Hope Dworaczyk

Hope Dworaczyk is Jason Kidd’s girlfriend. She’s also rumored to be a model, but I can’t find much evidence of it.

She does sound like a pretty cool girl, though. From her Myspace page:

Now, I understand that a woman might think that dating a professional athlete would be pretty cool. Especially someone that everyone will recognize when you drag him to the mall. I get that, and Kidd’s resume is impressive enough that even the most casual sports fan could pick him out of a lineup. He’s a hands down Hall of Famer.

But damnit, use some common sense here.

Kidd has been divorced since January, 2007. That’s not a dealbreaker on its own—lots of good people get divorced. But the guy once had an alcohol problem, plead guilty to domestic abuse charges, had numerous affairs, and was later accused of breaking his wife’s rib and smashing her head into the console of a car.

Hope Dworaczyk presumably knew all this, and still thought it would a good idea to date the dude.

Oh yeah, and now she’s pregnant with his kid.

/facepalm

Tiffany Stewart

Mark Cuban once told a reporter that he would “slice [his] f---ing nuts off” if he published the name of his fiancee. Here’s hoping that he’s gotten over it by now…

Tiffany Stewart (gulp) is now Mark Cuban’s wife. She married the dot com billionaire in September of 2002.

Cuban is one of those rare guys who manages to earn the respect of nerds and jocks alike. A dot com billionaire (he sold broadcast.com to the now fledgling Yahoo! for over $5 billion in 1999), Mark is now the outspoken owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks.

While racking up over $1 million in fines (he matches all fines with charitable donations), Mark Cuban has made himself more accessible than the typical fat cat sports owner. He keeps a blog and encourages fans to email him with questions or ideas.

Marianela Orono

You’ve probably had a couple summers in your life that you look back on and think man, that was a pretty perfect summer. Your summers may have been so great that at one point you may have even considered buying one of these beauties to go back in time and relive it.

And as nice as those times may have been for you, believe me when I say that compared to Manu Ginobili’s best summer, your best summer sucked. Sorry. Take it up with the flopper king.

In the summer of 2004, Manu got married, picked up a six-year $52 million contract to play for the Spurs, and led the Argentinian basketball team to a gold medal in the Olympic games. How do your memories of fireflies, sleeping bag farts and cute girls at the pool hold up to that? That’s what I thought.

Manu Ginobli’s wife is Marianela Orono. They were married in Bahia Blanca, Argentina in July of 2004.

DeShawn Snow

If you ever wanted to know the direct telephone number for the Executive Assistant of Basketball Operations for the Cleveland Cavaliers (and I’m sure there are a lot of pissed off Cavaliers fans out there right now who might like that number), thank DeShawn Snow.

DeShawn is a realtor, and as part of her marketing efforts, her website includes a letter of recommendation from Maura Schroeder. At the bottom of the letter is her direct phone number (yes, of course I called her).

Why would anybody involved with a sports team allow their direct line to be published on the internet? Don’t you know how crazy us fans are? What logical reason would anybody have do such a thing? I guess when you’re Eric Snow’s wife, you can talk people into these things.

When DeShawn isn’t busy sabotaging people’s work numbers or setting people up with subprime mortgages, she runs the Deshawn Snow Foundation (warning: loud annoying music is played upon entry to the site), which seeks to empower teenage girls.

Tyra Banks

Between The Tyra Banks Show and the despicable yet impossibly addictive America’s Next Top Model, you’ve probably had just about enough of Tyra Banks these days. But just in case you haven’t had enough of her yet, here’s a little more to push you over the edge.

Tyra Banks dated Chris Webber from 2001-2004. They were long-rumored to be engaged, but both parties denied the story.

In 2006, Tyra Banks aired a show called “Professional Athletes and the Women Who Love Them,” which is just a really long way to say WAGs.

Given her relationship with Webber, maybe she should have called the episode “Professional Athletes who accepted money as amateurs and forced their college to forfeit an entire season plus two final four games and was later suspended for lying to a grand jury and the women who love them.”

Chris Webber played (read: got hurt a lot) for the Golden State Warriors in the 2007-2008 season. He officially retired from the game last month.