“Basketball Wives” is back for a new season, cast and spirit. VH1 has cut the cast members to just five women this season; Suzie Ketcham, Shaunie O’Neal, Evelyn Lozada and Tami Roman, and one new member, Tasha Marbury. Tasha was with former NBA player Stephon Murbury for 10 years before she discovered that he was getting it in with his personal chef Thurayyah Mitchell, who sued him last year. Apparently, Stephon was dropping monthly payments for Thurayyah to keep her mouth shut, but when those checks stopped coming in, she took him to court for the remaining $300,000 left on the $1 million bucks that he promised her. Last year, Tasha also filed a restraining order against another mistress of Stephon that she claims was stalking her.
During the Essence Music Festival, Shaunie told The Grio that we will see a different, non-plate throwing, non-hair pulling side of things this time around.
“You’ll see a lot of growth. Just filming this season I felt the growth. Sometimes I’d look at the ladies and be like ‘I’m so proud of you. You handled that so well.’ This is like a mirror. We’ve been able to look at ourselves for four seasons, and now going into the fifth, it’s like ‘I gotta do better.’”
“I’m a mom of two girls. And my daughters see me… I never want to show them anything that I wouldn’t want them to represent as a black woman. I can’t control what everyone else does, I can’t control anybody else’s behavior, but I can control mine.”
She also hinted that this season would be extremely emotional, especially with Evelyn Lozada going through the aftermath of her domestic violence incident with Chad Johnson.
It was rough. It’s a whole lot of crying. I tease her now when we talk, like, ‘I stopped counting how many times you cried this season, and how many times you made me almost cry.’ A lot of it was us hearing some things for the first time. She let’s go a lot on the show, because it was so new when we were filming. It’s very emotional… it’s extremely emotional.
Will you be tuning in? We have Tasha Marbury’s drama and Evelyn Lozada’s rebirth this season sounds like an emotional roller coaster that we can’t wait to ride!
Basketball Wives Season 5 premieres on VH1, August 19.
Check out the hot new promo photos from the cast
