Kris Humphries and 7 NBA Players Better Known off the Court

Over the years, many NBA basketball players have become celebrities for their high level of play and for taking their teams to the NBA Championship. 

Hall of Fame players like Wilt Chamberlain, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Julius Erving are famous for the statistics they put up and the success that they had on the court. 

Even though a player may be great on the court, it is not uncommon to see one become famous for other things as well. 

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Michael Jordan and Shaquille O'Neal have all crossed over into movies and others are famous for the bad choices that they make. 

This season, New Jersey Nets forward Kris Humphries is the poster child for off court fame. His personal life was televised and millions of people learned who he was and that he actually played in the league. 

The following is a list of players who are well known for their off court activities. Some of them are relatively unknown outside the basketball world and some are superstars. 

In addition to their careers, each is famous to a larger audience than just those who follow the NBA.

Metta World Peace

Basketball fans will easily recognize Metta World Peace as a player for the Los Angeles Lakers who has changed his name from Ron Artest.

Best known for his infamous involvement in the "Malice in the Palace" on court brawl several years ago when he played for the Indiana Pacers, World Peace is well known off the court as well.

Thanks to his appearance on ABC's Dancing with the Stars, World Peace is very recognizable to non-basketball fans everywhere. 

In addition to being in the dancing contest, World Peace, an advocate for mental health awareness, was rumored last summer to be working on a reality show called "Last Second Shot" where he will work with parolees using basketball to help regain their lives after prison. 

Delonte West

Even the casual basketball fans may not know who Delonte West is, but they will have heard of his off court activities. 

West was most recently in the news for skipping a visit to the White House with the Dallas Mavericks in honor of winning the NBA Championship last season. 

West originally said that he was banned from the White House, but that was later proven untrue.

Even though he has made headlines lately, he is known outside the basketball world as the player who applied to work at the Home Depot during the lockout and the guy who allegedly had an affair with LeBron James' mother during the 2010 NBA playoffs. 

James and West were teammates at the time. 

Kobe Bryant

Kobe Bryant is the most recognizable current basketball player in the world and his on-court accomplishments are very well known. He is a future Hall of Famer and one of the greatest players in league history.

Unfortunately for Kobe, there is also a much wider audience outside of basketball who recognize him for some of his off-court difficulties. 

The most significant of these is the highly publicized legal charges that were brought upon Bryant for sexual assault that was alleged to have occurred in the Summer of 2003 when Bryant was in Colorado for a medical procedure. 

The charges against Bryant were later dropped, but the incident tarnished his image and turned Kobe into a criminal in the minds of many people. 

More recently, the highly scrutinized Bryant has again made headlines when his wife filed for divorce. This will be especially costly for Bryant as some reports have the amount he will owe his former wife estimated at $75 million. 

Kris Humphries

Kris Humphries is public enemy No. 1 in the NBA today and it has nothing to do with his on court performance. 

Due to his highly publicized relationship, short marriage and divorce from Kim Kardashian, Humphries is getting booed in arenas across the country. 

The wedding and courtship was chronicled on Kardashian's reality television show on which Humphries appeared many times. 

The whole process took a relatively unknown basketball player who had never made an All-Star team and turned him into an instant celebrity.

Humphries is better known by young women all around the world as the former Mr. Kardashian than for anything he has accomplished with a basketball.  

Greg Oden

The reason Greg Oden is better known for events off the court is not because has been involved with a lot of drama, but because he has not yet been able to play consistently during his career. 

After being drafted with the top overall selection in the 2007 NBA Draft, Oden has battled injuries and has only appeared in 82 games.

Oden did have one off-court controversy that brought him some unwanted attention when nude pictures of the Portland Trail Blazers center surfaced on the internet. 

He apologized to put the incident behind him. 

Now he just needs to get healthy so he can be known for doing something on the court in the NBA.

Jimmer Fredette

Jimmer Fredette has only played in a handful of games so far during his rookie season with the Sacramento Kings, but his legacy from his college days is very well known. 

As a senior last season at Brigham Young University, Fredette's popularity transcended the basketball court nationwide. 

While his play did earn him the Naismith College Player of the Year award, there was a music video made in his honor, his own reality show and Kevin Durant tweeted that Jimmer was the greatest scorer in the world.

Fredette is already responsible for selling a lot of tickets to a game later this month when he returns to Utah to play against the Jazz. 

It is not due to anything he has done in the NBA, but more because of the Jimmermania a season ago.

Carmelo Anthony

Carmelo Anthony has not yet reached the same status as some of the other NBA players in terms of reality show popularity, but he is well on his way.

Anthony and his wife, La La, have already starred in one Vh1 reality show called "La La's Full Court Wedding," and have plan for another series on the same channel.

Additionally, Anthony once appeared with Miami Heat star Chris Bosh in an episode of "Law and Order: SVU." 

Now that Anthony is playing in New York, he should get more exposure and opportunities for this type of thing than he did in Denver. 

Give him some time, and he may well catch up with Kris Humphries and Lamar Odom. 

Lamar Odom

Of all of the players currently in the NBA, Lamar Odom is the most famous for his off-court life.

After marrying into the ultimate reality show family in 2009, Odom has appeared on not only on his wife, Khloe Kardashian's, show but the couple have are about to launch the second season of "Khloe and Lamar" which follows their lives together.

Despite being traded to the Dallas Mavericks and out of Los Angeles, the reality series will go on in their new location. 

Before meeting Kardashian, Lamar Odom was a solid role player for several NBA teams including the Los Angeles Lakers. Now he is better known as the King of his own reality show.

He also has his own perfume line. 

If you ask most people, they can not tell you Odom's basketball statistics, or even which team he now plays for, but they could tell you when season two is set to begin.