Source: VH1 / Viacom
Liza Morales is new to the cast of Basketball Wives, and it’s clear that she’s very different from her co-stars. While they concern themselves with petty squabbles and drama, she’s busy trying to get her famous ex, Lamar Odom, to provide promised funds to their son to pay for college. They have no problem telling all their business while it took some drinks to finally get her to loosen up and open up. And while the ladies are label lovers, dressed to the nines to meet up at the store and gossip, Liza stays dressed in simple, laid-back fashions. In an interview with the New York Post’s Page Six Style she said being quarantined in a mansion with (most of) the cast compelled her to prioritize comfort over being gussied up.
“Once we started filming we went straight to the house, so for me, comfort is key. Like, where we going? We can’t go to the club, we’re not doing anything,” she said. “I was still in sweatsuits, leggings and hoodies; I feel like that became the attire. I just want to be comfortable, honestly — like, TV, no TV, I’m still gonna be me.”
It wasn’t just being stuck in a house that motivated her to dress down, though. You won’t catch her draped in head-to-toe designer fashions. Respectfully, ain’t nobody got time for that. She won’t even wear too many colors, as she joked that being from New York, she’s happiest in all black. So when it came to trying to keep up with her co-stars, she simply wasn’t interested.
“I know how the ladies can be; they will drag you for coming with an old purse. So I was like, honestly, I’ve been through some real s—t in life. I could care less about that. I just feel like life is so much bigger than all of that material stuff,” she said. “So if they wanna come at me for not having a Chanel or a Gucci bag, I don’t care. Because Gucci and Chanel don’t take care of me, so why would I be out there taking care of them?”
Morales joined the cast for Season 9, though she had been approached in the past about taking part in the reality show. As mentioned, she’s been through some things. She and Odom share three children (the youngest, son Jayden, passed away at six months old of SIDS). The baller ended up abandoning their relationship and family shortly after that tragedy in 2006. He wound up marrying Khloe Kardashian after weeks of knowing her. Meanwhile, he’d been with Morales for more than a decade and couldn’t commit. And while she’s portrayed on the show as someone who can’t seem to move on from Odom and his antics, she told The Daily Beast way back in 2013 that she was looking forward to finding love again with someone else.
“I spent a great deal of my young life focused only on Lamar and his world. That’s all over now,” she said at the time. “I’m looking forward to meeting someone new and finding a love again and finally walking down the aisle. I’m hopeful that I’ll find someone willing to be a role model and a father figure for my children. They deserve that. Today it’s about me and the kids and moving forward. No anger or regrets. Just lessons learned and good days ahead.”
