Stephon Marbury agreed to pay his family’s former private chef $900,000 to keep quiet about their affair, according to court papers that just became public.
Marbury has kept a low profile since moving to China to continue his basketball career. Back in January 2006, while he was still starring for the New York Knicks, he hired a private chef to cook for him, his wife Latasha and their three kids. According to the court papers, the two had sex several times before he fired her later that year.
She claimed sexual harassment, saying Marbury made her believe that keeping him happy was part of keeping her job. Marbury maintains the relationship was consensual.
Either way, he wanted it kept quiet. The Knicks were already dealing with the very public sexual harassment case against Isiah Thomas at the time, and Marbury wanted to spare his family and the team the embarrassment. So he agreed to pay her $900,000 to keep the affair private.
He made it about two thirds of the way. Marbury paid her roughly $600,000 before the payments stopped in January 2010. She took him to arbitration for the rest, and an arbitrator awarded her about $330,000, noting that she could have sold her story to the tabloids for far more than what she agreed to.
The only reason any of this is public now is that her lawyers asked a judge to enforce the award, which put the whole agreement into the court record.
So Starbury paid $600,000 to keep a secret, stopped paying, and the story got out anyway. Ouch.
