LAS VEGAS – Former Lakers and Clippers star Lamar Odom was hospitalized Tuesday after he was found unconscious at a brothel about 80 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

According to the Nye County sheriff’s office, Odom was experiencing a medical emergency and was unresponsive when an ambulance from Pahrump Fire and Rescue Service arrived Tuesday afternoon at Dennis Hof’s Love Ranch South in Crystal, Nev.

An ambulance took Odom to the Desert View Hospital in nearby Pahrump on Tuesday afternoon and he was later transported by ambulance to Sunrise Hospital in Las Vegas.

His condition was unknown.

The brothel’s owner, Dennis Hof, said brothel employees accompanied Odom to the hospital and offered a grim prognosis.

“They didn’t think he was going to make it,” he said.

Hof said Odom arrived at the brothel Saturday and told the staff he “just wanted to get away.”

It’s a refrain employees are used to hearing.

“A lot of celebrities come here to drop out,” he said.

Hof said “everything was fine” when two female employees visited Odom in his room at 6 a.m. on Tuesday. At 3:30 p.m., the employees returned to Odom’s room and found him unconscious.

Odom was bleeding and had vomited, Hof said.

“It was terrible,” Hof said. “It was something they’ll never forget.”

In his three days at the brothel, Hof said, Odom ate well and drank roughly two-thirds of a bottle of Cognac – “not an exceptional amount,” Hof said.

Odom also consumed an “excessive amount of herbal Viagra” over the course of three days at the brothel, Hof said.

He said Odom was in “good spirits” until Sunday, when the former NBA star received a phone call that “upset him a bit.”

Odom played for the Lakers from 2004-11, and, along with current Lakers Kobe Bryant and Metta World Peace, was a member of their championship teams in 2009 and 2010. He also spent five years in two stints with the Clippers, who drafted him fourth overall in 1999.

A favorite of players and team employees, Odom was named the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year in 2011. He last appeared in the NBA in 2013 with the Clippers.

The Lakers were in Las Vegas on Tuesday for an exhibition game against the Sacramento Kings at the MGM Grand Garden Arena. Word that Odom had been hospitalized spread through the locker room shortly before tipoff, with team staffers scrambling to find out which area hospital the 35-year-old Odom was being taken to.

Team spokesman John Black said he was aware of the report, but did not have anymore information. He said the team was “monitoring it as best we can and, yes, concerned.”

Kings forward Caron Butler, who was Odom’s teammate in Miami and L.A. from 2003-05, shared a hug with a Lakers staffer and said, “Prayers up.”

Odom had reportedly battled drug addiction in recent years and, in 2013, reportedly checked into a rehabilitation center for drug and alcohol abuse.

On Tuesday, Hof said there was no sign of drugs in Odom’s room.

“We couldn’t find any drugs at all,” he said. “The police couldn’t. What we know for sure is he was taking an excessive amount of herbal Viagra.”

Odom was given a room in Hof’s home, which is attached to the brothel, the owner said, “instead of a VIP suite, so he could have all the privacy he wanted.”

Hof added: “If he wanted to be in all the craziness, he just had to walk down the hallway 50 feet to the brothel.”

Hof declined to say whether Odom was a regular visitor to the ranch, but said, “He knew us well enough to give us a call.”

Odom married reality star Khloe Kardashian in 2009, but the pair split in December 2013 after the basketball player’s alleged drug and alcohol use put an added strain on their relationship.

He told InTouch magazine that Kardashian was his “soulmate,” but the two finalized their divorce in July, ending their four-year marriage.

Odom’s life has been filled with tragedy. After his mother died of colon cancer when he was 13 years old, he went to live with his grandmother.

In 2006, his 6 1/2-month-old son Jaden died from SIDS, and Odom was involved in an automobile accident in which a cyclist died. This past summer, two of his close friends – producer Bobby Heyward and Jamie Sangouthai – died a week apart of drug-related causes.

Staff writer Janis Carr contributed to this report.