Lamar Odom is once again revisiting the night that nearly cost him his life, and this time he is challenging one of the most widely accepted assumptions about what happened in Las Vegas in 2015.
Appearing on the Cousins podcast with Tracy McGrady and Vince Carter, Odom delivered a detailed and unfiltered account of the hours leading up to his collapse at the Love Ranch brothel in Nevada. Contrary to the belief that he had been heavily using drugs that day, Odom insisted the overdose did not follow a binge.
Lamar Odom: “Considering what I’ve been through being poisoned in that brothel, because I didn’t have drugs that day. I didn’t take any drugs that day. Keep it real with you. I remmber because I was mad as f**k. I didn’t have any cocaine. I just signed divorce papers with my wife.”
Vince Carter: “Hold on. What do you mean you ain’t have no drugs that day?”
Lamar Odom: “Listen to what I’m saying. I was living in Vegas for a week and a half, so I ain’t even know where to go get no drugs from. I just signed divorce papers. I said yo, I’m going to the Bunny Ranch…but I ain’t have no cocaine to take…so how am I gonna party, get it in with no cocaine…I was tight.”
“So I went, got there, gave them the black card, $75,000 I put down, and said, ‘let’s keep this a secret.’ You know what I’m saying? Because I was trying to protect their brand.”
Tracy McGrady: “Huh? $75,000??”
Lamar Odom: “Just keeping it real with you. 75 grand and say ‘Yo, let’s keep this a secret. You feel me? I don’t want them to know that I’m here. I just signed the divorce papers to their beautiful daughter and her sister. Sat down, had a drink, I woke up three days later. I couldn’t even talk when I woke up.”
Vince Carter: “You sat down at what? The bar?”
Lamar Odom: “No, just the little right by the bed. I remember I sat on the bed, sat the drink down a little table stand. I woke up three days later, man…That’s all I remember.”
The medical aftermath was staggering. Odom has since revealed that he suffered 12 strokes and six heart attacks during the incident, a sequence doctors described as nearly impossible to survive. He had to relearn how to walk and speak. At one point, he could not control basic bodily functions.
For a two-time NBA champion and former Sixth Man of the Year, the physical and emotional humility was overwhelming.
The Las Vegas collapse, though, was not the origin of his addiction. On the same podcast, Odom traced his substance abuse back to his teenage years in New York due to the loss of his mom.
Despite battling addiction, Odom built a 14-year NBA career, averaging 13.3 points, 8.4 rebounds, and 3.7 assists while winning championships with the Los Angeles Lakers in 2009 and 2010. Still, he believes his substance abuse prevented him from reaching Hall of Fame heights.
Now years removed from the brothel incident, Odom speaks with a clarity rooted in survival. He is no longer deflecting or minimizing. Instead, he is dissecting the decisions, the trauma, and the environment that shaped him.
Whether one believes his recollection of that night or not, the fact remains that he came closer to death than almost any athlete in modern sports history and somehow lived to tell the story in his own words.
