Carmelo Anthony started a new charity and benched his wife.
The Knicks forward incorporated the Carmelo Anthony Foundation Inc. in July, bringing two business associates on board as directors rather than now-estranged La La Anthony.
She has long been a board member, along with her husband, of the Carmelo Anthony Family Foundation, the basketball star’s main vehicle for charitable giving.
La La moved out of the couple’s Manhattan home a few months ago. The Post reported that Carmelo was cheating on her with Mia Angel Burks, a 24-year-old who is now pregnant with a child that the Hall of Famer believes is his.
La La, a former MTV VJ, did not participate with her husband at the foundation’s “Very Melo Christmas” movie event for kids in December.
Carmelo Anthony started the foundation in 2005 and his wife joined the board in 2009. His Melo Enterprises company donated $44,000 to the charity, which started off with modest programs to feed the homeless in Anthony’s hometown of Baltimore.
The next year, Anthony gave the group $500,000 and his business kicked in another $525,000.
The foundation initially concentrated most of its giving in Baltimore, Denver and to Syracuse University, where Anthony led the basketball team to a national championship. The foundation donated $3 million toward a basketball practice facility, named in his honor.
Donations by Anthony, who is in the midst of a five-year $124 million contract, have been much more modest in recent years.
He kicked in $290,000 to the foundation in 2014 and $293,791 in 2015, according to its latest tax filings. La La contributed $25,000.
The group in 2015 gave $5,000 to UNICEF; $15,000 to Feed the Children; and $30,700 to Brooklyn schools for supplies. It also spent $70,373 to build basketball courts.
It spent the bulk of the $689,500 it received in 2015 to hold an event it called “A Very Melo Weekend” in Puerto Rico. The weekend included a golf tournament, excursion to a soccer game and parties and was described on tax filings as both a fund-raiser and a chance to unveil new basketball courts it funded.
Anthony started the new charity, which received tax-exempt status from the IRS in January, “to broaden the horizons of his charitable endeavors by setting up a public foundation where he intends to raise contributions from the public,” a spokeswoman for Anthony said.
She said the family foundation was not folding and insisted La La Anthony would remain on its board.
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