Lamar Odom hasn’t lived an easy life. The former NBA star, who earned the Sixth Man of the Year Award in 2011 as well as multiple NBA Championships in 2009 and 2010, told the Los Angeles Times in 2011 that “death always seems to be around me” — and it has.
Born into poverty in Queens, N.Y., in 1979 was abandoned by his father, Joe Odom, a heroin addict, at a young age. By the time he was 12, Odom had also lost his mom, Cathy, to colon cancer; he depended on his grandmother, Mildred, to raise him.
A naturally gifted athlete, Odom found success in basketball, playing for the University of Rhode Island before being drafted in the first round by the Los Angeles Clippers in 1999. He want on to play for the Miami Heat, Dallas Mavericks, and most notably, the Los Angeles Lakers. He last played — briefly — for the New York Knicks; the NYC team dropped him in 2014.
But tragedy didn’t escape Khloe Kardashian’s future husband. Jayden, his son with ex-girlfriend Liza Morales, died in 2006 at the age of 6 months from SIDS while sleeping in his crib in New York City.
Odom, (also father to Destiny and Lamar Jr.), then lost his cousin Curtis Smith, who was shot and killed in 2011. The day after his cousin’s funeral, Odom was in a car accident that resulted in the death of a 15-year-old pedestrian.
Despite his seemingly happy marriage to Kardashian — which played out on Keeping Up With the Kardashians and their spinoff, Khloe & Lamar — Odom struggled with his own personal demons, including substance abuse, and Kardashian filed for divorce from Odom in December 2013.
This past June, he lost two of his best friends within one week, Jamie Sangouthai and Bobby Heyward, to drug overdoses.
Odom, 35, is currently in critical condition at Sunrise Hospital in Las Vegas after being found unconscious at brothel Love Ranch South on Oct. 13. Click here for everything we know so far about his status and watch the video above.
