Do Marriage and Pro Athletes Mix?

Aug. 8 — -- In his brilliant career, 24-year-old basketball star Kobe Bryant has done lots of things most NBA players have never done. Now as he fights charges of sexual assault, he has admitted doing something that one woman speculates nearly every NBA player has done or at least thought about: Cheat on his wife.

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"I don't think there's a single faithful man in the NBA. And if he is out there, then his wife has a very short leash on him," according to Tami Anderson.

An exaggeration? Sure. But Anderson is talking from her own experience and pain.

The Kobe Bryant case has focused attention on the sexual exploits — real and alleged — of professional athletes while on the road. How do ballplayers deal with the enormous temptations they face while away from home?

"I knew there were groupies, but I didn't pay much attention to them," says Angela Wilder, who, like Tami, was once married to an NBA star. "I was kind of like Seabiscuit, you know, I was the Seabiscuit NBA wife and I just kept those blinders on," said Wilder.

Anderson and Wilder — both beautiful and intelligent women — found out the hard way that for professional athletes, life on the road can be an open invitation to stray.

"Everybody's fair game. With this lifestyle, it's bound to happen," Anderson said.

The lifestyle of an NBA star means a lot of time away from home, and temptation lurks inside each hotel lobby and at every nearby bar or club.

'Play Ball, Get Laid, Sleep In'

Elizabeth Kaye has seen the dance between athletes and their female admirers. A veteran journalist who wrote the book Ain't No Tomorrow: Kobe, Shaq, and the Making of a Lakers Dynasty, Kaye says there's a motto that summarizes the NBA life in six easy words. "Play ball, get laid, sleep in."

And Kaye says the players have a certain type of woman they like. "Just make it easy and be pretty and compliant and shut up about it, basically," she said.

Big-time sports figures have always attracted their share of good-humored, if over-eager, women. But the underside of the sports-groupie scene can be blatant and exploitative.

Lynda Huey, a lover and confidante of the late Wilt Chamberlain, says she understands the mindset. Chamberlain, the 7-foot-tall NBA great, scored as frequently off the court as he did on it. In one memoir, the never-married Chamberlain boasted that he'd had sex with more than 20,000 women. Huey says, "It was exciting and I look at it now and see that it was destructive to me. It didn't allow me to form intimate relationships."