In September 2022, former NBA player Nick Young sat down with DJ Vlad. One of the wilder stories he — speaking as candidly as expected — revisited came from his rookie season with the Washington Wizards .
An unnamed Wizards cheerleader lost her job after sleeping with him and former teammate Andray Blatche . Her name never surfaced. Young and Blatche, both in their early 20s at the time, continued their careers without interruption, eventually combining for over two decades in the league.
Young, who retired following the 2018-2019 season, shared the story at a time when the NBA was still processing the fallout from the Ime Udoka scandal.
Just before then, it had announced that head coach Udoka — who had led the Boston Celtics to the 2022 Finals — would be suspended for the entire 2022–23 season for "violations of team policies" while an internal investigation into a relationship with a staff member was underway.
In times like these, those moments belong to the ones the league can't ignore — a stark reminder of workplace boundaries and the complex power dynamics that often accompany them.
Udoka, now with the Houston Rockets , was eventually dismissed in February 2023. Young and Blatche ? They had walked a similar line during the 2007–08 season but never reached that point. For them, the controversy disappeared before it ever became public. Young recalled realizing that when he and Blatche, a 6'11" big man, arrived at the gym one day.
"People was blaming us like it was our fault because she got fired or something like that," said the 2018 champ with the Golden State Warriors .
Ultimately, with the cheerleader gone, that finger-pointing was the only backlash the Wizards' young duo came to witness.
When asked by DJ Vlad whether sleeping with a cheerleader was acceptable, Young didn't hesitate.
"Yeah, yeah," he said, before joking that it must have been something new — pointing out that earlier eras, including Magic Johnson's, were probably even wilder.
Looking back, Swaggy P made it clear he understood the rule about not crossing certain lines within an organization. Players weren't supposed to, at least in theory. Still, despite him and Blatche doing that, the consequences that followed were completely one-sided.
Another wild thing Young — who seems to have a certain penchant for this — said during the interview was that in cases like his and Blatche's, as well as Udoka's, it usually came down to something simple.
"I think men just get bored sometimes," he said. "And things happen when you get bored. Just tryna stay busy."
While that, in his view, was exactly the reason Udoka cheated on a woman like Nia Long, for Young, it wasn't the first time boredom got him in trouble. Swaggy P had, after all, his fair share of affairs. That came to light in 2016 when a video secretly recorded by then-Los Angeles Lakers teammate D'Angelo Russell exposed Young's infidelity.
Ultimately, Nick's rookie season played out in an NBA era — and a Wizards locker room — that practically defined chaos, a time impossible to compare with today. A story like that now would explode. The fact that it didn't was just fine for Young and Blatche. For the cheerleader? Not so much.
This story was originally published by Basketball Network on Jan 2, 2026, where it first appeared in the Off The Court section. Add Basketball Network as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
