Lamar Odom’s rock bottom has been a long time coming.
The ex-NBA player’s downward spiral started with an alleged
crack-cocaine addiction he couldn’t shake — likely unraveling his
marriage to reality star Khloe Kardashian and a promising basketball
career.
A summer of grief recently filled Lamar and Khloe’s thoughts as drugs
led to the deaths of two good friends: Jamie Sangouthai and Bobby
Heyward.
Lamar's father, Joe, has blamed his son's drug problems on the Kardashians and says marrying Khloe was the "worst mistake." |
Odom was “beside himself” when a flesh-eating virus passed on through a dirty needle killed Sangouthai in June, but a week later, Heyward died of a suspected drug overdose.
In a tweet, Khloe even asked “when does it stop.”
A pair of prostitutes at David Hof’s famously legal bordello found Odom
passed out on the floor and foaming at the mouth. The 35-year-old had
last ingested a herbal substitute for Viagra, but it’s not clear if
another drug or alcohol cocktail contributed to his medical emergency.
Even Hof fears Odom “may not make it.”
Odom spent three weeks in a San Diego rehab between seasons with the
Dallas Mavericks and Los Angeles Clippers, but speculation over an
addiction costing Odom anywhere from $800 to $1,000 a day marred the player’s reputation.
The New York Knicks briefly signed the Queens native in 2014, but
passed him over for lack of professionalism at the end of the season.
“Lamar was unable to uphold the standards to return as an NBA player,”
Knicks president Phil Jackson said last year, ending Odom’s NBA career.
The offseason that year is when a DUI arrest along a Los Angeles
freeway made matters worse at home for Odom. Khloe reportedly staged an
intervention, pressuring her hubby to clean up his act.
Their spousal squabble that month sent Odom running to a hotel to kick
his habit with friends, but his three-day disappearance only led Khloe’s
family to believe he had relapsed.
“She really feels that this problem is out of control, and she’s hurt
that he won’t get help,” a source told People shortly before Odom
checked into rehab.
Khloe filed for divorce months later citing “irreconcilable differences,” but that didn't stop her from flying to Las Vegas to be by Odom's side overnight.
Odom’s father, Joe, chimed in with his own opinion about their personal
affairs, publicly blaming the Kardashian clan for his son’s drug
problem. Odom referenced his father’s history of heroin addiction in an
episode of the couple’s “Lamar and Khloe” short-lived reality series.
“He wasn’t there 2 raise me. He was absent ALL of my life due to his own demons,” Odom revealed in an online rant before enjoying Thanksgiving with his dad instead of Khloe.
Those “demons” were the only thing Odom says he inherited from his father.
Joe Odom now believes someone drugged Odom.
One of Lamar’s first run-ins with law enforcement was as a 17-year-old
when Las Vegas cops cited the University of Las Vegas-Nevada student for
soliciting prostitution during an undercover sting. He had been kicked
off the school’s basketball team a month before, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported in 1997.
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