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6 months ago
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Controversial Australian basketball star Liz Cambage was impossible to miss when she was spotted out shopping this week with a friend in Melbourne.
Cambage, 32, towered over her companion shortly after the polarising sporting identity won her maiden Women's Chinese Basketball Association championship with the SiChuan Yuanda team.
Not long after returning to Melbourne, Cambage made a beeline for Liberty Belle Skin Centre in upmarket Toorak, where she was 'determined to make her skin look great again' following her flight from Asia.
She also turned heads after dining with social media identity Charlie Wood at the Top Paddock Café in Richmond.
It is understood the two are close friends and not dating.
Controversial Australian basketball star Liz Cambage was impossible to miss when she was spotted out shopping this week with a friend in Melbourne (pictured)
Cambage, 32, towered over her two companions when they caught up in trendy Armadale as the star also went shopping in Toorak
It comes after the polarising sporting identity won her maiden WCBA championship with SiChuan Yuanda in China
Cambage signed a rumoured three-month, $1million deal with SiChuan Yuanda - and the move quickly paid off with some end-of-season silverware
Cambage won't feature at the Paris Games after she was blacklisted by the Opals when se allegedly made racial remarks towards the Nigerian national team in a warm-up match
Last month, Cambage courted controversy once again by getting ejected from a game in China for viciously elbowing one opponent in the head and hitting another in the face.
The former WNBA player and Australian Opal found her career on the rocks after allegedly making racial remarks toward the Nigerian national team in a warm-up match before the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
Opals teammates and members of the Nigerian team alleged Cambage called her opponents 'monkeys' and told them to 'go back to your third world country' during a break in play.
Those comments put her offside with her Los Angeles Sparks Nigerian-American teammates and she was ultimately released by the US franchise.
Her comments also divided the Opals camp and she has since been blacklisted from ever representing her country again.
Facing basketball oblivion, star centre Cambage then signed a rumoured $1million deal with SiChuan Yuanda - and the move quickly paid off with some end-of-season silverware.
Playing for just three months, Cambage earned more than four times as much as the best-paid WNBA stars, with Supermax contracts capped at $234,936 per-season.
Following her ejection last month after using her elbow, basketball fans were quick to savage the Aussie star, calling her a 'clown' and saying 'a leopard doesn't change its spots'.
Liz Cambage (second from right) was in the headlines recently after she was seen on video hitting an opponent in the face during a match in China
Vision also showed a fired-up Cambage elbowing an opponent in the head (pictured) before acting like nothing happened. She was later ejected from the game
The 32-year-old is currently on a $1million contract with China's Sichuan Yuanda
Cambage (pictured, second from left) was eventually banned from representing the Opals again after a long list of scandals
Cambage (left) did not endear herself to her Nigerian teammates in America's WNBA (centre and right) when she allegedly racially abused members of Nigeria's national team
With the Opals gearing up for a tough campaign at the Paris Olympics, several online commenters said they were glad Cambage would not be part of the tournament.
'I’m a proud Aussie but Liz is an embarrassment not just to most Australian’s but to all those ‘fair’ minded players & spectators around the world who follow sport,' one follower posted.
'Liz has a few issues to work through,' a second posted.
'Such a waste of talent. Could’ve gone down as one of the all time greats if she wasn’t such a magnet for drama.
'So glad they booted her from the Opals. Her behaviour is just downright embarrassing,' added a third.
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