Lamar Odom’s most recent opportunity to get his fledgling basketball career back on track came with the New York Knicks last year.
For his first official order of business as team president, Phil Jackson signed his former Los Angeles Lakers pupil to a non-guaranteed contract in April 2014. Though Odom reportedly began working out with the Knicks the following July, he was waived just shortly thereafter – and hasn’t been given a chance by another NBA team in the interim.
But before the 2011 Sixth Man of the Year was found unconscious at a Nevada brothel on Tuesday afternoon, he apparently had ambitions of returning to the league. Trainer Fareed Samad told The Daily Mail that he’d recently been working out with Odom, who’d been “doing so well and was on his way back” to playing shape.
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Another of Odom’s trainers told the British tabloid that he was “training hard and dropped 35 pounds.”
The 35-year-old’s last NBA stops, with the Dallas Mavericks and Los Angeles Clippers in 2011-12 and 2012-13, respectively, were marked by poor fitness and a questionable commitment to the game more than anything else. He was banished from all team activities and subsequently released by Dallas prior to the 2012 postseason, and a shell of his former self with the Clippers one year later.
Nevertheless, there was still reason to believe that Odom had a place in the league – albeit as a deep reserve – if he could exorcise personal demons and reach a level of fitness befitting a professional athlete. That cautious optimism, of course, has been rendered irrelevant by the ongoing fight for his life.
But it also doesn’t matter anymore. Much more important is the encouraging knowledge that he remains capable of living a healthy, fruitful lifestyle. And if Odom survives this latest tragedy, here’s hoping he’s able to find that part of himself again – whether professional basketball is involved or otherwise.
[Via The Daily Mail]
