Are You A NBA Groupie?

Are You A  NBA Groupie?
There are groupies, and then there are Groupies. Are you a Groupie and don't even know it?





Article from GQ Magazine

By Lisa DePaulo; Interview by Kyla Jones

There are groupies, and then there are Groupies. The first divide is those who will admit it—and those who won’t. As a general rule, the girls who are actually scoring—with real basketball players—(a) don’t identify themselves as Groupies (if you’ve blown a player, you have somehow been elevated, at least in your mind, to a much higher status) and (b) don’t give interviews. Talking about it is the quickest way to cut off your supply. Or worse, to lower yourself in the Groupie Hierarchy.

“The worst are the Gutter Groupies,” says Brenda Thomas. She is a tall, thin woman of a decent age (48) who is all legs and poise and attitude.

We meet several weeks before All-Star weekend over a too precious breakfast at Philadelphia’s Lacroix restaurant at the Rittenhouse Hotel to talk about blow jobs and basketball players.

Brenda is the reigning Groupie expert, thanks in part to a juicy novel she wrote, Threesome: Where Seduction, Power & Basketball Collide, which she whipped off after spending five years as the personal assistant to Stephon Marbury.

Marbury, as well as his wife, was none too thrilled with Thomas’s literary debut, in which a vast assortment of (allegedly fictional) women spend a great deal of time on their knees, in service to the NBA.

Brenda herself never did a player, but her years of up-close-and-personal interaction have left her with wisdom to burn. This is how she breaks down the Hierarchy:

  • . The Gutter Groupies. These are the women who will wait outside the arena gates after a game and do anything, sometimes right there in the parking lot. If a player is feeling particularly chivalrous, he might let one service him in his Bentley. Gutter Groupies don’t spring for airfare and hotel rooms for NBA All-Star weekend. They won’t go that far to give a free blow job.

  • . The Working Girls. The most prevalent category. Working Girls will bang a player if the opportunity arises, yes, but they won’t do just anything, and they don’t wait in parking lots. “They’re the ones reading In Style magazine but doing the Look for Less,” Brenda says. They’re mostly blue-collar, often from the hood, and more likely to be swept up by the “culture of the NBA” —which is to say, hip-hop—than by the actual game or the players. “They’re notch-in-the-belt party girls,” says Brenda, “who’d be happy with a fling with a bodyguard.” She pauses. “Basically, this is their hobby. Working Girls have a helluva lot more fun.”

  • 3. The Fly Girls. These are the women who are just classy enough to merit a second encounter with a player. They might even get a piece of jewelry or a ride on the team’s private plane. To be a Fly Girl, you need to be toting real Louis Vuitton. “You also have to be really gorgeous,” says Brenda. A great many Fly Girls are often in denial, she says. “They refuse to see themselves as groupies. They need All-Star rehab or something.”

    4. The Upper Crust. The stratospheric category of babe (see: Eva Longoria, Vanessa Williams, et al.) who might end up engaged or married (however briefly) to a player. The Upper Crust also includes women whose daddies or daddies’ lawyers can get them backstage with the players. They tend to be bony-assed white girls who may not marry the players—but won’t be left out on the curb, either.