Lamar Odom -- who made more than $100 million in his NBA career -- admits he struggled with a gambling problem ... and says things got so bad, he turned to Kobe Bryant for help paying off his debt.
The 41-year-old says his call to Kobe about the gambling issue was one of the last conversations they had before Bryant's death in Jan. 2020.
"I had been gambling," Odom said on the "All The Smoke" podcast ... "And, I had an old debt that got a little too steep for where I was at at that time.