Vegan within the NBA: Washington Wizards' JB Blair Says "My Physique Responded Splendidly"

JB Blair, assistant coach of NBA workforce Washington Wizards, isn’t your typical vegan. Towering at 6 ft 10 inches and weighing 255 kilos, Blair defies widespread stereotypes about vegans and athleticism. And he doesn’t shrink back from serving to others within the NBA perceive the advantages of this way of life.  

Blair went vegetarian throughout his final yr on the College of Arizona, the place he performed 4 seasons of school basketball with the Arizona Wildcats. In school, the athlete survived on budget-friendly meals made with potatoes, ramen, rice, and bananas.

Scott Suchman

“Actually, my physique responded splendidly,” Blair tells VegNews. “I felt higher. I had extra power. I misplaced a number of the load that I’d been carrying for fairly a while and I simply caught with it.” 

Over the following 13 years, his skilled basketball profession would take him all over the world, with each the Harlem Globetrotters and on groups in Europe. 

“I went via my complete skilled taking part in profession, roughly, I used to be vegetarian that complete time,” he says. 

After toggling between vegetarian and pescatarian diets, Blair was impressed to go vegan by his then-girlfriend who knowledgeable him of a YouTube documentary she noticed that uncovered the cruelty of the animal agriculture trade.   

Now, almost 9 years into the swap, the 49-year-old athlete says that going vegan has carried out a lot greater than enhance his bodily well being; it catalyzed a shift in consciousness. 

“Mentally, I’ve clear considering and focus,” he says. “And, I really do imagine that the self-discipline it takes to observe a plant-based eating regimen bleeds over to different elements of your life, as effectively.”

“Aware consuming results in acutely aware dwelling and that’s really what occurred,” he says.  

Plant-based curiosity grows within the NBA

Whereas meat-heavy diets have been as soon as considered important for fueling athletes, there’s a transparent uptick in curiosity concerning plant-based diets throughout the league, the coach says. 

That’s as a result of a lot has modified lately within the plant-based meals trade, which now produces thrilling meals that simply swap for his or her animal-derived counterparts. 

Eat Simply

“There are gamers who I’ve taken out to eat with me to my locations, they usually’re in the midst of consuming one thing they usually say, ‘That is wonderful. That is vegan? … Oh, I can do vegan, then,’” Blair says. 

“And I am going, ‘See, it’s not what you imagined,” he says. “It’s not all salad and tofu.”

The coach notes that gamers like Jarred Vanderbilt (of the Los Angeles Lakers) and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope (of the 2023 champion workforce Denver Nuggets) have expressed curiosity in attempting vegan choices. 

For the coach, the openness to at the least attempt vegan choices signifies a major step ahead from his first enterprise into veganism almost 9 years in the past, when understanding of the bodily and psychological advantages of a plant-based eating regimen, notably in athletics, was restricted.

One instance of the shift? When he started his teaching profession, post-game vitamin hardly ever included plant-based choices. “Now, we all the time have the plant-based protein obtainable in addition to the whey, whether or not it’s within the premixed drinks, the powder type, or after we’re constructing smoothies to provide guys after the sport,” Blair says. 

Scott Suchman

One main transfer that despatched a ripple via the NBA was in 2019, when famous person Chris Paul went vegan, a call Blair witnessed firsthand as they have been each with the Houston Rockets on the time. 

“I used to be so joyful he did it as a result of to have a participant of that magnitude make that call, it begins to open the eyes of gamers round him,” Blair says. “And in addition, it made groups conscious that they wanted to make modifications for these gamers.” 

“There’s all the time some vegan choices obtainable now and it makes such a distinction for folks to attempt it,” he says. 

NBA cities with nice vegan meals

For gamers and coaches who wish to attempt vegan meals, nowadays, they’re replete with decisions. And Blair is a digital listing of vegan choices in NBA cities. 

Think about Vegan Cafe

In Memphis, TN, he’s a fan of Think about Vegan Cafe and in Milwaukee, MN, he usually stops at On the Bus—and swears that the perfect vegan chocolate chip cookie lives proper throughout from the eatery in the identical meals corridor. 

He notably enjoys the problem of discovering new eating places and dishes, even in cities the place plant-based choices are much less well-known. Salt Lake Metropolis, he says, has an unimaginable vegan scene, as does his NBA workforce’s house base of Washington, DC the place vegan fast-food chain PLNT Burger might be discovered inside many Complete Meals Markets. 

PLNT Burger

Nonetheless, Blair admits to the problem of balancing the will to discover new locations with the pull of outdated favorites, particularly given the restricted alternatives for journey throughout the league schedule.

JB Blair’s vegan teaching ideas

Initially interested in a plant-based eating regimen for its well being advantages, Blair—a connoisseur of traditional vegan snacks resembling Oreos and Bitter Patch Youngsters—argues that his moral decisions have “a lot outweighed the well being advantages.” 

The concept that a meal isn’t value taking a life has turn into his guideline, a shift that permeates his way of life {and professional} commitments. 

Scott Suchman

A head coach as soon as known as Blair a “militant vegan,” a title he proudly accepts as an indication that his advocacy is having an influence. The truth is, Blair simply returned from Basketball With out Borders, a coaching camp in Europe, the place one other NBA coach turned to him for recommendation. 

“I’m proud to say, he began a plant-based eating regimen whereas we have been there,” Blair beams. “And I informed him, ‘I’ve a restaurant in each NBA metropolis. In case you don’t know the place to go, you name me and I’ll inform you.’”

In the case of teaching, he teaches gamers the importance of teamwork and self-sacrifice, core ideas he believes are intrinsically linked to his plant-based decisions. 

“That’s what I attempt to train my gamers. That what we’re doing is larger than ourselves,” Blair says. “And any accomplishments that we might have as a workforce, it’s as a result of we sacrifice the perfect components of ourselves for that. And I believe that my vegan eating regimen, my plant-based decisions, are a real testomony to that.” 

Leaving a plant-based legacy 

As Blair seems to be towards the following season and yr, the coach is much less involved with the rating sheet and extra centered on how he can encourage and help the folks round him. His final purpose is to turn into a stronger ambassador for a plant-based way of life, each on and off the courtroom. 

“Life’s wins and losses are a lot higher than what we do on the basketball courtroom,” Blair says. “If I can influence folks’s lives by what I do, with my job, then I’m all the time successful.”

Scott Suchman

Blair’s resolution to go vegan was a wake-up name for him in regards to the methods his dietary habits have been beforehand on the mercy of the artistic advertising and marketing of animal merchandise. “A useless cow isn’t a hamburger. It’s a useless cow. A nugget isn’t a nugget. That may be a piece of hen flesh,” he says.

“There are such a lot of issues that we as customers have simply absorbed and actually allowed ourselves to be manipulated. That’s the one cause, on high of every thing else, which means I’ll by no means return to meat-eating simply because I can’t allow them to win on me,” he says. 

In these 9 years, Blair’s proactive advocacy has made it simpler for gamers and coaches to go for vegan decisions, which he additionally attributes to improved advertising and marketing methods and broader cultural shifts round plant-based diets. 

“I actually do imagine that my dietary decisions—how I’m all the time eager about the way it’s higher than myself—is what teaching is all about,” Blair says. “It’s about what being on an NBA workforce is all about.”