For several weeks, Basketball Wives has been teasing a confrontation orchestrated by Tami Roman where Evelyn Lozada is outed for allegedly sleeping with Shaunie’s ex. On the most recent episode, we saw the first part of the confrontation, and now viewers want to know which ex, Shaquille O’Neal or Marlon Yates Jr.?
Now, to be clear, Evelyn has been adamant that she did no such thing at all. She’s so close to Shaunie that Ev says she would never do that to her friend.
However, with her history of sleeping with Tami’s man as well as the jokes that Tami has consistently made about Evelyn’s supposed promiscuity, it’s not hard to see why Shaunie is having such a hard time figuring out who to believe.
There’s also the question of which ex. Shaunie O’Neal was married to Shaquille O’Neal for five years and they had four children together. Long after their 2007 divorce, Shaunie finally announced on an episode of Basketball Wives that she was seeing someone else. Shaunie dated Marlon Yates Jr. for a couple of years despite being much older than the actor and model.
When Basketball Wives first started to tease the rumor that Evelyn Lozada slept with Shaunie O’Neal’s ex, the easy guess was that the ex was Marlon. After all, he and Shaunie had been broken up for a couple of years now and the rumor was supposed to be at least a year old.
Not to mention that Evelyn Lozada also seems to have a penchant for younger men, having dated Carl Crawford who is six years her junior. Chad Johnson is also younger than Evelyn but not really by that much.
One of the reasons we didn’t think it was Shaquille O’Neal is that he has been in a steady relationship with Laticia Rolle for several years now, and prior to that he was dating former Flavor of Love contestant Nicole “Hoopz” Alexander. He’s been in a serious relationship for several years which doesn’t disqualify him but certainly makes that hookup seem less likely.
However, when the shocking rumor was brought up in the last episode of Basketball Wives, a few things happened to make us think that Tami is talking about Shaq, whether it actually happened or not.
It has been mentioned on the show that there’s one man from Shaunie’s past that everyone knows not to mess with and it’s her ex-husband. As cameras rolled, they even talked about how she just might click out if there’s any drama or “sleeping with” that particular person.
They never actually said his name, though, and when the ladies were discussing exactly which of Shaunie’s exes was the alleged culprit, his name was bleeped out so no one could tell what they were saying. This lines right up with old reports that Shaq doesn’t want anyone talking about him or using his name on Basketball Wives.
So when Evelyn was bleeped for saying the name of Shaunie’s ex, that made it pretty clear that it was likely to be Shaquille O’Neal after all. Another clue was when Evelyn, who swears she did not and would never do that to her friend, told Shaunie to call him up and ask him.
Why would Shaunie call Marlon Yates Jr about the nasty rumor? They broke up two years ago and have no reason to stay in contact like that. On the other hand, Shaq is the father of Shaunie’s children and she does have regular contact with him.
Considering that Shaq doesn’t want to be mentioned on Basketball Wives and literally never has been before, there’s a pretty good chance that no one will actually ever go into specifics about which of Shaunie’s exes has been dragged into this drama on the show. But hopefully we’ll get at least a few more details in coming episodes.
It’s worth noting again that Evelyn Lozada still denies that she ever slept with any of the men in Shaunie’s life, though.
Basketball Wives airs on Mondays at 9/8c on VH1.