Even before Lamar Odom was found unresponsive in a Nevada brothel Tuesday, the former NBA champion’s life had been repeatedly touched by tragedy and losses that cut him so deeply he once contemplated quitting basketball.
“Death always seems to be around me,” Odom told the Los Angeles Times in 2011. “I’ve been burying people for a long time.”
Born in South Jamaica, Queens, Odom grew up during the height of the crack cocaine epidemic.
His father, a heroin addict, left the family when Odom was young, and his mother died of colon cancer when he was 12 years old.