LaLa Is The First Lady of the NBA

Posted by Sabrina B. @gametimegirl

The New York Times did a great article on Lala, wife of Knicks player Carmelo Anthony.  She may be the wife of a baller, but she is def. holding her own!  Check the article after the jump…

AS she was finishing lunch at the R Lounge overlooking Times Square recently, La La Anthony craned her neck and motioned toward the back of the room, over the head of her lunch guest, projectile whispering, “Just give me one second, O.K.!”

“Sorry,” she said, returning to her immediate company. “My financial guy is here for our meeting when you and I are done.”

“I’ll tell you a quick thing,” she added, leaning in conspiratorially, causing her vintage gold-hoop earrings to lurch forward. “He’s the one who got 50 Cent in that Vitaminwater deal. So any time he wants to meet with me, I’m like,” she clapped once and laughed, “I’m available!”

To be fair, Mrs. Anthony, the wife of the basketball playerCarmelo Anthony, is seemingly available for anything these days. Since her husband’s blockbuster trade to the New York Knicks from the Denver Nuggets in February, the couple have been popping up everywhere: “The View,” “The Wendy Williams Show,” the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Every stage of their apartment hunt was reported by Page Six, as was Mr. Anthony’s recent helicopter ride to Southampton, N.Y., from Manhattan for dinner at Nobu.

Such is life as “the first couple of the N.B.A.,” a term Mrs. Anthony laughs off, though only after bringing it up.

Given their combined star power, good looks and obvious ambition, the question must be asked: Are Mr. and Mrs. Anthony campaigning to be the next Posh and Becks (Victoria and David Beckham)? Or perhaps a family-friendly version of Khloe Kardashian and Lamar Odom?

Mrs. Anthony, born Alani Vazquez, a beauty with large brown eyes, full cheeks and a girl-next-door sweetness, prefers another comparison.

“I love Will Smith and Jada Pinkett,” she said earlier in the lunch, sipping iced tea with lemon. “You see the love, and you can see the support, and they partner on things and produce together. But she has a life, and he has a life.”

IF the formula for power-couple success is fame times two plus business savvy, the Anthonys would seem to have the right answer. In 2008, the couple established Krossover Productions, the name suggesting a melding of their two careers. That same year, the company produced “Tyson,” the critically praised Mike Tyson documentary. It currently co-produces Mrs. Anthony’s reality show on VH1, known as “La La’s Full Court Wedding,”in its first season. (It will become “La La’s Full Court Life” when it returns on Aug. 22.)

Other projects in the pipeline at Krossover include a movie with the director Brett Ratner (“Rush Hour,” “X-Men: The Last Stand”), more reality programming for VH1 and a children’s book about bullying.

But the record is spotty for New York sports couples trying to transcend their genres, particularly for the wives. For every Nancy Seaver — so beloved in New York after her husband, Tom, led the Mets to the World Series in 1969 that she appeared beside him in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade and in commercials for Phillips 66 — there is at least one Joumana Kidd, whose hosting career (“Extra,” NBA Television) dissolved amid a messy divorce from the former New Jersey Nets point guard Jason Kidd. Then there was Anna Benson, the men’s magazine model whose bawdy attempts to stay in the spotlight helped get her husband, the pitcher Kris Benson, traded from the Mets in 2006.

Still, Mr. Anthony said, converting their marriage into a business partnership simply made sense. Both he and his wife are innately ambitious people who are not eager to let others hold the puppet or purse strings.

“I saw her wanting to go into movies and producing films and documentaries and reality shows,” Mr. Anthony said in a telephone interview, “so I said instead of letting somebody else come on board and produce all this stuff, we have the capabilities and the relationships, we can create our own production company and bring everything through that.” Asked whether the chance to build an off-court career figured into his plans to come to New York, Mr. Anthony, 27, a Brooklyn native, said he simply wanted to come home. “I’d always imagined playing as a New York Knick at the Garden,” he said.

For Mrs. Anthony, 32, controlling her own career becomes both easier and more complex as she is increasingly identified as her husband’s wife. She was previously best known as the host of MTV’s “TRL” from 2002 to 2007, as well as from her appearances on “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” and “Flavor of Love” (as a host, not a contestant). Before that she was a radio D.J. in Atlanta and Los Angeles, a career she said she conned her way into during high school. “I lied about my age, because I was too young to do it at the time,” she said.

WRITTEN BY DOUGLAS QUENQUA & FULL STORY HERE