Being famous is hard. But being married to a person whose fame outshines yours is worse. Just look at Khloe Kardashian and Lamar Odom.

After four years of marriage, Odom and Kardashian decided to end things. Yet when tragedy struck, their marriage was put back on center stage.

Odom is a former NBA star and the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year. These things were mere footnotes when the star was found unconscious in a Nevada brothel last week.

Odom has played for numerous teams during the course of his career, his latest team being the New York Knicks in 2014.

Instead of focusing on Odom’s many accomplishments over the years, the media chose to focus on his relationship with Kardashian, the reality television star.

Odom was a NBA star long before he even met Kardashian, yet their union (and her family’s reaction to the news) was the main thing talked about. Even when they mentioned his three children and their mother, the media found ways to tie it back to the Kardashian family.

This is not an uncommon response in Hollywood, but the issue of why it’s done remains.

Why is it that your Hollywood validation comes from who you are married to and not what made you famous in the first place?

They tend to put too much emphasis on relationships and not enough on the people themselves.

It doesn’t matter who married who or why. When someone’s life is in danger the focus should be on them and their legacy.

The media cheated Odom out of this by focusing on his broken home and on accusations that Kardashian was using their failing marriage as a way to make more money.

Although the star was able to be moved to another facility and appears to be making a miraculous recovery, the media is still more focused on the fact the couple has decided to put their divorce on hold for the time being.

I feel like the media could have done so much better during this situation. Instead of providing documents of how much money he spent at the brothel or how sad the entire Kardashian family was, they could have spent more time talking about Odom’s outstanding basketball career or his charity adventures.