Lamar Odom, full of Hennessy, herbal Viagra, and reportedly cocaine, found unresponsive in a Nevada brothel, was too tall to be airlifted from the local hospital. He’s currently hooked up to a ventilator; the famously anti-social Kobe Bryant, Odom’s teammate for two Lakers championships, and Khloe Kardashian, the ex-wife apparently-still-current-wife who made an NBA cult hero into a household name, have been by his side.

It seems like ages ago that Lamar Odom first burst onto public consciousness as a top high school prospect. He was a joy to watch, a multi-skilled demon of a basketball player whose size and smooth, visionary game practically demanded Magic Johnson comparisons. The Queens-bred Odom was also very likely the last great homegrown talent to come out of New York City. After a perfunctory year of college, Odom was drafted fourth overall by the woeful Los Angeles Clippers in 1999. The Clippers had a strong youth movement going with Odom, Elton Brand, Corey Maggette, Quentin Richardson, and Darius Miles; they couldn’t crack the playoffs but were easily one of the league’s most entertaining—and on a good night, explosive—teams.

Odom, though clearly the team’s most important player, was oddly vacant. He could do almost anything on a basketball court but seemed reluctant to make plays, as if there were some other, less obvious path to stardom or some more oblique way to impact a basketball game that he was in the process of figuring out. Then came the suspensions for weed smoking and a lost 2001-2002 that transformed public perception. Odom had been a well-meaning, well-liked enigma. Now he was a bonafide fuck-up, if not quite a bust or a cancer. All those inexplicable decisions, all that potential kept under wraps—they became a symbol for everything that could go wrong with a modern day lottery pick. One of the most unique players in the NBA became a scapegoat for all the league’s perceived ills.

Who knows how this turn affected Odom. Certainly, he’d been through a lot already in life. His mother had died when he was twelve after an excruciating battle with colon cancer; his father Joe was junkie and wasn’t really in the picture. Maybe he was already numb to the world. But it always seemed like for Odom, this was just one more tribulation he had to get past. It’s not just that Odom persevered, eventually finding his way to the Heat and playing with a confidence and clarity that had been sorely lacking in Los Angeles. Odom got to Miami by sitting down with Donald Sterling to ask for the chance to start fresh somewhere else, rather than be retained as a restricted free agent. A man who could’ve long ago gone dead inside instead went to a deplorable scumbag with his heart on his sleeve.

That quality, as much as his intriguing style of play and the endless possibilities contained within it, is why Lamar Odom is so beloved among NBA fans of a certain age. He’s always come across as sensitive, even gentle. You could argue that it was to the detriment of his on-court performance, but then you’d be an idiot. Lamar Odom wasn’t just a good guy—he was someone who actually gave a fuck. He didn’t take things in stride or let them slough off too easily. Despite what some may have read into his play—especially when he came to the Lakers as part of the Shaquille O’Neal trade after only one year in Miami—Lamar Odom took things very seriously. It was endearing. And over time, the warmth many of us felt for Odom replaced any lingering disappointment in the player he had become. We were truly happy to see him contribute to those two titles in 2009 and 2010; his Sixth Man of the Year award in 2011 came as validation, as well as proof that Odom was no longer burdened by expectations. He was just free to play.