Nothing readies NBA players for the grind of up-and-down basketball like a piping hot cup of cocoa.
Said no one ever.
Except Washington Wizards point guard John Wall.
The 23-year-old All-Star has a weird tradition: He drinks two McDonald’s hot chocolates every day.
Every day.
Even in the summer?
Well, duh.
The Washington Post‘s Dan Steinberg (h/t Bleacher Report) has the details:
Athletes often have special pre-game beverages. Coffee. Gatorade. Water with electrolytes. Something.
John Wall? He drinks McDonald’s hot chocolate.
“I’ve been doing this since I was little,” he said after Wizards practice on Thursday. “Even in the summer time when it be hot as hell, I’ll be still drinking it.”
Specifically, he drinks two large-sized hot chocolates. Like, every day. Of the year.
“I just like hot chocolate that much,” he explained. “It’s a habit. I have one before the game and one in the morning. If I don’t get one in the morning [on off days], I’ll at least get two after practice to go home.”
Someone suggested that Wall adds extra sugar packets to the McDonald’s drink; “only like one or two,” he said. “Not too much. They make it extra chocolatey and stuff, so it’s good.”
I’m not thirsty just thinking about this.
In the scheme of pregame oddities, this is pretty weird. And it seems unhealthy. Like, really unhealthy.
Adding extra sugar gets me. Inevitably, it may get Wall too. Because that’s way, way, way, way too much.
According to McDonald’s website, a large hot chocolate contains 68 grams of sugar. That means Wall is consuming 136 grams of sugar just from those two drinks, plus the two to four total sugar packets he adds.
And you thought NBA players were conscious of their diet.
Plenty of players have their own routines, many of which are food and beverage related. But this is absurd. You have to wonder how long Wall can keep this up. Can he be playing late into his 30s knocking back hundreds of grams of sugar daily?
Right now, it might not be much of a problem. At 23, his metabolism can handle such intake, though I’m no doctor. The added carbs aren’t going to impact him as much given how frequently and hard NBA players run and workout and what not as well.
But the large hot chocolate still has 20 grams of fat, 12 of which are saturated. And again, Wall drinks two. I’d really like to know what the rest of his diet is like. Or maybe not. I’m not sure I can handle it. My waist is expanding just thinking about this. No telling what would happen if he revealed a tendency use Pepsi instead of milk in his cereal.
All this has me waxing nostalgia over Utah Jazz big man Enes Kanter. He detailed a former diet of his to The Salt Lake Tribune‘s Bill Oram back in October in 2012. It was simply ridiculous:
“First my breakfast: I was eating like six eggs, omelet with six eggs; seven or eight pancakes, with sugar, whipped cream, everything; then a breakfast burrito. That was just my breakfast. Then I came to practice and my lunch was just like pasta, chicken alfredo or whatever, and then a burger and an appetizer. Dessert? No. Dessert was at dinnertime. Dinnertime I ate another burger, a big meal again and a dessert.”
After reading that, Wall’s hot chocolate fetish doesn’t seem so bad. It’s still bad, but not as terribly awful.
Moral of the story? Never forget the Enes Kanter diet. Not even for a second.
It has the power to make you feel good about what you’re eating, or in Wall’s case, slurping in (disgusting) excess.
Dan Favale is a firm believer in the three-pointer as well as the notion that defense doesn’t always win championships. His musings can be found at Bleacherreport.com in addition to TheHoopDoctors.com.
