When Lamar Odom woke up from his coma, doctors told him he would never walk again. They also told him he would never talk again. He has spent the years since proving both of those predictions wrong, and on March 31 he sits down with Netflix to explain what it actually felt like from the inside.
Untold: The Death and Life of Lamar Odom arrives on the streaming platform as part of Netflix’s ongoing sports documentary series, and it promises something more than a career retrospective. Based on the trailer and Odom’s own recent comments, it is a first-person account of a man who experienced clinical death in measurable terms, 12 strokes and six heart attacks while unconscious at a Las Vegas brothel in 2015, and came back with a perspective on life, death, and the afterlife that he describes as different from what most people imagine.
What the documentary covers
The film traces Odom’s full arc, from his rise as a two-time NBA champion with the Los Angeles Lakers, winning back-to-back titles in 2009 and 2010, through his marriage to Khloé Kardashian, his long battle with addiction, and the overdose that nearly ended everything.
Odom has spoken about his coma experiences before, including in a 2018 conversation with Kevin Hart where he first described the number of strokes and heart attacks his body endured while he was unconscious. The documentary revisits those moments in greater depth, with him addressing his thoughts on what he encountered on the other side in terms that are deliberately understated. He has indicated that what he found there did not match the version people tend to describe.
Kobe Bryant and the visit Odom couldn’t feel
One of the more quietly affecting threads in Odom’s story involves Kobe Bryant. The two were close during their years as Lakers teammates, and Bryant was among the people who traveled to be with him during his hospitalization in 2015. Odom was not conscious and had no awareness of Bryant’s presence at the time. He only learned about the visit afterward, and he has reflected on what it meant to know that his teammate showed up regardless of whether he would ever know he had been there.
Bryant died in a helicopter crash in January 2020 alongside his daughter Gianna and seven others. Odom has continued to honor his memory in the years since. The Lakers unveiled a statue of Bryant outside Crypto.com Arena, and Odom has spoken about the ongoing influence Bryant’s approach to the game and to life continues to have on him.
Where Odom is now
The road since the coma has not been straightforward. In January, Odom was arrested on a DUI charge in Las Vegas. He has since spoken publicly about recommitting to sobriety, describing himself as more than 56 days clean as of March, with no alcohol or marijuana. He has framed the current chapter of his life around mental and spiritual development, including a deliberate effort to read more and rebuild the cognitive sharpness that the strokes affected.
He is 44 years old. He was not supposed to be walking around giving interviews. The fact that he is, and that he is willing to be this direct about everything that happened, is the central argument the documentary makes.
What to expect on March 31
Untold: The Death and Life of Lamar Odom streams on Netflix beginning March 31. The series has previously covered figures including Tiger Woods, Malice at the Palace, and Barry Bonds, with a format that prioritizes access and candor over narrated highlight packages. His episode fits that template. He is not relitigating his basketball career so much as accounting for the full cost of the life that surrounded it, and explaining, in his own words, what it means to still be here.
