Sports Icons Who Cheated On Their Wives

The following article includes mentions of addiction, domestic violence, and sexual assault allegations.

Divorce rates show that, unlike sports, success usually comes down to a coin toss. Those are good odds considering the divorce rate among professional athletes has reached a whopping 80%, per one study. "It's hard to keep a marriage going if you're a celebrity athlete," New York divorce attorney Bruce Provda told Forbes. "There is a great deal of temptation and a ton of money available. It's a bad combination."

Celebrity athletes cheating has become so cliche that NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wrote in an essay for Cosmopolitan that the cliche itself is a stereotype rooted in cultural bias. "This offensive characterization is in no way on par with the much worse stereotyping of women, people of color, Muslims, Jews, immigrants, and the LGBTQ community," he wrote. "But when we allow any prejudice to pass unchallenged, we endorse all prejudice."

Whether you agree with Abdul-Jabbar's sentiments or not is up to you, but we can all agree that infidelity is a great way to potentially damage a marriage beyond repair. These are the sports icons who cheated on their wives.

New York Knicks basketball star Carmelo Anthony and wife La La Anthony were once #couplegoals. Their union was well-documented on reality TV, and they certainly became a fixture on the NYC social scene. All that came to an abrupt end in April 2017 when tabloids began claiming the small forward had been unfaithful to his wife of seven years and even impregnated an exotic dancer. Soon after, the couple announced their separation.

While neither side has publicly discussed the alleged infidelity, the press has been hounding La La and her son, Kyan. "You kind of get used to it. What can you do? My mom always says, 'Worry when people don't care about you.' And that's what I tell myself," La La told Extra. "We're that interesting that people want to know what we're doing." As for their son, La La said she would lie to him, saying the paparazzi was following them to get fashion shots for magazines. "I kind of try to make it fun for him so he doesn't view it as a negative thing," she added. "We explain it in a way that works for a 10-year-old."

However, after a brief reconciliation, La La Anthony filed for divorce in June 2021 after 11 years of marriage (via E!). During an appearance on "The Angie Martinez Show," La La said: "Marriage, I don't think I can do that ever again. I mean, some amazing person would have to come. I don't see that happening again."

Franck Ribéry would probably like to forget the year 2010. In July of that year, the former three-time French Player of the Year was questioned by authorities regarding an investigation into an underage prostitution ring that revealed Ribéry and a former teammate both had sexual relations with a 16-year-old girl, Zahia Dehar. Ribéry's lawyer, Sophie Bottai, insisted during a radio interview that her client was unaware of Dehar's age at the time. "She would have had to look like a minor, which was not the case. She would have to be claiming that she had told him she was a minor, which is not the case," Bottai said, per The Guardian. 

During a 2010 interview with Paris Match Magazine (via Daily Mail), Dehar stated the former FIFA World Cup player "made reservations at a luxury hotel in Munich" and then paid her for sex. She also stated that Ribéry thought she was 18 during their encounter. 

The publication went on to say that Ribéry's wife was standing by him. "It hurt my family, above all those close to me. That's all I want to say," he said of the scandal. Eventually the case was dropped after the prosecution admitted that the underage sex worker had "said herself that she told them she was 18" (per France 24). 

In June 2003, Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant was at the top of his game when a night in a Vail, Colorado resort would forever change his path. Bryant allegedly had a sexual encounter with a 19-year-old woman who worked at the hotel. His wife, Vanessa Bryant, and first child, were not with him on the trip. According to CNN, the teenager filed a police complaint the day after the alleged encounter and Bryant was subsequently charged with sexual assault, which could have landed him in jail for life if convicted. 

"I didn't force her to do anything against her will," a 24-year-old Kobe said during a press conference. "I'm innocent. You know. I sit here in front of you guys furious at myself. Disgusted at myself for making a mistake of adultery." A year later, the case against Kobe was dropped after the alleged victim refused to testify in the trial. She did, however, file a civil case against him, reported The Washington Post. That suit was settled behind closed doors.

The stress of the time period weighed heavily on Bryant and his wife. In 2015, he shouldered the blame for the miscarriage Vanessa suffered during the trial. "We were expecting," Kobe, who tragically died in a helicopter crash in 2020, said in a documentary called "Kobe Bryant's Muse" (via HuffPost). "Expecting our second child during that time and there was just so much stress. ... I have a real hard time dealing with that 'cause I felt like it was just my fault."

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).

Former basketball great Lamar Odom's drug addiction and infidelity helped fuel the demise of his marriage to reality star Khloé Kardashian. The pair tied the knot in 2009 and officially divorced in 2016 after a slew of scandalous headlines, including Odom's drug bender that nearly left him dead in 2015. 

In 2017, the former Los Angeles Lakers star came clean about his roaming eyes to Us Weekly, noting that the reality show "Khloé & Lamar" "opened this gate up with other women who probably wouldn't have been interested in me. When I became Khloé Kardash­ian's man and on TV, it made me look more enticing. People who didn't even know basketball would approach me because they knew Lammy." 

He said the exposure was a curse, explaining, "B***hes and THOTs came out of the woodwork. If there is one thing I regret when I was married, it was having multiple affairs with different women. That wasn't the stand-up thing to do. I wish I could have kept my d**k in my pants."

If you or anyone you know is struggling with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

Former New Jersey Nets player Jason Kidd had his dirty laundry aired by his wife of 10 years, Joumana Kidd. When they divorced in 2007, Jason claimed she was emotionally unstable, but she alleged he was a massive cheater who stepped out with exotic dancers, drank too much, and abused her. (He was arrested in 2001 for domestic violence against Joumana.) 

In a tell-all piece with Metropolis Nights Magazine (via the New York Daily News), Joumana recalled a time when she used their son to uncover Jason's alleged infidelity. As the story goes, in December 2006, she allegedly got their son to lift Jason's phone from the locker room so she could comb through its text messages and yell at him from her court-side seats during a game. 

"I will say that most women put in that position would have acted the same way, or at least wanted to," she told the magazine. "Plus, it was blown up into something way bigger than it was. It was just his lawyers trying to paint a picture of me crossing boundaries and they did a good job of it. But it was far from the truth. And, it wasn't as dramatic and amazing as they made it sound, although I kind of wish it was."

If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic abuse, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.

Atlanta Braves baseball star Chipper Jones wrote in detail about the time he decided to come clean about his affairs to his wife, Karin Luise. In his 2017 memoir, "Ballplayer," he described an agonizing drive home to share the heartbreaking news. "She sat down and started welling up right away. She knew what was coming; she just didn't know the depth of it," he wrote (via The Atlanta Journal-Constitution). "'Karin,' I said. 'This is killing me and I've got to get it out. ... I've been having affairs with three girls: the girl from LA; a girl from Atlanta; and a girl from Detroit. ... I've been having these affairs since the beginning of the season. ... The girl from Detroit, Jennifer, is pregnant. And she's going to have the baby."

Jones described 30 minutes of subsequent chaos, crying, and shattered glass flying around their Georgia home. Then came a moment of silence. He wrote, "She walked into my office and sat on the arm of the chaise lounge beside me. She leaned into me. We sat there in silence for a long time. 'I'm so sorry,' I said." 

The couple divorced in 2000. "I would not be who I am today had I not traveled through those years," Karin Luise told the AJC in 2018. Jones later married his third wife — Playboy model Taylor Higgins — in 2015 (via the New York Post).

In 2014, former NFL wide receiver Hank Baskett's marriage with model Kendra Wilkinson became embroiled in tabloid headlines, when he was accused of having an affair with transgender model Ava Sabrina London. 

The incident occurred while Wilkinson was eight months pregnant with their second child, the couple later told People. As the story goes, Baskett wanted to buy marijuana from a random couple and was given an address to make the purchase. After using the restroom at the location, he claimed to have seen two transwomen, one of whom was nude, making out. One of the women reportedly fondled Baskett over his clothes. "I didn't engage in anything," he said. "It was like a bank robbery. You never know when you'll freeze. I don't know if it was a couple of seconds or 15 seconds, because all I was saying was get out, get out, get out."

Baskett and Wilkinson worked hard to rebuild their union, and they temporarily reconciled. "Hank was very naïve and gullible," the "Kendra" star told People in 2015. "He thinks everybody is his friend. That led him to the hell that we've lived." However, the couple's marriage ultimately ended in divorce in 2018, per Us Weekly.

"I've misbehaved and slept with girls behind her back and that's not right. She knows about it all now and we're moving on. I'm not going to cheat on her ever again," Chelsea legend John Terry said in 2005, two years before exchanging wedding vows with Toni Poole (per Daily Mail). However, in 2010, Terry was embroiled in a cheating scandal with a teammate's girlfriend.

According to the Daily Mail, Terry had an extramarital affair with French underwear model Vanessa Perroncel — his teammate Wayne Bridge's girlfriend and Terry's wife's best friend. Sounds like the Bermuda Triangle of love triangles. Terry vehemently denied the allegations, but the allegations began a tabloid feeding frenzy once a court ruled to lift a ban on reporting the alleged sordid details. Perroncel also denied the affair took place, telling The Guardian in 2010: "The stories are untrue. Who are they to do this?" Later that year, two British tabloids publicly apologized to Perroncel for their rabid reporting of the incident.

As far as Wayne Bridge's thoughts on the matter, he refused to shake Terry's hand during a match in 2010. "The most disappointing aspect of it all is that I'm probably more famous for not shaking someone's hand than I am for playing football," he told The Sun in 2017. "I get abuse walking down the street now and I let it go in one ear and out the other. It's a handshake after all, nothing more."