Memorable sporting divorces
vacation in Miami,” Odom wrote. “I wish I could tell you there was a reason for it. There wasn’t. It was just an asinine decision I made.
“If I knew that it was going to affect my life the way it did, I would’ve never even thought about it. Never. But I did it. It turned out to be a life- altering decision.”
At that key juncture in his life, Odom then suffered more loss, using cocaine to take away the pain from the deaths of his grandmother and six- month- old son Jayden to sudden infant death syndrome. Stuck in a vicious cycle of drug abuse, Odom proceeded to drug himself out of the NBA.
“When I was like 32, 33, I just wanted to get high all the time,” he wrote. “And things got dark as hell. One of the darkest places I’ve ever been was when I was in a motel room, getting high with this chick, and my wife [ at the time] walked in. That probably was like rock bottom.”
At least, that’s what Odom thought at the time. But much worse was to come, culminating in the incident in Las Vegas in which he almost lost his life.
“At some point, the main doctor came in and told me what had happened,” Odom wrote. “He said, ‘ Mr Odom, you’ve been in a coma for the last four days. Do you understand?’ I couldn’t talk. So I just nodded. He said, ‘ It’s a miracle that you’re here. We didn’t think you were going to make it’.
“I shook hands with death. But it ain’t time for that yet. I still got my kids. I’m still here. And damn, I’m still pretty handsome.” Forget about Michael Phelps ‘ racing a shark’, this week’s most entertaining combination of athlete and sea creature came when Nick Young encountered a dolphin.
First, though, you need to know about the Golden State Warrior’s last meeting with the animal, in a story that shares a lot of similarities with Odom’s, albeit one more humorous than tragic.
Like Odom, Young is a former Laker, he also had a celebrity partner at the time, popstar Iggy Azalea, and he also suffered a near- death experience. Kind of.
I’ll let Young pick it up, from a 2015 interview with ESPN, recounting his experience of swimming with dolphins while on vacation with Azalea in Cabo.
“He was playing with everybody else, doing what dolphins do — the ‘ ack ack’ and all that,” Young said. “It was my time to ride the dolphin. For some reason, he took me all the way to the bottom.
“He was trying to drown me. But I saw it happening, so I jumped out of the water and took off the little life vest and threw off my little water shoes and stayed outside.”
Young was able to ascribe some motive to the dolphin —“I think he was trying to get on Iggy. He was a little friendly, kissing her and stuff. He was trying to take my woman” — and it left him with a case of delfiniphobia.
But in a happy ending to this story, Young posted a cute photo of Instagram this week of his reunion a dolphin, with the pair smiling and the basketballer looking only slightly afraid for his life.
“I gave these dolphins another chance,” Young captioned the photo. “We cool now.” After reaching the NBA finals for three straight seasons, it looks like Kyrie Irving and LeBron James are splitting up. Irving has reportedly requested a trade away from the Cleveland Cavaliers, apparently tired of playing in the shadow of the King.
Now, having LeBron on your side seems a pretty good idea, given he’s contested seven straight finals for either the Cavs or Miami Heat.
But James is a free agent after next season and could be leaving Cleveland, a rumour that might have caused Irving to make the first move to avoid being left behind.
This could get ugly — James has already denied a report he wanted to “kick Irving’s ass” — but it would hardly be the first seemingly successful sporting marriage to end in a bitter split. . .
LeBron has history in this regard, famously decamping from his home town Cavaliers in 2010 and taking his talents to Miami. The move caused Cleveland owner Dan Gilbert to craft an incredible open letter, written in Comic Sans and featuring this hysterically wrong passage: “I PERSONALLY GUARANTEE THAT THE CLEVELAND CAVALIERS WILL WIN AN NBA CHAMPIONSHIP BEFORE THE SELF- TITLED FORMER ‘ KING' WINS ONE.”
Fergie fell out with a succession of high- profile players while building his dynasty at Manchester United — David Beckham, Jaap Stam and, most acrimoniously, his long- time captain. After months of simmering tensions between the pair in 2005, an explosive rant on the club’s in- house TV channel saw Keane get his marching orders. All you really need to know about this one is there’s a 6500- word Wikipedia page titled ‘ Shaq- Kobe feud’. Go read it. But, in summary, after winning three straight NBA titles during 2000- 02, the relationship rapidly turned sour and O’Neal was traded to Miami. Then, while rapping at a club years later, Shaq unleashed the infamous line, “Hey Kobe, tell me how my ass tastes?”