The NBA's Secret Wine Society

Fun ESPN piece on some of the top NBA guys and their growing obsession with wine.
Though now I find I like Carmelo a little more. ack.
Lebron was no secret, but it seems it is spreading:

Long article, but great read. “NBA’s Obsession with Wine.”

Quoting below, just for Howard, given J.J. Redick turns out to be a big-time Burg fan

Philadelphia 76ers guard J.J. Redick started drinking wine early in his NBA career, dabbling with cabernet and chardonnay. Now he prefers Barolos and burgundies, and for his birthdays, Redick’s wife procures him a bottle of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, “DRC” as the sky-high-priced wine is known. On a recent 76ers road trip, Redick looked around the team plane. Back when Redick was drafted in 2006, he often saw, say, a bottle of vodka, Hennessey, or a 12-pack of Coors Light on team flights – and that was basically it. Now? Says Redick: “It’s pretty much exclusively wine.”

Beat you to it. By a few minutes

The more high paid athletes get into wine, with very deep pockets, the more they will drive the bottle prices up. Oh well.

Ah, where’s Robin Leach when you need him?

Really enjoyed the article, particularly the details about how some of the stars were following the path that many of us do from bolder wines to Burgundy. I was surprised at how many players started with rieslings - Jancis would be proud!

too true. On the one hand I love the NBA so glad these guys are enjoying wine. But when I got to the part about how Chris Paul likes D’Angerville Taillepieds, I was like, shit, so much for under $100 D’Angerville Volnays.

Carmelo Anthony is basically all of us with our non wine friends

It remains unclear what wine they imbibed; all Anthony remembers is telling his friends that he’d bring his own; he didn’t trust, at this point, their palates

This is awesome. Wouldn’t shock me if there were an NBA lurker or two on this site.

I also love that CP3 is drinking d’Angerville.

You have no idea how I’ve been trying to connect to cp3 and Redick about wine as a clippers season ticket holder. I’ve reached stalker level.

My wife’s hs friend is cp’s personal chef and his wife and my wife talk babies. I keep telling her we need a baby play date so I can get in good (he’s in the inner circle). But… now they moved to Houston to be where cp is

Make it happen in Houston–I know you’d get on a plane for that. CP3 probably needs friends here.

I’ll go search for you whining about the Koch brothers, doctors, lawyers, business/finance types, the Wine Advocate, Wine Spectator, etc…

You should at least be OK with JJ Reddick.

There are 500 players in the NBA, I think we’ll be OK.

Same, Bron. Same.

You’re the Joseph Swan of this topic - you did it first, but the second guy got all the attention.

LOL

Kevin Durant likes Pinot Noir. Heard him talk about it in an on court interview.

I got a J.J. Redick quote in there; it’s all about the marketing!

Durant might say he loves Pinot right now, but he’ll likely ditch it if another variety keeps getting higher scores.

I want to know where to get some Vanilla Puddin chardonnay.