’s are playing out every day in America and to many it seems unfathomable that a man that once seemed so invincible, so powerful, so in control could end up on the floor of a brothel wrestling with what could have been the last moments of his life.
Odom seemed untouchable in his greatest moments as a Laker. Alongside Kobe, Pau Gasol, Derek Fisher, and Phil Jackson Odom had found a home in the NBA and had some awe-inspiring moments as a Laker. Odom had the size of many NBA centers and moved with the grace of a point guard. Over his career with the Lakers, he averaged a respectable 33 percent from beyond the arc. He was a serious threat and even garnered recognition as the Sixth Man of the Year in 2011. The lesson, if there is one from what we are witnessing Odom go through, is that the superhero-esque talents of athletes do not remove them from the cold, dark world of human life.
In addition to the loss of his mother, Odom has been forced to deal with the death of his 6-year-old son who, in 2006, died of sudden infant death syndrome. When Odom left the stable system of support that he enjoyed in L.A., his career and personal life careened out of control on a very public stage. During most of his stint with the Dallas Mavericks, the entire camera crew from “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” was filming for the show. The otherworldly talent of Lamar Odom was gone, the air had left the building, the lights of the Staples Center were long gone.
In an interview with Chris Palmer, formerly of ESPN, Odom talked to the life of an NBA star, “It’s past tricky. The world’s not being honest. Just because that ball going in don’t mean it’s easy. What if it wasn’t going in?” Once the ball stopped going in for Lamar Odom, his world began to crumble with each passing poor performance. In his last NBA season with the Clippers in 2012-13 Odom averaged a mere four points.
While the grand spectacle of professional sports can create larger than life superstars, it also acts to disguise the most human elements of athletes’ lives. When athletes are pushing the limits of human physicality on a nightly basis it is easy to forget that so many struggle with the basic elements of existence. All humans yearn for the love of a parent, the warmth of family, and to see their children grow up. Two years removed from his last NBA game, Odom has been forced to come face to face with many of the personal demons that dogged him throughout his career. I have never met Odom and probably never will, but as a lover of sports and as a human being I hope Odom can find his way back into the world, because he has a whole lot more living to do beyond his NBA career.