If you fancy yourself a reality TV aficionado, then you’re sure to remember all the ups and downs that former NBA star Lamar Odom and Khloé Kardashian displayed during “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” in the early 2000s. And now, their relationship is getting renewed interest thanks to Odom’s shocking new Netflix documentary, “The Death and Life of Lamar Odom.”
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But if you don’t have the time to sit and watch it, don’t you worry. Here, we’ll breakdown some of the biggest moments that transpired between the two as well as some of the other trauma that played a part in their tumultuous marriage.
Lamar’s Drug Problems Started Way Before He Met Khloe
As revealed by Odom’s high school sweetheart Liza Morales, not too long after he was drafted into the NBA to the Los Angeles Clippers in 1999, he struggled with balancing his newfound fame, fortune, and access. His issues with drugs would present their first challenge in 2001 after he was suspended for several games for violating the league’s anti-drug policy. He suffered a second offense just eight months later and was subsequently suspended for that again.
Five years later, Odom would turn to drugs again after the third child he shared with Morales died at just six months old, having suffered from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) in June 2006. While Morales leaned on her faith and therapy to get her through, Odom turned to deeper drug use.
Lamar Dealt With Family Trauma Early On
To say that Odom had a complicated upbringing would be putting it lightly. As revealed in the documentary, his father Joe was a heroin addict for a large part of his life which made for a strained relationship between the two. Odom’s mother Cathy sadly passed away of colon cancer when he was just 12-years-old.
What’s more is that around the same time he was dealing with the aforementioned death of his infant son in 2006, he was also coming to grips with the death of one of his aunts, according to the New York Times.
Lamar and Khloé Got Together After One Month of Dating
In news that shocked both of their respective families, Odom and Kardashian tied the knot after just 30 days of dating in September 2009. The move came as such a surprise that Odom’s own kids failed to show up to the wedding. While he had previously portrayed that Morales had refused for them to come, in the doc, his daughter Destiny and son LJ made it clear that the choice was theirs alone.
“I just didn’t wanna be a show pony or anything like that,” Destiny explained. “If you wanna get married in front of, like, a hundred people and all these cameras, that’s totally cool, and it’s on you.”
Added LJ: “I never even met her. I don’t think he told me he was marrying her.”
Odom’s Motive for Marrying Khloé Was Bad From the Start
During one part of the documentary, Odom shared that a major factor in his decision to marry Kardashian was her lavish lifestyle. At the time, she and her family were budding reality TV stars and building their fame and wealth. Seeing as how he had already had a name and money for himself due to his then-great NBA career, linking up with them looked like a lucrative deal.
“I’m already Lamar Odom, and I’m just watching how she live and their lifestyle. I’m like, ‘I know this is where I wanna be. Like, ‘this is how I wanna live,’” Odom said. “I think that was like a power trip for me, ‘cause you took the power I had [as an NBA player], and then Kardashian power. When you add’em…”
He later added, “But I wasn’t really ready for all that power.”
Khloe Admitted to Being an ‘Enabler’ to Lamar’s Drug Addiction
In the documentary, Kardashian looked back on their relationship and the part she played by unintentionally “enabling” Odom while he was dealing with his drug abuse in an effort to protect him. In particular, she detailed how she would clean up behind him in hotel rooms—specifically getting rid of “spoons and tinfoil”—to keep the cleaning staff from selling a story and discovering his issues. She also said that she’d often look for him in “alleys” and “motels” knowing that he was somewhere getting high.
“I was such an enabler without knowing I was an enabler,” she said.
Kardashian also cited his family trauma, as a form of rationale for his behavior and explained that she felt she had a responsibility to try to “fix” him and “love him enough” so he’d choose differently.
“I remember just keeping all these secrets, and feeling horrible about myself,” she said.
She later added: “I was fighting every single day either to protect him, to not let him get caught, which sounds insane…. I didn’t sleep for years.”
Lamar’s Addiction Took a Scary Turn in 2011
Unfortunately, despite Kardashian’s best efforts, it wasn’t enough for Odom to kick his addiction. While things were already tough, things took a turn for the worse in 2011 when, after he was traded from the Los Angeles Lakers to the Dallas Mavericks, he hit drugs hard to cope.
Per Kardashian in the doc: “The drug use that transpired from the Dallas trade was monstrous… I had never seen so many drugs and such a dark aura around us.”
She later said that after that short-lived season and his return back to the LA Clippers (the team he was initially drafted by), Odom did so many drugs and overdosed a few times that she had to “pump his stomach.”
Lamar Chose His Addiction Over His Marriage to Khloé
In August 2013, Kardashian staged an intervention with Odom, giving him the ultimatum that he had to choose his addiction or his marriage, even though she wasn’t ready to end their relationship. However, based off encouragement from her friends, she was confident that given the high stakes, it would be enough for the basketball star to wake up and get his act together. Sadly, that wasn’t the case.
“I was advised to do this intervention, and the interventionist said, ‘You’re gonna go in there and tell him, ‘You need to go to rehab, and if you don’t stay for a three-month program,’ you’re gonna say you’re getting a divorce,’” Kardashian explained in the doc.
She later said: “Everyone around me was like, ‘he’ll never say he wants the divorce.’ We do the intervention. I give my speech. And he was like, ‘OK, all I want is my passport, and yeah, let’s get the f*cking divorce.’ I was like, looking around like, ‘wait. Wait. I don’t want the divorce. You guys [the interventionists] told me I have to say this.’ Lamar left immediately, was like, ‘We’re getting the f*cking divorce, and I’m never coming back here again.”
By December 2013, she officially filed for divorce.
Lamar’s Nevada Brothel Ordeal Made Headlines in the Worst Way
In news that most basketball fans will remember and Odom will never forget, in October 2015, he was found unresponsive in a Nevada brothel. The near-fatal moment saw him suffer 12 strokes and six heart attacks with doctors giving him a grim prognosis that he’d likely never walk or talk again. Employees at the brothel alleged that he took cocaine and “sex-performance enhancing” drugs before he fell ill, but Odom has consistently pushed back on that narrative and instead said that he felt he was poisoned and targeted.
“I didn’t have any cocaine to take to the brothel that day. And I was kind of f*cking heated that I just signed these divorce papers and I thought I was going to live out a young addict mind’s dream and go to this brothel with some cocaine and go all out that night. And that just wasn’t the case,” Odom said in the doc. “It was like a hit,” Odom says of what transpired at the Love Ranch. “Obviously, they missed. I don’t know if they want to finish the job.”
Odom stayed in the hospital for months and endured a three-day coma and months of rehabilitation.
Lamar’s Own Father Tried to Take Him Off Life Support, But Khloé Intervened
In a plot twist nobody saw coming, despite Odom’s father being absent from his life as a child, he somehow popped back up after Odom was rushed to the hospital following the brothel overdose incident.
While there, Odom’s dad tried to have him taken off life support. Thankfully, Kardashian stepped in at the knick of time.
“We get to the hospital. His dad was there. I assume, [he] thought, he’s now the beneficiary to Lamar,” she explained in the doc. “And Joe just said, ‘Don’t put him on life support. Turn those machines off.’ And I remember walking in around that time, and I kid you not, it was a scene out of a movie.”
She then went on to ask Odom’s dad what it was he wanted and made it clear that she was still his the NBA star’s wife as their divorce hadn’t been finalized yet.
“I’m like, ‘Sorry, Joe, I’m still his wife. What do you need?’ And Joe wanted a pair of Nikes and $100, and a hotel room for the night. And Joe left, and never came back,” Kardashian said.
Lamar Betrayed Khloé’s Trust Again Even After His Near-Fatal Hospital Stay
After all this, you would think that this traumatic event would bring Kardashian and Odom closer, but sadly that wasn’t the case, Determined to see him through betterment, Kardashian shared that four months after he got out of the hospital, she rented a home with a caregiver and a chef in order to help him ease back into his regular life.
However, when she randomly decided to visit him and check on his progress, she caught him in the act of smoking crack once again.
“Once you know the smell of crack, it’s the most identifiable, disgusting smell. And there’s nothing you can confuse it with. And I remember stopping by the house, and I smelled crack. He was in his bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed, smoking crack. And I just punched him in his face,” Kardashian explained.
That proved to be her breaking point with her expressing to the now-disgraced ball player how frustrated and betrayed she felt in that moment.
“‘I just put my life on hold to f*cking take care of you. How did you get this? You don’t have a f*cking phone. You can’t talk,’” she recalled her yelling at the time in the doc. “Well, lo and behold, he had a phone. He was better than I knew. He was playing me so I can continue this lifestyle for him. I said, ‘By Monday, you need out of this house. I’m done. I’m not paying for a thing, and I never want to speak to you again.’”
Lamar & Khloe’s Divorce Gets Finalized
After enduring his hardships for over five years, Kardashian withdrew her first petition for divorce from Odom in 2015, in an effort to help him in his recovery journey. However, after reaching her limit, she filed again in May 2016. The ink was officially dried that December.
Lamar and Khloe Remain on Shaky Ground
Even though Kardashian participated in this new doc and was very transparent, Odom revealed that the two haven’t spoken since 2025. That instance came when they all gathered together again for the widely-watched, “The Kardashians,” reunion special on Hulu that aired in February 2025.
Of that moment and thinking back on their complicated marriage, Odom said: “To me, it[the reunion] didn’t really go well. Felt like she was in attack mode, but I can’t really invalidate her feelings, and I won’t do that. I kind of almost felt sorry for her, in a sense, when I walked away from it. Even though I know she’s OK − she’s in a good place, she has kids now. But I could understand the hurt that I caused her.”
How Lamar Is Doing Now
While Odom has battled some DUI issues here recently, toward the end of March 2026, he revealed to USA Today that he was nearly 60 days sober, having not touched alcohol or marijuana since Jan. 28 of this year.
“I have a certain type of mental and physical endurance, but when it comes to getting high and escaping, I’m just like everyone else,” he told the outlet. “If I could just help the average person and give them faith and hope that they can overcome it, then that’s probably one of the reasons why the Lord spared me.”
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