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Near the end of the Basketball Wives reunion on Sunday, Shaunie O’Neal was asked about her thoughts on the season as a whole. She pointed out that she felt like the season was one of growth for the ladies, and in many ways, that’s true. Tami Roman, despite her messier moments, has owned some of her past mistakes and tried to move forward, for the most part, in positivity. Jackie Christie has risen above the drama thanks to therapy, so much so that she was barely even spoken to during the reunion (calling an MIA Jenn was her only moment). Shaunie is branching into another level of business with weed. Malaysia Pargo tackled her fear of the police. As for the newbies, if they are invited back next season (no Kristen Scott please), they will likely learn a thing or two from mistakes made in Season 7. As for Jennifer Williams, she didn’t come to the reunion, so her growth comes in finally realizing that if you don’t have the receipts, don’t bother showing up for yet another tongue-lashing.
But one person who hasn’t really showed much growth and who proved that during the season, and throughout the reunion, is Evelyn Lozada. Sitting with Iyanla Vanzant was supposed to help her to be a better person following years of bottle-throwing, table-jumping antics, and when she is with her family, you can see flickers of that person. However, when she gets among the ladies of this show, she’s back to her old hurtful antics.
She came to the reunion pretending she was too important to interact with Tami, as opposed to really trying to hash out whatever is behind their issues, which they said started again after last year’s reunion. She scowled throughout the reunion like she was smelling something terrible. She threw light shade about who was “thirsty” and who was not. And when she was asked to give her final thoughts about the season by host Marc Lamont Hill, she chose to use that time to speak negatively of Tami, who had already exited the reunion and whom she wouldn’t look at when she was on stage, urging the Bonnet Chronicles star to be more of her “real self.”
But where I was truly disheartened was to see Evelyn expose an alleged conversation she had with Tami and Shaunie, where it was claimed that Tami said she could no longer have children. Conveniently, Shaunie couldn’t “confirm or deny” the conversation because she couldn’t remember it (that selective memory is a trip), but things spiraled from there. Tami responded by saying Evelyn was a “non-embryo having” something, and Evelyn fired back by saying her eggs still work while Tami’s are “fried as f–k.”
It was all incredibly low, especially when you consider that Roman has opened up publicly about having miscarriages, and it’s a sensitive topic that Lozada can also relate to. So to hear them go back and forth about who is fertile and who is not? Disgusting. When called out for bringing up and allegedly making light of Tami’s fertility issues, Evelyn couldn’t defend it. Instead, she just lashed out.
“You’re f–king disgusting,” she said to her co-star. “Like how do you live with yourself?”
But that is the question she needs to ask herself at this point. Sure, Tami hasn’t always made the best decisions, but it did seem as though in Season 7 she was regretful about certain things and making changes. But Evelyn, on the other hand, is still too fond of rolling in the mud of drama. She spent the season entertaining (if not creating) rumors about the other ladies, calling them derogatory names like Lee Lee, doing impressions of them for laughs, talking ugly about them literally right behind their back, and body-shaming them. Despite her positive trip to Puerto Rico to help out post-hurricane, the mass majority of what we saw of Evelyn this season was not a revamped version of herself. It wasn’t an apologetic one. It wasn’t a peacemaker or an unbothered one. It was the same old pettiness, the same gossip, and the same lies about how she never has the names of other people in her mouth when that seems to be the constant.
For all of her commentary during the reunion about the other ladies needing to be “real” and authentic, particularly Jenn and Tami, if what we’ve witnessed all season long is her version of that, she should know it’s nothing to be proud of. She may be “real” in her mind, but from the outside looking in, she’s still just “real” mean.
Twitter also had a lot to say about the Basketball Wives reunion. Hit the flip to see what everyone’s thoughts were on Sunday night’s shenanigans.
