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    By Bridgette Bartlett Royall ·Updated April 7, 2026 Getting your Trinity Audio player ready…

    Is Lamar Odom ready to come out of retirement as Coach Odom?

    That’s the question buzzing through sports and entertainment circles after the former Los Angeles Lakers forward appeared on Today with Jenna & Sheinelle yesterday. The two-time NBA champion was promoting his new Netflix documentary Untold: The Death & Life of Lamar Odom on the popular NBC morning show. Odom, 46, opened up to the co-hosts about some of the tough topics covered in the doc including losing his 6-month-old son to SIDS, widely reported drug addiction struggles, his once strained relationships with two now adult children: Destiny and Lamar Jr. (LJ), a public marriage —and divorce— and a troubled childhood that forced him to mourn his mother as an only child while he was still an adolescent while his father coped with his own substance abuse problems.

    A native of Jamaica, Queens, NY, Odom developed a love of basketball at an early age and honed his skills at his childhood neighborhood refuge, Lincoln Park. The ex-husband of Khloe Kardashian, Odom retired from the NBA in 2014 only after earning a slew of accolades including being an NBA Sixth Man of the Year in 2011 and a NYC Basketball Hall of Fame Inductee in 2017. A force to be reckoned with on the court, Odom once earned championships alongside former teammate and friend, Kobe Bryant. While he’s a decade removed from playing professionally, the love of basketball remains at his core.  

    Odom even revealed to Jenna and Sheinelle that he is eager to use his top-tier athletic skills with young college basketball players. When pressed to share where exactly, Odom confessed that Winston-Salem State University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina is his dream institution to flex those burgeoning  coaching skills. Claiming that he was often the coach of the locker room while playing pro, Odom’s face lit up when he mentioned the HBCU. Jenna and Sheinelle emphatically encouraged their soft spoken 6’10 gentle giant show guest by telling him that the job was already his.   

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    A post shared by TODAY with Jenna & Sheinelle (@jennasheinelle)

    Odom wouldn’t be the first retired professional athlete to try a hand at coaching at an HBCU. Former NBA all-star and fellow Queens native Kenny Anderson served as a men’s basketball coach for six seasons at Fisk University. Another retired NBA all-star turned coach Reggie Theus presently holds a dual role as both Athletic Director and Head Men’s Basketball Coach for Bethune-Cookman University. Former NFL icon Michael Vick is currently head football coach at Norfolk State University and Deion Sanders made a big splash as head football coach at Jackson State University.

    Even more intriguing is that newly retired NBA all-star Chris Paul earned his bachelor’s degree from Winston-Salem State in 2022. He had previously entered the NBA draft as a Wake Forest University sophomore in 2005.

    While basketball is clearly Odom’s life passion, he admits that the desire to coach on campus at WSSU isn’t purely professional. Like Paul, he too has his sights set on earning a degree. Another retired NBA star, J.R. Smith, found a home to further his academic pursuits at a nearby HBCU, North Carolina A&T State University, where he joined the Aggies Golf Team. Odom disclosed in his doc, “I really want to use coaching college as an opportunity to go back to school.” He continued, “My grandmother went back to school when she was 50 years old. And she graduated.”

    During the height of his drug addiction woes, Odom suffered a shocking 12rel="tag">College Sports

    The post Lamar Odom Is Eyeing Winston-Salem State: Could He Be The Next Big HBCU Coach? appeared first on Essence.

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