Dominique Lenard Shares The Truth About Life After The NBA

The reality show Basketball Wives is known for glorifying the glitzy, glamorous lifestyles of the NBA’s first ladies — a category of reality star loosely defined as women who are married or engaged to, have children with or are divorced from big-name professional athletes. Many times, the “for real for real” story of these women who stand beside their men through the good, the bad and the ugly seems to get lost in the drama. 

Dominique Lenard, 37, is the newest member of the Basketball Wives TV sorority, but what we saw of her on the series was only a glimpse of her truth. She is the former wife to NBA star Voshon Lenard, and her “role” on the show was to be a supporting player to the main cast: namely, long-standing cast member Jennifer Williams’ “hype man” in the latter’s feud with fellow veteran Evelyn Lozada. 

Unsurprisingly, much of what you see of Dominique on the show is made-for-TV drama. In reality (real reality), she is indeed a very close friend of Williams, but she is also a mother, an entrepreneur and a 20-year vet of the NBA WAG (Wives and Girlfriends) Club.  

It’s been one year since Dominique, who is now 37, divorced Voshon, now 46. She is finally coming to terms with how her past has affected her and is trying to find her true identity outside of being a basketball wife — a title, she has realized, she was never really happy with. “I stayed 10 years longer than I wanted,” she says. “But eventually I realized our relationship had ran its course, and before I became a bitter woman. I wanted to become a free woman.”

A painting hangs on the main level of the three-story house in the suburbs of Detroit that Dominique once shared with Voshon. It features a woman carrying a bag with three babies inside of it. The picture represents a woman with baggage, with no husband, who has to carry the load by herself. It was painted and given to Dominique by her mother after she had her daughters but before she got married, to remind her that, essentially, she’d be raising her daughters alone. 

On the day of our interview, Dominique is wearing an all-white sleeveless duster, light blue denim distressed jeans and bright pink flip-flop shoes. Her hair is a honey blonde, half wrapped into a bun on the top of her head and the other half hanging loosely down her back. She is relaxed and carefree — not what I was expecting from a reality star. From what I had seen on the show, the stars of Basketball Wives were always on edge and ready for combat. But Dominique is calm and inviting and seemed to glow with a sense of being reborn. 

Dominique and Voshon met when she was 14 after she moved next door to him during her freshman year of high school. At the time, she didn’t know he was in the NBA. Dominique would be on her way to the bus stop to go to work and Voshon would stop her on the way to talk. “If [Voshon] seen her coming out, we were mad,” says her mother, Joyce Barnett. “Dominique was young!” The two began dating.

Her parents, who were actively involved in their church, said they were “hurt and embarrassed” about Voshon and Dominique’s newfound love, but before they could put a stop to it, Dominique was pregnant. Her parents both have different theories on how Dominique and Voshon became intimate, but they both agree that Voshon instigated the relationship. 

Dominique had been attending Renaissance High, one of four of the highest performing schools in the Detroit Public School system, but because of the demands of motherhood, she dropped out of Renaissance and enrolled into Oak Park High School — where test performances scored in the bottom 6% of Michigan schools. But Oak Park High offered a home-school program that would allow Dominique to complete high school and get a diploma.

Dominique finished high school a year earlier than expected, but only because she had a strong support system that included her parents, siblings and close friends.  

After graduating, Dominique and the twins moved from Detroit to Miami due to the demands of Voshon’s career. She had to follow him if she wanted her family to be together. This also meant any plans of Dominique going to college were also put on hold.  

Despite it all, things went smoothly for the couple over the next decade. They had another child, got married, and Dominique eventually went back to school part time at the University of Michigan. Then Voshon retired from the NBA, and the closeness that Dominique always assumed would come with proximity never materialized.

“He would go to parties, just not with me. I would go to parties, just not with him,” Dominique says. “Me and the girls took many family vacations, just without him. He was home more, but you can be living in the same house with somebody and still be alone.” She continued, “He was always a great provider, but I feel like I was just younger, and I didn’t require a whole bunch.” 

Looking back, Dominique admits that when she met Voshon, she couldn’t possibly have known what she wanted in a relationship. “I gave up my life back then for what I wanted at that time,” she says. She thought she wanted a sense of comfort and protection, but ultimately says she grew, but her marriage did not.

In 2017, Dominique filed for divorce. She admits she was frightened. Voshon handled a lot for her, but now she would have to fend for herself in ways she never did before. “After my divorce, I lost my sight,” Dominique says. “My ex was my sight, and I was his hearing. He was my protector,” she says. 

Dominique’s friend and castmate Jennifer Williams says she can relate. Williams, who is also divorced from an NBA player, refers to the emotions one experiences with divorce as a “slow death.” She tells BET.com, “It’s like your life completely changes, and it’s a lot of complications and struggles that go along with it.” 

That’s precisely why Williams thought Dominique’s journey of regrouping after divorce would be a good storyline for Basketball Wives.

“It’s not always going to be sunny,” Williams says. “That’s the reality of what you go through when you go through a divorce. And not to say it’s the end all be all, but being on a show that involves women, that’s our audience, and I think other women can relate.” She then added, “Unfortunately though, the talent doesn’t have any control over what the network chooses for the show.”

When Dominique was first approached about joining Basketball Wives she declined, but when producers came back a year later after her divorce was final, she and her daughters collectively decided that she should join the show. Dominique says she knew there was going to be drama because she was Williams’ friend, and some of the girls were at odds with Williams at the time. But she didn’t think that this would be her main storyline. “When I came on, I was associated with Jennifer because I’m a ride or die, and Jennifer is my real friend,” Dominique says. “She is not the friend however that is going to say don’t talk to someone.”   

Dominique describes, specifically, her on-camera brawl with Lozada as something that was blown out of proportion. “I have never had any contact with her after what you guys seen on TV. They played it out on camera, we fixed it, and that was it. I saw her again in a couple other settings, and we never had a fallout, no run out, no words, nothing,” she says. “If I dead something, that’s what it is.”  

As for Dominique’s future career, she says she’d like to do another season of Basketball Wives and really tell her story, as opposed to just playing a supporting role to the main cast. “I am relatable,” Dominique says. “Even though I have had all of this, I’m still going to tell you what the real truth is behind it.”

One harsh reality of divorce that Dominique speaks about candidly is the financial shift. “The alimony I received after my divorce is gone,” Dominique says. “Today, I am in a struggle trying to support my family and take on a space that my ex-husband carried.” 

Her three daughters — Tayler and Tyler, 20, and Taeshon, 16 — are all home this day, celebrating Tyler’s going off to Eastern Michigan University for college. This is something Dominique says she has been working toward with all her girls, especially since Dominique herself had to put her education on hold when she got pregnant with twins at 15. Ultimately, though, she did finish school. “I graduated from U of M [The University of Michigan],” Dominique says proudly while pointing to her bachelor’s degree hanging on her kitchen wall. Sitting on a table directly behind it is a white-and-green sheet cake with the words, “Good luck at Eastern Tyler!” spelled out in green icing. 

Throughout her divorce, the “baggage” Dominique’s mother portrayed in her painting became her support system. But Dominique knows her future is her standing on her own two feet. That means focusing on her intimate-wear business, Loyal Hosiery, and Basketball Wives to make her financially independent. And preparing for an empty nest.

Today, though, Dominique’s house is full with friends and family arriving for Tyler’s send-off party. Voshon drives away from the house, and Dominique waves, but Voshon doesn’t return the friendly gesture. “That’s why I didn’t want to have the event here, because it makes him mad,” she says. “The outside of this house didn’t look like this when we were living together. It was like all broken pieces, and now I’m putting them back together.”