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Story highlights
- Roxanne Jones met Lamar Odom who was still new to LA, on a 2000 segment for ESPN. He didn't like city, thought people were fake
- She says in his rags to riches story he seems to have lost himself, was drawn into Hollywood culture, and something was terribly wrong
Roxanne Jones, a founding editor of ESPN Magazine and former vice president at ESPN, has worked as a producer and as a reporter at the New York Daily News and The Philadelphia Inquirer. She was named a 2010 Woman of the Year by Women in Sports and Events. Jones is a co-author of "Say It Loud: An Illustrated History of the Black Athlete" and CEO of the Push Marketing Group. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
(CNN)I first met Lamar Odom back in 2000. I was a producer for an ESPN show called "The Life" and we were out in Los Angeles to shoot a segment with him. He was playing with the LA Clippers then, living the rags-to-riches story of a city kid who made it off the playground and into the big-time. And we wanted to show fans how Lamar -- beautiful, talented and rich -- was living every man's dream.
The problem was it wasn't Lamar's dream.
Roxanne Jones
"I hate it out here. I do not want to be here ... you have to drive every place, the traffic is horrible and the people are fake. I hate fake people," I recall Lamar saying that summer day. He did not look happy at all.
Lamar Odom never wanted Hollywood. He just wanted to play ball, to be a basketball star, a legend.
But somehow his dream veered terribly off track. Blindsided by the harsh lights, the soft-spoken, overly-polite basketball phenom from Queens, lost his way out in la-la land.
And today, Odom, a two-time NBA champion with the LA Lakers and estranged husband of Khloe Kardashian was reportedly barely holding onto life after he was found unconscious at a legal Nevada brothel, the Love Ranch, where he had apparently partied for three days. Authorities there said that Odom had used cocaine and an employee at the brothel told 911 operators that she'd seen him ingest more than 10 herbal supplements over his visit there, apparently used to enhance his sexual performance.
Joe Smith on Lamar Odom's drug use: I had no idea 06:27
It's a sad, tawdry tale that reads more like part of the tacky reality TV script that became his life. And I can't help feeling that the Lamar I knew deserved better than this. I know he wanted more than this for his life.
I didn't know the reality star Lamar -- the guy whose life became a mockery in front of millions of Americans with his roles in "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" and then "Khloe & Lamar." I never could stand to watch those shows. I didn't want to see what had happened to Lamar's life.
I'd had a taste of it on that trip for ESPN. "I wanted to play ball back East, closer to home. I don't fit in here," he told us then in a moment of rare honesty as he chauffeured my crew around in his shiny new SUV. But we ignored his pain. No one wanted to hear his problems. My assignment was to tell a happy story so we kept the conversation light, as we stopped at Lamar's favorite designer shopping malls and fancy sidewalk cafes, filled with too many three-second celebrities to count.
I wonder now when Lamar, who was so self-aware at only 20 years old, lost his ability to tell the difference between the pretenders and the genuine people who cared about him and wanted him to succeed. Where were the people who saw him as more than just a commodity? And if I'm honest, I know that I was no better than those users that day -- too caught up in my career and pleasing my bosses to care about Lamar's problems.
Lamar was drafted by the NBA in 1999, and his road to the league had not been easy. Throughout his high school years, according to an article in the New York Times, he'd been chased by seedy scouts and faced harsh media scrutiny. He'd transferred to three different schools during his senior year in high school and then was forced to leave Nevada-Las Vegas University after he was involved in a test-score scandal. Odom ended up at University of Rhode Island and entered the NBA draft after his first year there.
When I met him in 2000, there were already whispers that Lamar liked to smoke a little too much weed. And soon the drug rumors grew louder as he was fined for abusing the NBA drug policy two times in his first four seasons.
Photos: The Kardashian clan
Khloe Kardashian and boyfriend Tristan Thompson were the subject of reports in April that Thompson had been spending time with other women during her pregnancy. Let's "katch" up with the rest of her famous family.
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Photos: The Kardashian clan
The most famous of the Kardashian clan is undoubtedly Kim Kardashian West, who has gained publicity for everything from "breaking the Internet" to bleaching her hair blonde to ... well, pretty much everything she does gains publicity. At the least, she can usually be seen with her family on the E! series "Keeping Up With the Kardashians." The middle Kardashian daughter is married to rap star Kanye West and has a daughter, North, born in 2013. She gave birth to a son, Saint, in 2015 and in January 2018 daughter Chicago was born via surrogate.
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Photos: The Kardashian clan
Kourtney Kardashian is the oldest of the four Kardashian siblings. She works with her sisters in the fashion business. She and Scott Disick were together from 2006 to 2015 and have three children.
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Photos: The Kardashian clan
Khloé Kardashian is the youngest of the Kardashian daughters and along with Khloe has starred in some spinoffs of their family's famous reality show. She had been married to former NBA star Lamar Odom but filed for divorce from him for the second time in May 2016. She previously filed in 2013, but put the divorce on hold when he was found unconscious in a Nevada brothel. The pair settled their divorce in December 2016. A year later she confirmed she was expecting her first child with her NBA player boyfriend Tristan Thompson.
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Photos: The Kardashian clan
Rob Kardashian has been on "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" but has been uncomfortable in the spotlight his sisters love so much. He dated pop star Adrienne Bailon for a time and performed on season 13 of "Dancing With the Stars" but has generally kept a low profile (for a Kardashian, anyway). He was involved with model and personality Blac Chyna and their show "Rob & Chyna" followed the couple's tumultuous relationship and the arrival of their daughter, Dream. The couple split and in July 2017 Chyna was granted a temporary restraining order after he posted personal info about her on social media.
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Photos: The Kardashian clan
Kylie Jenner, the youngest of the clan, has also made her mark with modeling and social media. In 2015, she made headlines with a relationship with rapper Tyga. In February 2018 she gave birth to her first child, a daughter she and boyfriend rapper Travis Scott named Stormi.
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In March 2018, Kendall Jenner answered rumors that she is gay in an interview with Vogue. Fans have watched the model grow up on "Keeping Up With the Kardashians," and she has made the most of the opportunity, hosting awards shows, endorsing products and walking high fashion runways.
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Photos: The Kardashian clan
Kris Jenner, the matriarch of the family, was married to Los Angeles lawyer Robert Kardashian until 1991 and then married Olympian Bruce Jenner a month after the divorce. She's hosted a talk show, "Kris," and been a regular presence on "Keeping Up." She split from Bruce in September 2014; he later transitioned to Caitlyn Jenner.
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Photos: The Kardashian clan
Caitlyn Jenner shot to fame as the winner of the 1976 Olympic men's decathlon, becoming "the world's greatest athlete." An occasional actor and longtime broadcaster, he married Kris, his third wife, in 1991. The pair have two children together, Kendall and Kylie. In 2015, she announced that she was transgender.
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Photos: The Kardashian clan
Brandon Jenner, Bruce Jenner's son by his second wife, Linda Thompson, had a reality show even before the rest of the family: 2005's "The Princes of Malibu" with his brother, Brody. Brandon is now in a music duo with his wife, Leah Felder, the daughter of Eagles guitarist Don Felder.
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Photos: The Kardashian clan
Brody Jenner has practically grown up in front of the cameras. Before "Keeping Up With the Kardashians," he was in "The Princes of Malibu" with brother Brandon, "The Hills" on MTV and "Bromance," a "Hills" spinoff. He's the younger son of Bruce Jenner and Linda Thompson.
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Photos: The Kardashian clan
The family patriarch was Robert Kardashian, a Los Angeles attorney who first became famous to the rest of the country as one of O.J. Simpson's best friends, the man who hosted Simpson after the 1994 murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. Kardashian, who's the father of Kim, Khloe, Kourtney and Rob, married Kris in 1978 and divorced her 13 years later. Robert Kardashian died in 2003.
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Hip-hop star Kanye West was taken into the family orbit after he started seeing Kim Kardashian in 2012. The couple had a daughter, North, the next year and married in May 2014.
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Photos: The Kardashian clan
Scott Disick had been with Kourtney Kardashian since 2006. The two have three children. Disick has struggled in the glare of the Kardashian spotlight, admitting to anger issues and getting into tiffs with other members of the family. The couple eventually split amid rumors that he cheated.
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Photos: The Kardashian clan
Odom married Khloe in 2009, but despite getting a reality series of their own -- "Khloe & Lamar" -- the marriage struggled. Khloe filed for divorce in 2013. Odom, who won the NBA Sixth Man of the Year award in 2011, was waived by the New York Knicks in 2014 after a 15-year professional career.
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Photos: The Kardashian clan
Khloe Kardashian and Cleveland Cavaliers basketball player Tristan Thompson went public with their relationship in September 2016. The pair weathered some criticism early on as Thompson's ex-girlfriend, Jordan Craig, was pregnant with their child at the time.
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By the time I met up with him in L.A., Lamar clearly understood the TV game. He put his problems aside, cranked up his favorite song -- R. Kelly's "I Believe I Can Fly," and smiled for the cameras. And we all pretended it was just another beautiful day. But I knew something was wrong, especially after an agitated Lamar, who had just gotten his license days earlier, crashed his SUV in the mall parking lot. Little damage was done but Lamar seemed to be struggling.
Our paths would cross over the years at basketball games, parties and other events and I wondered how he was doing. After reaching the height of his professional basketball career with the Lakers in 2011 he was traded to Dallas. He bounced around the league and played overseas before retiring in 2014. And the downward spiral of his life and problems with his addiction appeared to continue.
"I wish he had just come home and surrounded himself with the genuine, loving people who have been there for you from the beginning," Erick Barkley, a former teammate at Christ the King Regional High School in Queens, told the Times
None of us can know how our later years will pass. My prayer for Lamar is that he will find peace.
That he will find the comfort he was seeking when he sang his favorite song the day I met him:
"I used to think that I could not go on;
And life was nothing but an awful song;
But now I know the meaning of true love;
I'm leaning on the everlasting arms."