Lamar Odom is opening up about how his relationship with Taraji P. Henson crumbled because he fell for future ex-wife Khloé Kardashian.
Odom dated the Oscar-nominated actress briefly circa 2009, a whirlwind courtship the NBA player first admitted to in his memoir, “Darkness To Light: A Memoir,” which was released in May.
On a new episode of TVOne’s “Uncensored,” Odom explained how dating Henson was one of his most informative experiences and admitted he’d change things if he had to do it all over again.
“I just wish I would have done things different with her,” he says of the woman he dated in secret 10 years ago. “She was a little older than me, but I learned a lot from her because that was the most significant relationship, as a grownup, that I had with a black woman.
He admitted that he used to have a photo of her on the road with him — something no one else had previously known except for his Los Angeles Lakers teammates.
“She gave me inspiration, you know what I’m sayin’?” Odom continues. “A black woman working like that, that’s just as good at her craft that I’m as good in my craft.”
The “Empire” actress proved to be such an inspiration to Odom that he used her to have one of his biggest perfomances in a game against the Cleveland Cavaliers.
“That’s part of the inspiration was going back to see her, gettin’ back to L.A., was one of the reasons why I kicked they ass that day,” he recalled. “I remember how I was feeling during that game and after that game. Just–she inspired me.”
But the inspiration from his decade-older girlfriend was not enough to keep his eye from wandering. Odom confessed in his memoir that he wound up cheating on Henson with Kardashian. In his words, “God gave me a layup and I blew it.”
“Things ended with Taraji because me being an immature punk, I didn’t know how to tell her that I was falling in love with another woman named Khloé Kardashian,” the athlete says on “Uncensored.”
Odom ended up in yet another whirlwind romance with Kardashian, whom he wed just one month after they met. The two scored their own spinoff from E!’s reality show “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” in the form of “Khloé & Lamar.” It lasted two seasons, and by 2013 Kardashian had filed for divorce amid her then-husband’s legal and alcohol abuse woes. Odom was also plagued by rumors he’d fallen back into his past struggle with substance abuse, Entertainment Tonight reported.
Kardashian’s divorce from Odom was finalized in 2016, and since then Odom has mounted a comeback from the harrowing overdose ordeal that nearly claimed his life in 2015. He competed on ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars” and is now dating Sabrina Parr, a personal trainer.
