Reports: Lamar Odom has made small improvements, remains on life support
Lamar Odom experienced some small improvements in his condition Wednesday, according to Ramona Shelburne of ESPN.
While Odom is "not out of the woods" yet - he remains intubated, according to Shelburne - Mark Medina of Los Angeles Daily News echoed the cautious positivity early Thursday morning.
The 35-year-old Odom is on life support at a Las Vegas hospital after being found unresponsive at a Nevada brothel Tuesday afternoon. The Nye County Sheriff's Office, which first responded on the scene at Love Ranch in Crystal, Nev., Tuesday, said Wednesday that Odom used cocaine and sexual enhancement supplements before being found unconscious with blood and a white substance coming from his nose and mouth.
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First responders stabilized Odom on the scene before transporting him to one hospital, and then another, the second at which he continues to receive treatment. A communications officer for the sheriff's office indicated the investigation of Odom's case is ongoing, and that detectives obtained a search warrant for Odom's blood and investigated the Love Ranch.
"We're only after the truth," Sheriff Sharon Wehrly said. "We're going to be looking at the entire situation."
The Ranch has a "strict anti-drug policy," according to brothel spokesman Richard Hunter, though Odom allegedly told Hunter he had done cocaine before arriving at the ranch Saturday.
Odom was visited at the hospital by former Los Angeles Lakers teammate Kobe Bryant, among others, and received an outpouring of love and support from the basketball community.
His estranged wife Khloe Kardashian, now dating Houston Rockets star James Harden, has also reportedly been by his side. Kardashian filed for divorce from Odom in 2013 but it hasn't been finalized, and she's making medical decisions on Odom's behalf, according to a report from CNN.
Tragedy has seemingly followed Odom, who lost his mother to cancer when he was 12 and was raised by his grandmother, as his father was an absentee drug addict. His grandmother passed away in 2003. In 2006, he lost his six-month-old son, Jayden, to SIDS, and was shot at during a robbery in his old neighborhood weeks after the funeral. He lost a close cousin in 2011, and was a passenger in a vehicle that left a teenager dead in an accident later that year.
"Some of the things I've been through, a lot of people wouldn't have been able to stick it out, mentally," Odom told SLAM in 2010. "So many things have happened to me but I wouldn't do anything over, because if I did, it wouldn't be my story. It's what makes me a unique individual."
Since his departure from the league, Odom has been arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence and repeatedly tied to reports of illicit drug use. In 2000-01, he was suspended for violating the NBA's anti-drug policy for a second time in an eight-month span.
The former fourth overall pick last played in the NBA in 2012-13, when he helped the Los Angeles Clippers reach the Western Conference semifinals. Odom won two championships with the Lakers and was once named the league's Sixth Man of the Year (2010-11) in his underrated 14-year career, during which he essentially defined the role of point forward.