11 Examples Of The 'Kardashian Curse' Being 'Real' & How People Claim It's Haunting Their Exes
Dating the Kardashians comes at a price.
Kathy Hutchins / Tinseltown / Instagram / Shutterstock The “Kardashian Curse” has claimed many of the sisters’ romantic partners as victims during the family’s time in the spotlight.
What is the Kardashian curse? Well, Kylie Jenner described it pretty accurately in a June 2016 episode of “Keeping Up With The Kardashians.”
“The Kardashian curse is every male figure that comes and dates a Kardashian. Their life kind of just goes downhill after that,” Jenner said.
Athletes, rappers and many more have fallen prey to the curse, each with their own unique flavor of pain.
Here are 11 undeniable examples of the Kardashian Curse.
1. James Harden had “the worst year of his life” while dating Khloe.
Harden’s eight-month relationship with Khloe Kardashian lasted from June 2015 to February 2016.
It isn’t a time the NBA star looks back on fondly, going so far as to call it the “worst year of his life” in an interview with Sports Illustrated.
The then-Houston Rockets guard struggled on the court throughout his relationship with Khloe. The team won just 41 games, 15 fewer than the year before and 14 fewer than the year after. Houston’s poor performance carried over into the postseason, where they were eliminated by the Golden State Warriors in five games one year after reaching the Western Conference Finals.
Harden attributed his underperformance, at least in part, on his relationship with Khloe. He believed that the spotlight placed on him distracted him from focusing on basketball.
“I didn’t like all the attention,” Harden said. “I feel like it was for no reason. I wasn’t getting anything out of it except my name out there and my face out there, and I don’t need that.”
2. Reggie Bush’s football career fell apart after meeting Kim Kardashian.
Reggie Bush was on top of the football world in the mid-2000s. The star running back led the University of Southern California to the national championship in 2004.
The New Orleans Saints then rewarded him for his accomplishments by selecting him with the second overall pick in the 2006 NFL Draft.
When Bush met Kim at the 2007 ESPY Awards and the two began dating, his playing career took a turn for the worse. He bounced around between five different teams throughout the remainder of his career.
Bush’s time in the league came to an unceremonious end in 2016, when he finished with -3 rushing yards on the season to become the first running back ever to finish the season with negative yards on more than 10 carries.
Bush has said that he believes the overwhelming media attention played a key role in the downturn of his career, particularly during his two-year relationship with Kim.
However, he says that he has no regrets about how events played out.
"When I started dating my ex, that's when all this stuff came," Bush told ESPN in 2014.
“The gossip magazines and all the other stuff, the ugly side of it. But you know what, I wouldn't change anything because it helped mold and shape who I am today and I'm a better man for it."
3. Scott Disick lost both of his parents while dating Kourtney.
Disick, Kourtney’s ex-husband and father to her three children, tragically lost both of his parents in the span of a few months.
His mother Bonnie passed away in June 2013, then his father Jeffrey passed away the following January.
He also dealt with episodes of alcohol and drug addiction throughout his run on “Keeping Up With The Kardashians,” with much of it being documented on the show.
Disick strongly believed that he suffered from the “Kardashian Curse,” so much so that he visited a psychic in a 2016 episode of the show. The psychic then “confirmed” his suspicions in a tarot reading.
“A negative energy is following you around,” the psychic said. “Everything that you try to do, you have a tendency to have many obstacles in front of you. To answer your question, I would probably say you do have a curse.”
4. Kris Humphries’ basketball career took a nosedive after his brief marriage to Kim.
Humphries' marriage to Kim may have been brief, lasting only two months before Kim filed for divorce, but it contained enough drama to make an opera out of it.
The NBA player had a solid role with the then-New Jersey Nets before his marriage.
Since then, however, he never managed to regain that form. He never averaged more than nine points in a season again, and for six different teams before retiring in 2017.
5. Tyga became the subject of lawsuits while dating Kylie.
Tyga, who dated and had a kid with fellow “Kardashian Curse” victim Blac Chyna beforehand, dated Kylie Jenner sporadically between 2014 and 2017.
Over the course of their relationship, the rapper has been involved in many controversies. Chyna accused him of not paying child support for their son, and multiple affairs took place throughout their relationship.
Judges have also ordered him to pay large sums of money for unpaid bills.
6. Blac Chyna received a restraining order against Rob.
Chyna’s relationship with Rob Kardashian, which lasted from 2016 to 2017, was tenuous from the start, and it all came to a boiling point when the two broke up.
Chyna claimed that Rob shared explicit images of her on social media, and that he was physically abusive towards her, among other offenses.
As a result, Chyna received a temporary restraining order against Rob.
She also filed a defamation lawsuit against the Kardashians for allegedly ruining her television career. The curse claimed another victim earlier in May when the judge sided with the family in the $100 million lawsuit.
7. Tristan Thompson flopped in the NBA Finals while dating Khloe.
Thompson and Khloe’s relationship, like many the Kardashians are involved with, wasn’t the most stable due to his frequent cheating.
Tristan Thompson faced the wrath of the curse at the worst possible time, in the 2017 NBA Finals. In the first three games of the series,
Thompson recorded a total of eight points and 11 rebounds as his Cleveland Cavaliers lost all three contests to the eventual champion Golden State Warriors.
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Many blamed Thompson’s poor performance on the “Kardashian Curse.” ESPN analyst Jalen Rose even agreed with the theory after Cleveland’s defeat in game three.
"I want to say what everybody’s thinking,” Rose said.
“There are three things in life that are certain to me: Father Time, gravity, and the curse of the Kardashians. Tristan Thompson had zero points in two of the three (Finals) games."
8. Damon Thomas filed for bankruptcy after divorcing Kim Kardashian.
Thomas enjoyed success as half of the R&B duo The Underdogs before marrying Kim and 2000, but he could not escape the dreaded curse following their divorce in 2003.
The music producer filed for bankruptcy years after his split with Kim. Court documents also revealed that Thomas was more than $3.5 million in debt, most coming from unpaid taxes.
Kardashian claimed that Thomas abused her physically and emotionally throughout the divorce. Thomas has made it clear in interviews that he doesn’t look back on their time together fondly.
"She can't write or sing or dance, so she does harmful things in order to validate herself in the media," Thomas said in a press release. "That's a fame-whore to me. It's just not cool at all."
9. Caitlyn Jenner is isolated from the rest of the family.
Apparently, the curse can also affect members of the Kardashian-Jenner family themselves. Kris Jenner’s former spouse and parent of Kendall and Kylie has been on a rocky road since completing her transition.
Her 2017 memoir, “The Secrets of My Life,” reportedly infuriated the Kardashians over their portrayal.
While she still talks to her two biological children, she has lost contact with Kris and her three eldest daughters.
“I don’t talk about that side of the family, I spent 23 years of my life with those kids – it’s difficult to talk about it, terribly terribly sad,” Jenner said.
“I’ve lost all relationship with them, yes, I don’t talk to any of them anymore.”
10. Lamar Odom battled addiction during his relationship with Khloe.
Another basketball player to the curse’s toll, Odom suffered many problems throughout his marriage to Khloe from 2009 to 2016.
After Khloe filed for divorce for the first time in 2013, Odom suffered from heavy drug addiction. The former NBA star almost died after overdosing at a Nevada brothel in 2015.
In his 2017 memoir, “Darkness to Light,” Odom revealed that he also had a sex addiction and he cheated on Khloe on many occasions.
“I had broken my vows with Khloé so many times it’s just impossible for me to remember them all,” Odom wrote.
“I don’t know why Khloé stayed with me.”
11. Ray J’s career centered around his tape with Kim.
Ray J is arguably responsible for launching the Kardashian’s media empire with his role in the infamous tape he made with Kim so many years ago.
He may have seen some success since the tape’s release in 2007, but he’s never been able to escape the shadow it has cast on his image.
In 2014, around the time Kim tied the knot with Kanye West, Ray J reportedly sent the couple a check for $47,000, the profit he received from the tape in the first four months of the year. Clearly, he hasn’t forgotten about the impact the tape has had on his life.
Is the “Kardashian Curse” real? No one can say definitively, but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that there may be such a thing.
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Jonathan Alfano is a writer who focuses on news and entertainment topics. Follow him on Twitter to keep up with his content.