During a public feud with adult film star Moriah Mills, New Orleans Pelicans star guard Zion Williamson turned heads throughout the NBA last week.
Mills detailed a torrid affair with Williamson despite the NBA star having a pregnant girlfriend.
And while the sordid tale certainly created its fair share of headlines, former NBA champion center Andrew Bogut, speaking on his Rogue Bogues podcast, detailed why the situation was hardly a “one-off” in the NBA.
“If you think this is a one-off in the NBA, you’re very wrong, you’re very wrong,” Bogut said. “This is a common occurrence on many teams I’ve been on. This is a common occurrence among the league where there are different relationships, and that’s how they have their relationships.
“Some know about it; some don’t. But this, this is not; this is not something you need to be shocked about because it happens a lot. There’s girls I know for a fact they are on players’ payrolls to be a side girl. Unfortunately, the stupidity of that is that tap cannot get turned off, bro.”
Bogut cautioned against players paying women as their “side pieces” because those arrangements are hard to afford once their playing days end.
“Once you’re paying a girl or man – this could go either way these days – you’re paying a side piece to be a side piece, the moment you stop paying that side piece, your wife’s going to find out about it, bro, that’s just the way the world works.
“So the moment you’re like, ‘Holy [crap], I’ve retired, I can’t keep paying you 20K a month to be my side piece because I can’t afford it anymore,’ that’s gonna go public. That’s just the reality of the world. I saw it mainly in silence in the NBA; I had some people that I played with and against that were paying people off and whatnot and this and that. It’s normal, bro; I have to say it’s normal.”
Whether standard or not, other NBA stars in similar situations will undoubtedly hope that their special arrangements don’t go public similarly.
[Rogue Bogues with Andrew Bogut]
