| | | I'm sorry, but she's taken.
|  | | Rony Seikaly says he has been getting asked more about his wife than his NBA career. |
I'm talking about my wife, Elsa Benitez, who graces the cover of this week's Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.
We met a little less than four years ago. A mutual friend introduced us, and we went out to dinner that night. We hit it off perfectly, and I just knew right there that she was the one for me.
I've been an avid reader of the Swimsuit Issue for a long time. It's funny, because I was actually in the issue in 1986. No, not in a swimsuit. Our Syracuse team, which of course lost to Indiana in the national championship game that year, was one of the stories of that week, and there were three or four pictures of me in the magazine. But no one remembers that, because no one reads the articles anyway. Elle MacPherson -- my favorite model at the time -- was on the cover.
The issue is really something to look forward to. I remember getting it at Syracuse, and you could be freezing in the snow, but when you got that magazine with beautiful women in bikinis, it just felt like summer.
I know some people think that it's too provocative. But anyone who says that is just not secure about themselves. It's a simple fact that if you go to beaches that's what you see: women in bikinis, women in thongs, topless women, completely nude women.
|  | | Elsa Benitez, a k a Mrs. Rony Seikaly, landed one of the most coveted shots in modeling -- the cover of Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit Issue. |
My wife never thought that she'd be on the cover. She had two or three pictures in it last year, and she got some good feedback. But this year she felt she had no chance, because the cover shot is always in the water, and she was in Tunisia in the middle of the desert. Then three or four days before the issue came out, the agency called her in and said, "You're on the cover," and she almost had a heart attack.
She has been in all these magazines like Vogue and Cosmopolitan that revolve around the fashion industry, but the Swimsuit Issue is bigger than that. This magazine is read by mainstream America and is sold at every gas station in New York and in every hamburger joint in Indiana. And 90 percent of its readers are men.
I know you all want to know what it's like to be married to a woman who is on the cover of the Swimsuit Issue. Truthfully, it's a high-maintenance kind of job.
Every single man in every place we go tries to make the move, impress her and pick her up. These guys must think I'm stupid. They think I don't know the game.
It goes like this: Three guys will come over to me and start talking basketball. Then all of a sudden, one of them is talking to me and the other two are talking to my wife. I'm like, "Please, this is an old trick already."
|
“ |
Every single man in every place we go
tries to make the move, impress her and pick her
up. These guys must think I'm stupid. They think I don't know the game.
” |
|
|
— Rony Seikaly |
One time we were eating dinner in Southern France, and this flower lady came over to our table and put a basket of flowers in front of my wife. She asked who it was from and the flower lady said, "It's from that man over there at that table." So I told the flower lady that she could take the flowers back and shove it up his butt. The flower lady said that she wouldn't make any money if my wife didn't keep them. So I asked how much they were, gave her the money, and took the flowers. After dinner I threw them in the street where all the cars would run over them.
Her making the cover definitely changed some things. After she went on all the talk shows last week, I'd be riding around in my car in Miami and people didn't even ask me the usual questions, like where I was going to play next or what I thought about Allen Iverson scoring 47 points in this game. They all said, "Hey, Rony, those were beautiful pictures of your wife." It's a change, but I'm really happy for her. She worked really hard, and she is really a great person.
I'm not sure if I'll be back in the NBA again. I had major reconstructive surgery on my foot, and I've worked my way back into shape, but unless I'm going to be on a team that has a chance to win the championship, I'm not going to come back. If that's the case, I've had a great career, and it's been so much fun.
Right now, my wife's booked all over the place, and I'm trying to travel around so that we can spend one of her days off together in Paris or London in the next couple weeks. It's all I can do to just keep up with her.
Rony Seikaly played for the Heat, Warriors, Magic and Nets in an 11-year NBA career that began in 1988. Send this story to a friend | Most sent stories
|
|
|
