LaMelo Ball and Jalen Green are among the young NBA stars dating older women today, and Antoine Walker has a simple explanation for why that happens. Walker, a former NBA star, was asked on We Got a Story to Tell if this happened during his playing days as well, and it turns out he himself was an example.
“For me, of course, I have a older baby mom, so it definitely happened back in the day,” Walker said. “So I’m not going to sit here and criticize without taking some criticism myself. I ending up dating a older woman that was 15, 16 years older than me when I was 21.
“So, I understand it to a certain degree,” Walker continued. “It’s one of those situations where you just got to be smarter. I mean if it’s not a relationship that you feel like that’s going to last a long time you got to be smarter, but it happens. It’s a part of life. I mean it’s some older women that look good.
“You 21, sometimes you want an older woman,” Walker added. “I mean so that’s a tough question to ask me, to put me on… I made that mistake, and I won’t necessarily call a mistake, but I dated an older woman at a younger age, so I have to take that criticism that comes along with that.”
It isn’t completely clear who Walker was referring to there. He had his eldest daughter, Alana, with a woman named Donna Grant. His younger daughter, meanwhile, is named Crystal, but it is unclear if he had her with Grant.
Walker was also engaged to former Basketball Wives star Evelyn Lozada from 1998 to 2008, but they don’t have any children together, and they are about the same age as well.
Whatever the case may be, Walker says that was simply down to him finding someone older to be attractive. That was all it took for him. That’s not the case for everyone, though. Here’s what LaVar Ball had to say about his son dating Ana Montana.
“Now, the woman that Melo has, Ana, I like her, love her,” Ball said on Vlad TV. “Everybody is stuck on that thing like, ‘Oh, she’s so old, he’s so young.’ … I kind of made Melo do that on the fact that he always played up six or seven years. So he a little more older than what he actually is, so of course he not gonna pick the girlfriend type from high school. He gonna gravitate toward a woman… every time Melo need her to do something, she there. She ain’t trying to go to the club.”
Montana is 35 years old, while Ball is 24. The Charlotte Hornets star has reportedly been dating her since February 2022, and they are going strong even today.
A relationship where it seemed like all might not be well today is that of 23-year-old Green and 40-year-old Draya Michele. The Phoenix Suns guard got into a heated argument with Michele outside a New York Fashion Week party in September, and they had to be separated from each other. They appear to have put it behind them now, though.
Green and Michele first sparked dating rumors back in August 2023. The fact that Michele has a son, Kniko Howard, who is about the same age as Green, only made matters worse in the eyes of the public. The lovebirds didn’t care, though, and they now have a child together. Their daughter, Lyght, was born on May 12, 2024.
