Something tabloid media forgot about Lamar Odom

For a time, Lamar Odom was a basketball vagabond, well before he was hooked into the farce of reality TV.

Odom spent a year in the home district, attending and playing basketball for Redemption Christian Academy, then sought his fortunes elsewhere, which ultimately led to playing college ball at Rhode Island before an NBA career that included stops with Miami and the Lakers.

I never met the guy, even though Redemption was based in Troy. For a time, he was one of us. A local kid who'd eventually make it big.

After his playing days ended, as we've been reminded endlessly over the last week, Odom fell victim to what I call the Black Widow Sisters, aka the Kardashians. He fell in love with, then married and divorced Khloe. Ended up doing reality TV in lockstep with the Black Widows, who wouldn't know what a real job is if it came up and bit them.

You all know the story by now. Odom was found unconscious and unresponsive in a Las Vegas hotel last week. He's gradually recovering, thankfully, but, just as unfortunate is the fact that the Black Widows came to Vegas to exploit the situation for television. It's all they know, but that's worth a separate post another time.

ESPN's Scott Van Pelt took the wire services and tabloid media to task for forgetting how Odom became so famous in the first place with an on-air editorial......



Unfortunately, a wire service report in today's papers shows that Van Pelt's message didn't get through to the Associated Press, among others. Odom is still being referred to as a reality television star, not a former NBA player. It wasn't that long ago that he'd retired from the NBA and got tangled in the Kardashian web. Khloe's moved on, sinking her hooks in another NBA player, Houston's James Harden. The New York Post ripped the Black Widows to shreds the other day, and, to tell you the truth, after reading the piece, the perception I have is that these bimbos make a legitimately wealthy woman in their age group, Paris Hilton, look like a Girl Scout by comparison.

As far as the Kardorkians are concerned, to paraphrase an old Foreigner song, they need to know what a real job is, because reality is waiting to smack them down.