In October of 2015, as the Los Angeles Lakers were in the midst of preseason during Kobe Bryant’s final season in the NBA, everything around the franchise came to a pause. Lamar Odom was in a coma, found unconscious in a brothel in Nevada after a drug binge that nearly killed him.
The news hit the Lakers hard, with Kobe and childhood-friend Metta World Peace taking the news the hardest. It seemed unlikely that Odom would make it out of the dire situation alive, but somehow, someway, he did.
Fast forward to June of 2017, and Odom’s hanging out with Lakers head coach Luke Walton at the team’s training facility while the franchise works out incoming prospects ahead of the NBA Draft.