Vintage performance: what’s behind NBA stars’ wine obsession?

LeBron James could have chosen anything as a hobby to see him through middle age. He could have started collecting vintage cars or investing in startups or flying planes; he could have had Texas-style barbecue and joined the massive ranks of American men who base their self-esteem on the quality of their smoke rings; he could have launched an alt-coin; he could have become a man from the Roman Empire, a pizza nerd, an amateur farmer or a whiskey borer. Instead, he has developed a passion for wine. Nowhere is that passion better expressed than in Watch the gameJames’ new show with JJ Redick, in which this giant of the boards dissects – in sometimes mind-bogglingly shaky detail – the great plays and tactical trends of modern basketball, while pouring a range of fabulously expensive wines for the couple’s on-screen delight .

James, of course, is the eternal adult of American sports, an athlete who had the body of a man when he was a boy and arrived in the NBA with all the elements of his adult game – the vision, the piano hands, the speed in transition and bulging power through the paint – apparently already perfected. So it seems somewhat logical that he has chosen scientific, contemplative, adult oenophilia—the most responsible form of adult irresponsibility, a pastime that educates while intoxicating—as the signature off-court distraction of his final years in the NBA. . The king of the court is now the king of the wine influencers.

James developed an interest in wine after he turned 30around the time his former miami heat teammate dwyane wade a now famous photo of the couple enjoying an unfamiliar red (leggy in the glass with shades of cherry and black fruit; perhaps an aglianico or big Sonoma red?) in the company of fellow All-Stars Carmelo Anthony and Chris Paul.

Wine has become a much clearer part of James’ off-court identity over the past five years: during an injury layoff in his first season with the Los Angeles Lakers, came to a game with a stemless glass of red; bottle shots are a regular part of the king’s Instagram production (a recent post rhapsodized on a 1984 Cabernet Sauvignon from the Caymus Vineyards in Napa Valley: “They say the year I was born was one of the worst years in wine history, but they can’t say that. This is drinking really well right now!”); and red sloshing in blunt, tavern-style glasses was one of the most memorable elements of James’ otherwise limp HBO talk series The Shop.

At Mind the Game, it’s James who brings the wines and does the pouring – and, apparently, most of the drinking. The bottles are emptied into glasses as tall and skinny as Victor Wenbanyama, but once the vessels face LeBron, it becomes clear that the recent trend toward gigantism in glassware has led to this point: In the modern 250-pound NBA power forward, the wine The industry finally has a large enough workforce to justify the size of the glasses. The first episode opens with a big declaration of oenophilic intent, as James tastes a 2012 grand cru Mazy-Chambertin from Burgundy’s Domaine Armand Rousseau (average retail price: $1,200 per bottle) and a 1995 Bordeaux blend from Château Lynch-Bages ( at an affordable price). slightly less eye-watering $250 a bottle), while Redick spouts some lame excuse about how he was all set to bring three bottles of some forgettable cabernet franc from the Loire, but then didn’t due to scheduling conflicts or something. These are big, serious, rich boy wines: there is no concession to youthful fashion here, no whisper of an organic pineau d’aunis or a funky field blend or a chalky cap made wet with minimal intervention and observance of the pagan lunar cycle. LeBron’s wine rotation represents the very best that extreme wealth, sulphites, and centuries of tradition can muster.

As James takes his first sip, it seems like the pattern of the series is set: the world-historical alpha throwing back Côte d’Or grands crus like it was Gatorade, while Redick, the statistical beta, gingerly lips his Zalto sippy. cup as he explores the origins of his counterpart’s greatness on the field. Instead, something more subtle emerges: LeBron is as deferential to his co-host as he is to the wines. He drinks short, unobtrusive sips (there’s no “look at me” wave of the glass, no examination of the legs or pig samples of the fumes) while intellectually keeping pace with Redick’s frenzied on-screen dissection of the technical apparatus of the modern game. all those “thumbs down” and “hedges” and “horn chests” and “floppies” that make today’s NBA tick. As the series developed, it became defined by the dance between James’s two hands – the dominant left hand that he uses in everyday life and with which he drinks wine, and the right hand that accompanies all the defining plays of his career (including, most famously, The Block, which he and Redick have already discussed). His powerful hand is as meaty as his wine-holding hand is light. This is a man, the series seems to say, with layers.

Of course, James isn’t the only NBA star with an interest in wine, but he’s certainly the biggest. Carmelo Anthony hosted a series of interviews throughout the pandemic What’s in your glass?, in which he shared his enthusiasm for wine with a series of slightly less enthusiastic celebrity wine drinkers; San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich is one legendary connoisseur of the joys of the vine; and several high-profile players, including Wade, James Harden, Kevin Love and CJ McCollum, have done so as well even produced their own wines.

Player-backed wine labels are also growing in the NFL — former Oakland Raiders defensive end Charles Woodson produces a range of budget-friendly cuvées from the Napa Valley, for example — but it’s in basketball that the love of wine has gained the most attention, powerful as a cultural discriminator. As the NFL struggles to shed its image as the home of brothers and beers, and ballplayers in the post-chewing tobacco era of MLB must seek solace in their nicotine pouches, the NBA’s elite have gone all in on the grape. And while these players generally prefer red Burgundies, Bordeaux and Barolos to white wines from any region or appellation (some might say this is a classic shortcoming of the novice oenophile), the wines they consume are products of great ripeness and finesse. (That’s how I read it online; unfortunately the budget for this piece does not extend to tasting a grand cru Mazy-Chambertin.)

Appreciating fine wine requires no justification – after all, why shouldn’t NBA players indulge in fermented fruit juice? It’s delicious and they have the resources to buy the best of the best. But it is worth while, I think, to come up with a braver explanation for this sudden surge of interest in the darkness and mystery of the vine. As a status symbol, prestige wine is a lot more refined than the collection of fast cars, the private jet or the big house – the traditional channel for superstar athletes to distinguish themselves from the adoring consumer masses. An interest in wine, especially the big, prestigious reds that LeBron and company gravitate toward, is a way to signal omnivorousness, an openness to experience, a curiosity about the world beyond the narrow confines of professional basketball—a pursuit that is precisely is in line with the NBA’s cultivated image as the most worldly and culturally self-aware of the major US sports leagues.

In other words, wine is the rare vice that fits the NBA’s brand. But there is also something else. In the fourth episode of Mind the Game Redick asks LeBron on why he thinks women’s basketball — and women’s basketball in particular, inspired by Caitlin Clark’s prodigious scoring exploits — has exploded in popularity lately. LeBron identifies one factor that makes the women’s game so attractive at the college level: time. Male college basketball players can declare for the NBA draft after their freshman year, he explains, but “in the women’s game you have the opportunity to build your legacy and build your bond and brand with that fan base, with that community . You see these girls continue to grow year after year after year. I think that has a lot to do with the popularity of the sport.”

The NBA is a restless, expansive league full of restless, ambitious players. Together with that ambition comes a kind of uprooting. LeBron himself has lived through the dramas of modern basketball’s hypermobility, feeling the struggle to honor his roots in Ohio while answering the calls of fame and success beyond. Like many modern players, he is simultaneously from somewhere and nowhere, a sporting vagabond bouncing from team to team and city to city, always in a hurry. The life of the elite basketball player is both itinerant and programmed, hectic and predictable, linked to the conditioning rhythm of the playing calendar and the technical demands of the tactics board. Wine, on the other hand, is a powerful expression of place and chance. Although each bottle bears the imprint of its maker, its contents are subject to the vagaries of soil, slope, time and climate, and it is that ineffable quality of terroir that gives every good wine its distinguishing mark. This is a radically different world than the one elite basketball players live in every day, where great teams are built and dismantled with the speed and efficiency of a car wash.

The burgeoning love of fine wine could, in the kinetic, permacasting world of the modern NBA, be a way for players to reconnect with place, commune with the earth, appreciate a realm of performance and beauty beyond human control lies – the rich athlete version of “touching grass”. The more you see the craze for the grape spreading through basketball, the more you start to see it everywhere, reflected in everything. Ultimately you can even discover the wines in the players themselves. You see Kevin Durant as a skinny Etna red, Russell Westbrook as an overenthusiastic Amarone, Giannis Antetokounmpo as an inky black vertzami, Steph Curry as a finely bubbling crémant – or LeBron himself even as a regal, bottle-aged Côte de Nuits , lined with a rusty glamour, the old may have mellowed but still lurks.