Though it seems like Kim Kardashian and Kanye West have been married for more than a decade, some people forget that Kim actually wed former NBA star Kris Humphries before Yeezy.
As fans know, the marriage was very short-lived, with the couple remaining married for only 72 days total. After that, Us Magazine shares that Kardashian filed for divorce on October 31, 2013, citing “irreconcilable differences.” Then, on December 1, Humphries filed papers seeking an annulment rather than a divorce. Eventually, after a lot of back and forth and arguing, the pair agreed to settle in April 2013 and the divorce finalized on June 3, 2013 — just before the birth of North West.
Now, Humphries is breaking his silence on the divorce that earned him a lot of backlash in a lengthy piece for The Player’s Tribune . In the article titled “I Never Wanted To Be That Guy,” Kris details his relationship with Kim and the way that it tainted his career as a basketball player, with many people not taking him seriously in the league after his marriage to Kardashian.
“I should have known what I was getting into,” he admitted in the post. “I was definitely naive about how much my life was going to change. But the one thing that really bothers me is whenever people say my marriage was fake. There’s definitely a lot about that world that is not entirely real.”
Fascinating piece by Minnesota restaurant entrepreneur ? @KrisHumphries ? – he’s opened a bunch of ? @FiveGuys ? and now building Crisp & Green. Yes, he’s also “That Guy” who married Kim Kardashian. https://t.co/Pu971ALQrp
— Jason DeRusha (@DeRushaJ) March 26, 2019
The retired NBA star then goes on to say that his relationship with Kim was 100% real and when it didn’t work out, it was really, really hard to go through so publicly.
“It’s never easy to go through the embarrassment of something like that — with your friends, with your family….but when it plays out so publicly, in front of the world, it’s a whole other level. It was brutal.”
Since the divorce was so highly publicized and the pair fought in court for quite some time, Humphries said that he would oftentimes get booed at games. But what killed him the most, he says, is the fact that some people think he disrespected the game of basketball because he just wanted to get more famous by marrying the reality star. However, he assured readers that that is not the case at all, because the only thing that he ever wanted to be known for was for basketball.
Towards the end of the piece, Kris makes it clear that he was never equipped to handle such public scrutiny and he went through a dark time when he didn’t want to be Kris Humphries. And while he knows that most people will, unfortunately, remember him as “that f***ing guy from TV,” he hopes that there are at least some people remember him for his playing skills.
“And I get it. I signed up for it. I don’t want any pity at all. But I hope that true fans of basketball remember me as a grinder, as a guy who transformed into a heck of a rebounder, and as a guy who always tried to put the game in the best light,” Humphries wrote.
He insists that he will always just be the guy from Minnesota that loves the game of basketball.