After photographs surfaced of NBA star Carmelo Anthony laying next to leopard print swimsuit clad mystery woman on a yacht on June 25, several outlets have now identified her as model Sara Smiri. She’s believed to be of Swedish-Moroccan descent and the website Blackish Tea says she’s based out of Los Angeles. Sara’s since turned her Instagram account to private, but she’s got 38.4K followers, among them rapper Meek Mill, 32. The website Rapped Out claims that Melo, 35, met Sara at an event in Paris before heading to the south of France, where they were photographed aboard a yacht catching some rays. There was no touching or canoodling going on in the photos and so far there’s been no proof that Carmelo and the woman hooked up. We have not been able to confirm that Sara is the woman in the photos.
Both sites say Sara is definitely not married like Melo claimed when denying that there was anything going on between the two. On June 26 he made the bold move of taping a strong denial that anything was going on and giving it to TMZ Sports. He claimed in the video that the woman in the photos was the wife of a friend and they were having a business trip. “I’m really only addressing this for my family,” he said at the start of the clip referring to wife La La Anthony, 36, and their son Kiyan Carmelo Anthony, 12, adding “Keep my family out this, man.”
“I’m over here trying to do a business retreat. I’m over here trying to have a good time,” he continued, adding that he was on a boat with some married pals. He said “Y’all exposing somebody’s wife, c’mon! Leave that alone, that ain’t cool. Now I gotta deal with it with my son, I gotta deal with that with my wife. That’s ain’t cool man,” as the front of the yacht and the ocean could be seen in the reflection of his sunglasses.
He ended the video by saying “The only reason I’m addressing this is cause it’s affecting my family now. And y’all got me out here looking crazy. Usually I wouldn’t address this but I had to address this. I can’t let this one slide cause this sh*t ain’t cool no more. Peace.” The day after Carmelo issued the denial, La La posted then deleted an Instagram pic of a bullet being shot through a heart so she’s clearly hurting over the whole situation.
The photos of Melo on the yacht broke on La La’s 36th birthday, and while he was in the south of France he posted an Instagram pic of the Power star and lovingly captioned it: “Your heart is full of love and affection. Your hands are always caring. I am lucky to have you as my wife. HAPPY BORN DAY QUEEN I LOVE YOU @lala.”