The Lamar Odom of reality TV was a charming man. He was a Kardashian, and it's easy to see how he folded into the family. It’s easy to see why they would rush to his hospital bedside — without cameras on — especially his estranged wife, Khloe. And it's easy to see why so many people who only knew Odom from "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" would be hoping for his well-being today.
I watched three episodes of “Khloe & Lamar,” the spinoff show focusing on the couple, plus parts of several episodes of “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” last night. I’d never seen either show and was curious what kind of man had been represented in those years on reality television. What I found was a man with a hard edge but deep passion. In one episode, he is forced to handle his best friend’s mistakes in a business venture. In another, he breaks down upon hearing he’s been traded to the Mavericks. In another, he smirks and informs Khloe that he’d like to name a future son “Bourré” after the card game.
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Across the world today are people who have thought, hoped, prayed and wished the best for Odom as he remains on life support in a Las Vegas hospital after losing consciousness at a legal brothel. Some of these people knew Odom personally. Others watched his beautiful and understated basketball career, from a distance or in the seats of Staples Center. But many knew Odom first and foremost as Khloe Kardashian’s estranged husband, perhaps an ignoble title but every bit a part of the man’s life.
The sports world has taken that as an affront. The suggestion is that defining Odom as Kardashian's husband somehow demeans the man. My answer to that: Is defining him as a Sixth Man of the Year or two-time NBA champion any better? Is what he did on the basketball court all that much more important? The man isn't forgotten when we use descriptors. The man is explained and contextualized.
The era of collective conscience has long past, if it ever existed at all. We operate within our own contexts, our own interests and our own frames of reference. The Internet and 300-plus cable TV channels only further enable the segregation — we know what we choose to know, in the formats we choose to know it, with apps automated to give us more of what we want without all that news-judgment clutter.
The backlash in the basketball world against Khloe Kardashian and her family and their reality show and their fame and their media attention is predictable. That doesn’t make it fair. That doesn’t mean they put Odom in this hospital. Odom is depicted as the love of Khloe's life in several episodes, even ones dealing with the complicated fallout of the relationship.
It’s easy to bind Odom’s predicament with his Hollywood turn, less so to separate out the facts. An episode of “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” drew blame in a TMZ report for what set Odom off on the binge that rendered him unconscious. But the facts in that account are murky, as is to be expected when drawing tips from anonymous (but likely paid) sources in a legal Nevada brothel. As Jezebel clarified, the “Kardashians” moments mentioned by TMZ were featured earlier this season — and hardly qualify as bombshells of mischaracterization.
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Odom’s relationship with Khloe undoubtedly is confused. They have maintained contact even as the final paperwork on their divorce went through this summer, and she was at his bedside and reportedly distraught as of Wednesday. (Per a TMZ report, the divorce has yet to be finalized, and Kardashian still may be making medical decisions.) But several close to Odom have gone on the record to speak to Kardashian’s positive influence on his life, and their TV show suggests a love, albeit one that has come with pain for both.
“I thought, personally, I thought Khloe was great for him,” Pelicans coach and longtime Odom mentor Alvin Gentry told Sporting News. “I thought she really loved him and wanted to protect him and take care of him. But on his side, he didn’t know how to handle that. He never had anybody who was just there to protect him and didn’t want anything. All she wanted from him — I felt like, she just wanted Lamar to love her back. It is a sad situation.”
The blame is misplaced. Odom himself would tell you that. He’s railed against TMZ and other gossip outlets in the past, and they are the ones who have forcibly interjected themselves on his post-playing and post-divorce life. But that’s the price of fame.
Odom is important to many more people right now because of who he was married to and the TV shows he starred in. But we can't lose sight that he only is important to 99 percent of us, the NBA audience, because he was one of the few good enough to make it into the league. For a man who grew up in poverty and tragedy, he could have fallen through the cracks much sooner. We would not be talking about that Lamar Odom.
We got to choose how we found Lamar Odom, be it through basketball or television or gossip pages. We were able to assign our own emotions to his trouble. But regardless of the path, regardless of the appropriate qualifier, we all want the same thing: We want Odom to smile again.
