Liz Cambage towers over her friend as controversial basketball star hits one of Australia’s most exclusive fashion hubs after the biggest win in her chequered career

Controversial Australian basketball star Liz Cambage was hard to miss when she was spotted shopping with a friend in Melbourne this week.

Cambage, 32, towered over her companion shortly after the polarizing sports identity won her first Women’s Chinese Basketball Association championship with the SiChuan Yuanda team.

Not long after returning to Melbourne, Cambage headed to the Liberty Belle Skin Center in posh Toorak, where she was “determined to get her skin looking great again” after 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 clear that the two are good friends and not dating.

Cambage, 32, towered over her two companions as they visited trendy Armadale while the star also went shopping in Toorak

It comes after the polarizing sports identity won her first WCBA championship with SiChuan Yuanda in China

Cambage signed a rumored three-month deal worth $1 million with SiChuan Yuanda – and the move quickly paid off with some silverware at the end of the season

Cambage will not attend the Paris Games after being blacklisted from the Opals when she allegedly made racist comments against the Nigerian national team in a warm-up match

Last month, Cambage courted controversy again by being ejected from a match in China for viciously elbowing one opponent in the head and punching another in the face.

The former WNBA player and Australian Opal saw her career on the rocks after she allegedly made racist comments against the Nigerian national team during a warm-up match for the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.

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 stoppage in play.

Those comments sidelined her from her Nigerian-American Los Angeles Sparks teammates and she was eventually released by the American franchise.

Her comments also divided the Opals camp and she has since been blacklisted from never representing her country again.

Facing basketball oblivion, star center Cambage then signed a $1 million deal with SiChuan Yuanda – and the move quickly paid off with some silverware at the end of the season.

Cambage played just three months and earned more than four times as much as the highest-paid WNBA stars, with Supermax contracts of up to $234,936 per season.

After she was ejected last month after using her elbow, basketball fans were quick to attack the Aussie star, calling her a ‘clown’ and saying ‘a leopard doesn’t change its spots’.

Liz Cambage (second from right) was recently in the news after she was seen on video punching an opponent in the face during a match in China

The vision also showed an excited Cambage elbowing an opponent in the head (pictured) before pretending nothing had happened. She was later kicked out of the game

The 32-year-old currently has a contract worth $1 million with Chinese side 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 the American WNBA (center and right) when she allegedly racially abused members of the Nigerian national team

With the Opals gearing up for a tough campaign at the Paris Olympics, several online commentators said they were glad Cambage would not be part of the tournament.

“I’m a proud Australian but Liz is an embarrassment not only to most Australians but to all those ‘honest’ players and spectators who follow sport around the world,” one follower wrote.

“Liz has some issues she needs to sort out,” wrote a second.

‘What a waste of talent. Could have gone down in history as one of the greatest of all time if she wasn’t such a magnet for drama.

“So glad they got her out of the Opals. Her behavior is downright embarrassing,” a third added.