Is Lamar Odom back on drugs?
By Brad Weiss
Lamar Odom recently cheated death, after being found unconcisous in a Nevada brothel. Have the demons returned?
For any athlete, a second chance is sometimes all they need to make things right. Whether it is an injury or just a bad situation, most elite stars will find the motivation to get back on the right track. For Lamar Odom, who is battling a different demon, he appears to be wasting his second chance at life.
At one point, Odom was one of the better players in the NBA. A two-time NBA champion with the Los Angeles Lakers, he appeared to be made for Hollywood, even capturing the NBA Sixth Man of the Year Award in 2011.
However, that would be his last year playing for the Lakers, and his life and career have derailed in a big way since then.
In 2009, the year of his first championship with the Lakers, Odom married Khloe Kardashian, one of the stars of the hit reality TV show, Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Khloe and Lamar would get their own show in 2011, as Khloe and Lamar debuted on April 10.
Their show would last only two seasons, as the two decided not to return for a third so that Lamar could focus on his NBA career.
It didn’t help, and after a horrendous stint with the Dallas Mavericks in 2012, Odom returned to the team that drafted him, the Los Angeles Clippers, for the 2013 season. In 2014, he had small stints in the Euroleague and the Spanish League before coming back stateside to join his hometown New York Knicks, though he never appeared in a game.
Odom has had troubles with the law in the past, including a DUI arrest in 2013. However, since leaving the NBA his life has become a train wreck, culminating in an almost life-ending trip to a Nevada brothel in October of 2015. Odom was found unconscious at the Love Ranch, located in Crystal, Nevada, and was then placed in a medically induced coma. Against all odds, he survived, though he does not seem to have learned his lesson.
Recently, TMZ reported that his friends have spoken out about being scared for his safety. During a recent attempt to help him, which took place at Odom’s home in Calabasas, his friends noticed drug paraphernalia scattered all over the place. The mess included crack pipes, baggies, and roaches. His friends fear he thinks he is invincible, but the next slip up could be his last.
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He has already lost his wife, who refiled for divorce recently, and his life could be next. Still only 36 years old, Odom has time to turn his life around, but it will be up to him to take the second chance he was given.
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