The new Netflix documentary, “Untold: The Death & Life of Lamar Odom,” chronicles the NBA star’s history.
The two-time NBA champion has endured a public battle with addiction, including a well-known 2015 incident in which he was found unconscious in a brothel.
“This documentary traces the life of Lamar Odom, from his rise to NBA fame and marriage to Khloé Kardashian to his near-fatal overdose in a Nevada brothel,” Netflix said.
In the documentary, Odom, 46, examines the overdose, his future and his marriage to Kardashian. The two tied the knot in 2009 and were married until their divorce in 2016.
What happened to Lamar Odom in 2015? The doc shares new details
Odom, who played in the NBA for 14 seasons from 1999 until 2013, was hospitalized in 2015 after he was found unconscious following an overdose while at a brothel in Crystal, Nevada. He suffered kidney failure, multiple heart attacks and strokes. (Odom has specified that he had six heart attacks and 12 strokes.)
He was placed in a coma and on life support before he became conscious again three days later.
Kardashian had signed divorce papers prior to his overdose, but the split had not yet been finalized. Kardashian, who remained by his side after the medical episode, said she had a sort of premonition that something bad would happen to him.
“I was doing a photo shoot for People magazine, and the night before, I had a dream about Lamar, that he was dead, and I was at his funeral, and I was sobbing,” Kardashian said in the documentary.
She says her sister, Kim Kardashian, was the one to let her know what had happened to him.
“In my interview, Kim called me three times,” she said. “I get in the car, I call her, and she’s like, ‘Lamar overdosed. He’s in Vegas.’ And I just remember screaming.”
The incident was preceded by years of drug use, Odom said in the documentary. Kardashian said she was aware of his drug use and worked to keep it a secret from the public. “I was such an enabler without knowing I was an enabler. But I just felt such a responsibility to cover this up, hold it together and protect him,” she said.
Khloe Kardashian said Odom’s late father, Joe Odom, wanted to take his son off of life support.
“I remember walking in around that time, and I kid you not, it was a scene out of a movie, and I’m like, ‘Sorry, Joe, I’m still his wife. What do you need?’ And Joe wanted a pair of Nikes and $100 at a hotel room for the night. And Joe left and never came back,” she recalled.
“This is my husband. Through sickness and health, I have to be there for him. I have to show up for him, and I was going to do everything I could to make sure that he had the best fighting chance. And I just trusted myself more than I trusted anyone in his circle.”
Odom’s children, son LJ and daughter Destiny, also were interviewed in the documentary and said they visited the hospital with the understanding that they would be saying goodbye to their father.
“When we went into the hospital room, it was hard seeing him all tubed up and everything,” Destiny said. “He was so swollen. I remember how swollen he was.”
“I was like, ‘You can’t leave. Like we still have memories to make,'” Destiny continued.
What does Lamar Odom say about the incident in the documentary?
Odom spoke about waking up after three days of a coma, “ripping tubes out of my neck.”
“I still got the scar from it,” he said.
Kardashian said he looked up at her, said, “Hey, baby,” and fell back asleep.
Odom spoke about the difficulty of the recovery process, calling it humiliating. “I won two championships. I’m Lamar Odom. I can’t walk, can’t talk,” he said.
Kardashian spent four months at the hospital by his side. “We were determined to get him walking and moving again,” she said over footage of his recovery process. He eventually learned how to walk again.
Odom acknowledged the matter weighed heavily on Kardashian.
“It probably was harder for her, because I couldn’t say thank you, or I appreciate you. Or couldn’t show any — I wouldn’t even cry,” he said.
“It’s like I was a heartbeat,” he said.
How the 2015 incident played into his divorce From Kardashian
“Untold” shows how Odom’s drug use and the 2015 incident led to his divorce from Kardashian.
In the leadup to an intervention about Odom’s drug use, Kardashian said she was encouraged to offer up divorce as an ultimatum. She did, actually not believing he would take her up on it. To her surprise, he did.
“Everyone around me was like, ‘He’ll never say he wants the divorce.’ We do the intervention. I give my speech. And he was like, ‘OK, all I want is my passport, and yeah, let’s get the … divorce,’ ” she said, adding that she “didn’t want” a divorce.
After caring for Odom at the hospital, she rented a house for Odom to continue his recovery. However, when she caught him using drugs again, she ended the relationship.
“He was playing me so I can continue this lifestyle for him. I said, ‘By Monday, you need out of this house. I’m done. I’m not paying for a thing, and I never want to speak to you again,’” she said.
They had a tense reunion in the Season 6 premiere of “The Kardashians,” speaking for the first time in nine years.
“I took you through a lot, huh?” he said.
“I can’t say that was the easiest time,” she responded.
“No, not for me either,” he said. “Yeah, I f–d up … with you. I love you for trying your hardest with me, man.”
Where Is Lamar Odom Now?
Odom, at the end of the documentary, speaks about his future plans.
“Before I die I promise I’m going to learn how to swim and go back to school because I got a chance right now to coach in college really soon, and probably after that, probably in the NBA, if I want to,” he said.
“But I really want to use coaching college to go back to school. My grandma went back to school. She was 50 years old before graduating.”
Earlier this year, Odom was arrested in Las Vegas for driving under the influence. A lawyer entered a not guilty plea in March on Odom’s behalf. Odom’s manager, Gina Rodriguez, told People he checked into rehab to address marijuana use. TODAY.com can confirm the documentary completed filming before Odom’s 2026 arrest.
Odom spoke with USA Today ahead of the documentary’s release and said he was 60 days sober.
He likened revisiting his past for the documentary to “swimming in a cesspool of trauma.”
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