Former NBA player Rashad McCants claims he never had genuine feelings for Khloe Kardashian and that their seven-month relationship was an arrangement for the cameras, a story he keeps telling in different versions.
McCants, 41, appeared on the TFU Podcast on June 24 and laid out what he described as the transactional nature of his 2008, 2009 relationship with the 42-year-old reality star and Good American co-founder. The ex-Minnesota Timberwolves guard said the pairing was never romantic on his end and that he treated it as a business arrangement from the start.
The Sun reported McCants's blunt description of the setup. He told the podcast hosts he changed his Facebook relationship status to "It's complicated", and that single move set off a chain reaction that ended things between them.
"It's complicated. You date me because you want me to help you do some s**t. We have an agreement. This is not, I like you, I like your sister."
McCants went further, describing how he tried to manage the situation with other women in his life while keeping up appearances with Kardashian.
"And I'm trying to convince other girls the same, like...no no no, we're not dating, we're just visibly holding hands. We're not doing too much. We can still do what we do."
That arrangement, McCants said, came with "strict rules" about what he could say and do, rules he did not spell out in detail on the podcast. The relationship lasted roughly seven months before the two split in January 2009, with hectic and conflicting schedules cited at the time as the reason.
McCants pinpointed the moment the arrangement fell apart. He changed his Facebook relationship status, a move that, in 2008, still carried real social weight, and the media picked it up immediately.
"I changed my relationship status to 'It's complicated.' This is what did it all."
Kardashian confronted him about the status change. McCants said he decided to walk away. "It got too much. I was like, you know what, I'm cool," he told the podcast hosts.
At the time, McCants said, Kim Kardashian was dating NFL star Reggie Bush, which placed both couples inside the same celebrity orbit, and the same media spotlight. McCants made clear he wanted no part of it once the attention spiraled beyond the original terms of the arrangement.
The broader celebrity world has seen no shortage of high-profile figures rethinking how they handle public relationships, and McCants's account, if accurate, suggests that calculation has been going on far longer than most fans realize.
The podcast interview also touched on the so-called "Kardashian Kurse", the idea, popular in tabloid culture, that men who date into the Kardashian-Jenner family see their careers or personal lives unravel. The podcast hosts brought up names like Lamar Odom, Ray J, Kanye West, and Caitlyn Jenner as examples.
McCants brushed it off. "I don't know, man, I didn't get cursed. I got out," he said. When pressed about the others, he kept it short: "Ask them."
But McCants's own career timeline complicates his bravado. He was traded from the Timberwolves to the Sacramento Kings in February 2009, one month after the breakup. He never played in the NBA again after the 2008, 09 season. He had talks with several other teams about a possible return, but none materialized.
And his explanation for why has shifted. In a February 2023 interview, McCants said his departure from the league was "a mental thing" and had nothing to do with his connection to Kardashian. In a separate, undated interview after that, he reversed course and claimed the Timberwolves let him go specifically because his relationship with Kardashian created unwanted attention and caused friction with teammates.
Those two accounts, one blaming his own mental state, the other blaming the Kardashian spotlight, sit in direct tension. McCants has not addressed the contradiction publicly.
The Kardashian family, meanwhile, has continued to generate headlines of every variety. Kim Kardashian's own home was the site of a break-in at her $60 million mansion that led to an arrest, a reminder that the family's fame brings risks well beyond tabloid gossip.
Khloe Kardashian has not publicly responded to McCants's latest claims. She made no statement after the podcast aired, and no comment from her representatives appeared in connection with the interview.
McCants offered no documentary evidence for the "agreement", no texts, no contracts, no corroboration from anyone else who was present. His account rests entirely on his own word, delivered more than fifteen years after the relationship ended.
Several basic questions remain unanswered. What were the specific "strict rules" Kardashian allegedly imposed? Which teams talked to McCants about a comeback after his trade to Sacramento? And why has he given two contradictory explanations for the end of his NBA career?
Celebrity relationships, whether Brad Pitt going Instagram official with Ines de Ramon or Tom Holland and Zendaya's secret wedding, generate enormous public interest precisely because fans assume they are seeing something real. McCants's claim, if true, would confirm what skeptics have long suspected about the Kardashian brand: that the line between genuine personal life and manufactured content was never very thick to begin with.
A man who says his relationship was fake, can't keep his own career story straight, and waits a decade and a half to tell all on a podcast is not exactly a star witness. But the Kardashian machine has always thrived on attention, and McCants, whatever his motives, just handed them another round.
