According to longtime NBA analyst Stephen A. Smith, there have been instances where players in the league have been traded for getting with people who were involved with their coaches or teammates in some way.
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“I can’t even begin to tell you the things that I’ve seen,” Smith said. “It’d make you scared to get married. What I’m sayin’ to you is that there are players who have been traded because they were with a teammate’s wife. There are coaches who have traded players because players was gettin’ with somebody they were gettin’ with.”
A famous example of alleged infidelity in the NBA happened between former San Antonio Spurs star Tony Parker and former NBA journeyman Brent Barry’s wife at the time. According to the New York Post, Parker, while married himself, exchanged sexually charged text messages with Barry’s wife for more than a year.
Barry — who played alongside Parker on the Spurs for a time and won two titles with the franchise — and his wife ultimately separated. The same went for Parker and his partner, actress Eva Longoria.
But Barry was no longer a member of the Spurs by the time the scandal was made public. In fact, Barry had already decided to retire from the NBA at that point, as his swan song in the league came when he played 56 games with the Houston Rockets during the 2008-09 regular season and four more games during the team’s playoff run.
Barry has not remarried since splitting up with his significant other all those years ago. Parker, on the other hand, married a journalist named Axelle Francine, though they divorced back in 2020 after tying the knot in 2014.
It’s interesting to think about whether there have been any recent instances of infidelity that have occurred in NBA circles and simply haven’t been reported on. Smith has certainly been around the league for a long time, and while he isn’t necessarily known for breaking stories, he may know a thing or two about some of the drama that goes down behind the scenes in the NBA.
