The Rich Roll Podcast - John Salley: The NBA Champion On Going Vegan For Athletic Performance, Longevity & The Environment (Plus: Why So Many Pro Athletes Die Young)

Episode Date: September 28, 2015

It’s one thing when a skinny runner dude starts talking about the benefits of a plant-based diet. It's another thing altogether when a 6′ 11″ 4-time NBA Champion tells you it's a good idea. Enter John Salley. Husband, father, athlete, actor, entrepreneur, talk show host, philanthropist, wellness advocate, NBA champion… and vegan. John was the first basketball player in NBA history to win four championships with three different teams in three different decades — two with the Detroit Pistons ('89 & '90), one with the Chicago Bulls ('96) & one more with the Los Angeles Lakers ('00). After eleven seasons he retired as a Laker on the 2000 NBA Lakers Championship team. Since his retirement from the NBA, John has worked consistently in television, film, radio, print and new media. For seven years he co-hosted the Emmy-nominated series The Best Damn Sports Show Period (FOX). He then hosted BET's sports talk show Baller before creating his own show Game On for REELZ. In addition, John is an avid entrepreneur, channeling his enthusiasm for clean eating & advocacy for the vegan lifestyle into an array of ventures, including The Vegan Vine, his California wine brand (who knew some wine wasn't vegan?), and his Betta Life 21-Day Challenge. John's mission is simple: to educate as many people as possible on the health and environmental benefits of a plant-based lifestyle. This is a fairly free range conversation that takes us inside John's NBA career; what it was like to play ball at the highest level with guys like Michael Jordan, Isaiah Thomas and Shaq; and how being coached by Phil Jackson, perhaps the greatest coach in basketball history, helped forge his character and inform his post-NBA career success. We get into the hows and whys of John's decision to go vegan; his opinion on how most professional athletes eat; why so many professional athletes die young; how he works with both athletes and average folks to change misplaced, normative ideas about the plant-based lifestyle; the importance of yoga and meditation in his routine; and what drives his mission to change the face of global health. A few more topics covered include: * forging normative change by example * the link between cancer & diet * plant-based nutrition for athletes * the importance of stepping stone goals * warning the NBA about the nutrition risks * millennial adaptation to technology * making money while you sleep * the benefits of meditation * John’s stellar NBA career * Coach Phil Jackson & team dynamics * fragility of reputation & Big Brother John is an easy guy to love. He is engaging, incredibly charismatic and always entertaining. But behind the playful attitude is a serious message worth heeding. I sincerely hope you enjoy the exchange. Peace + Plants, Rich

People don't make your future, your habits make your future. So I make sure that my habits are beneficial for my future. So what I plant today, what I do today will benefit me tomorrow. I'm not sad that I worked that hard today so I can have the benefit tomorrow. That is the great John Sally and this is the Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey everybody, what's happening? How are you? Thanks for tuning in. My name is Rich Roll, and this is the podcast that

bears my name. It's the podcast where I sit down with the outliers, the big forward thinkers, across all categories of positive paradigm-breaking culture change. And the aim is simple. The aim is to help all of us unlock and unleash our best, most authentic selves. Basically, it's about, I think these conversations and the guests that I host are really about kind of elucidating a greater sense of one's personal truth, right? So I have guests come on, they tell their stories. These are conversations that my hope is you can emotionally connect with, like you can connect with their emotional truth. And my aspiration for you is that that will sort of elucidate

some kind of universal truth applicable to your own path, your own journey. At least that's my big idea. And I've got a great guest on the show today to do just that, John Sally. He's an amazing guy. And I think that he's a guy

who ain't afraid to speak his own truth. He's a proud and loud advocate of a healthy plant-based lifestyle, which is really powerful coming from an athlete of his pedigree and caliber. He's a four-time NBA champion, for those of you who don't know who he is. But he's very entertaining. He's been somebody that has been an influence on me. I've known him for a number of years and a huge influence on so many young and older pro athletes out there. So I'm looking forward to talking with him and sharing that conversation with you guys here today.

But in the meantime, I just want to share a little appreciation to you guys for tuning in today, for subscribing to the show on iTunes, for checking out my weekly newsletter. Please give us a review on iTunes if you got a moment that really helps us out. And thank you so much for using the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com for all your Amazon purchases. The banner is right there on the podcast page. It doesn't cost you anything extra, just a simple, awesome, free way for you guys to support what we're trying to do. And it really does help us out a lot. So thank you so much. I got a few more things I want to say about John before we get into the interview. But first. All right, so you guys are in for a treat today with John Sally. Many of

you probably already know who John is. He's a very well-known, renowned NBA basketball player who has also made his imprint on the entertainment scene. In addition to being a husband and a father and this incredible athlete, he's also an actor. He's been in a couple movies. He's an entrepreneur. I feel like every time I see him or talk to him, he has some new entrepreneurial venture. Talk show host, philanthropist, wellness advocate, longtime passionate vegan, and actually NBA champion. In fact, John was the first basketball player in NBA history to win four championships with three different teams, the Detroit Pistons, the Chicago Bulls, and the LA Lakers. He retired after 11 seasons as a Laker on the 2000 NBA Lakers championship team.

And since his retirement from the NBA, he's done all sorts of things. He's worked in television, film, radio, print, and new media. He was co-host of the Emmy-nominated series The Best Damn Sports Show Period on Fox, and that went on for seven years. He had a podcast for a while with Podcast One. I think it was on the Corolla Network. He's not doing that anymore. But he also hosted BET's sports talk show called Baller,

and he's had his own show called Game On on Reels. John is a passionate, like I said, longtime vegan. He's really such a great ambassador of this movement uh around clean eating and he has a you know a mission in life which is to educate people on the health benefits of a plant-based lifestyle along the way he has all these entrepreneurial ventures one of them is called the vegan vine it's's his California wine brand. You might be surprised to know that not all wine is vegan. Who knew that, right? And he's active with another venture called Betta Life 21 Day Challenge, and we're going to talk about that stuff today. in the NBA, what it was like to play with guys like Michael Jordan, Isaiah Thomas, Shaq, and undercoaches like the great Phil Jackson.

We talk about what drove his decision to go vegan, when and how that happened, how he advocates and works with athletes and normal people alike to change misplaced normative ideas about what it means to be plant-based. We talk about his entrepreneurial drive. it means to be plant-based. We talk about his entrepreneurial drive. We talk about the importance of meditation and yoga in his success equation, his routine, and his mission to change the face of health by leading by example. And I really love this guy. I've known him for many, many years. He is nothing if not super fun and engaging and incredibly charismatic. He's an easy guy to talk to. He's prone to a few tangents, sure.

We kind of go left a couple times, and you're never quite sure where John is headed with things. But listen, he's nothing if not entertaining, right? So this conversation has a little bit of a life of its own. It might have gotten away from me a bit at times. I'm not sure, but I'm not sure I care either. I love John and I'm really happy and excited to share this conversation with you guys today. So without further ado, enjoy the life and times of John Salve. Thanks for coming over to the house, man. I i appreciate it oh yeah it wasn't a problem coming to this beauty this is beautiful and i like how you brought your entourage to like

true to form like true nba player like rolling deep yeah only rolling with vegans positive thoughts uh nobody's carrying a pistol nobody has a chip on their shoulder it's a different kind of different yeah yeah reinvent reinventing the entourage. I like it, dude. Well, this is a long time coming. I'm psyched to sit down and talk to you, man. There's so many things we could get into, but why don't we just kick it off with,

I mean, you're such a crazy entrepreneur. You're hands in so many different things. I can't even keep track. Every time I check you out or I run into you it's like some new business right so what is what's going on now i'm trying to keep my daughters in private school yeah i know what that's like so you know they're charging all this money for me not to get it back well i decided to just stop working for people i work you know for people stop working, stop being in a situation. When I was at Fox

and nine years on a great show called The Best Damn Sports Show Period, they fired me. You can't pay your salary anymore and the show's going to go away. I just thought that was crazy. Such a great show. The ratings were huge for that too, right? Why did they decide to

end it? welcome to the world yeah i mean they were only making 61 million dollars a year it's not good for their bottom line to only make 61 million profit uh it was eight years eight years of doing something is nine years for me for doing something and television is long four years is usually what things last the fact that the view is still on is amazing, 15, 16 years. You see what they had to do to Regis and Kelly, and they had to make it Kelly and Michael. Right.

I mean, you have to keep changing the Tonight Show. How did Michael get that job and not you? Because of Regis. Regis talked about Michael so much, and then Michael being a giant giant being on the show so much he was with me on the best damn sports show for 16 weeks but he got it because he really deserves it

I'm telling you I watch I mean you're a hard working man but that guy's you know one of the hardest working men in show business man and they make him come over to Good Morning America yeah he's like flying back coast to coast all the time right yeah he was. During the season, he flies here.

But, you know, they put him on the jet to fly him back so he can be there in the morning. Right. So he's a hardworking piece. I figured out I needed a job that was going to pay me for not killing myself. And I had to leave something for my daughters. I put you through college international business. I'm out of being business that can help you when we get out. And I told her, I said, this is like, so when I got in the wine business, you can pass the wine business down to your kids and all they have to do is make sure the bottles are filled. And that's what I did. So

I got into the beverage business. Was that a preexisting brand that you jumped in on or did you help found that? No, I came in I think five months after they started it and then after the second year I became co-owner and now I own it throughout the world. Oh, wow. Except four countries. Oh, wow. That's amazing. Yeah. We just got whole food

so anybody listening, you gotta ask for the vegan vine wine. Why? Is there a different one called? Well, they say you got vegan wine. Ah, I got you. So I had the brand. At one time, we were the only product in all of any store, 80,000 pieces, that the prominent word was vegan. So it wasn't just about me selling wine.

It was about promoting veganism. Right. And so now it's it's different the bottle was different but that was this huge piece and everybody was going we didn't know why it was vegan as long as we got you speaking about what's vegan and what's not i think i did my job yeah so a couple things i mean the first thing is most people uh would just assume it's vegan i mean it's just grapes right so what's what's the vegan part like part? Like what's the non-vegan part in other wines? They don't do it as much, but in the finding of the wine, in the making of the wine, they use fish bladders.

They use casein, better name for milk. Use egg whites. They use gelatin. Really? Is that in the fermentation process? No. Once they crush it, once you crush the wine, say somebody steps on the wine, you're going to have these wine particles in it. So they have to figure out a way to get those out

without just sitting there with a scoop. So they throw that in. It magnetizes it. The pieces go to it. Then they scoop out the whole thing. Oh, I see. So it helps separate everything. Interesting.

Yeah, I would have never known that. Yeah, me either. When I got there, it was the name of my program. If you go to the website, the Vegan Vine website, it says, I had no idea. So that's literally what I said. I had no idea idea i used to drink stout when i went to you know i wanted

a guinness stout that's made with fish bladders to this day so i no longer drink uh i make my own beer now yeah the road gets narrower i had uh i had david carter in here the other day the 300 pound vegan yeah and uh he had to go to the bathroom and he goes in there and he washed his hands. He goes, you know, your soap's not vegan, man. It's got like glycerin in it. You got to switch it up. And I'm like, I didn't know. He starts going on this whole thing about like how, uh, you know, glycerin, a lot of the glycerin comes from animal fat and like, it's not labeled properly. And you know, all these things that you think, you think you're doing a good job. There's always something dr bonner's brother yeah get past it all we had a lot of that stuff

i know you get some castle soap no one says anything but the other thing too is that you know from what i understand with the with with uh with the wine they wanted you to take vegan off the label right so there's a lot of pushback on that it was it was a hard thing to get it on and then they broke it down to where the word vegan was smaller and the new design of the bottle that's cool still on the cover i still know people still know it it stands out amongst them but it's still a great california wine that's the deal every time i go out with one of our reps who is definitely not vegans because they sell in steakhouses and it's kind of hard to sell me because they don't take me into a fish place.

You don't take me into a steakhouse. But in the summertime, when I bring out the Chardonnay, we sometimes don't even show them the bag. Everyone buys a Chardonnay. And then we take it out of the bag and they go, this is vegan? This is good. I go, well, most of you guys are eating a vegan while drinking this wine. Right.

Well, that's how you win. I mean, it's got to be on par, if not better, right? Otherwise, people aren't going to do it. No. And it shouldn't. I'm just going to tell you. I tell people all the time, just to sit around and tell somebody, it's good for you. It's a lot of vegan food.

It doesn't motivate people. No. No. Remember, people, they're stuck in their brain about what food is too so i've been working with a lot of people and the biggest pushback is i have people who have cancer working with now and i mentioned well first thing we got to change what you eat and the first thing they said is i'm not giving up chicken and i go okay give up your life yeah go ahead give up your life i was talking to a friend

last night who's a cancer survivor and it's just it's beyond me how anybody who is on the other side of that would would be taken in dairy and meat right it's just it's it's crazy i think i think it's uh one i tell people i i'd stop trying to save the world the last time I did that. They hung me on a cross a long time ago. What happened? No, but I said Jesus tried to change the world and they killed him. Yeah. So I just changed my world and people look and see the outcome of it. And I got somebody right now going, oh, I'm going to this new technique.

The chemo didn't work. I can't take chemo. I'm anemic. I have to chemo didn't work. I can't take chemo. I'm anemic. I have to have a blood transfusion before they can give me chemo. I said, well, you have to change your diet. And she's like, no, I'm not going to eat like that. I don't like vegetables.

And I said, all right, nice to have met you. And I literally left. And the daughters are calling me, how could you be so cruel? I said, meanwhile, me being cruel? It was a nice meeting. I already know the outcome. My father passed of it.

One of my best friends died from it. So I know the outcome if you don't change what you put in your body. Right. But that's a powerful, like, spiritual lesson, right? Like, you got to stand in the light. But the minute you start pointing your finger, like, you're just, you're undermining your ultimate goal. Right. And you just can't, you can't will somebody into wanting to change. It has to

be internally driven. You know, and people have different, uh, you know, inflection points for how much pain they're willing to suffer before they're ready to take a look at that. But it's, it's just odd that, you know, nutrition is so patently obvious, you know, a way to start to correct some of these things, but it's also the thing that people are most reluctant to deal with. That's because if they think they're missing something, I always said, I said, what do you think you're going to miss? They go, well, you guys have pizza. I said, yeah, you guys, but if you don't like, if you don't like meat so much, why does so many of your products look like meat I said because you people only buy what you see so if it looks like the thing but it doesn't give you the same outcome you should eat it and

I've been working all these years cooking my wife didn't even know I can cook for like 13 years because I wanted to make sure she knew how to cook that's a whole other thing yeah I'd get in trouble with that one. I was like, chick, I am not doing this all over. So it's when the food kicks in, how the food kicks in. Everyone asks me about drinking wine and drinking alcohol and smoking weed. And I go, no animals had to die. So nothing has to die for me to live.

That's my mentality. Right. So, well, let's take it back man let's let's let's uh get into the origin story a little bit so um you get into georgia you're you're you're playing you're a baller at georgia tech you get drafted you're in the nba and you know when does the idea of starting to take a look at kind of some of your lifestyle habits and nutrition start to kick in? Because I know there's a little bit of a story there.

Oh, yeah. So I'm a rookie, 1986. And back then, they put guys in the same room together because the NBA was cheap. And so Adrian Dantley and I, older guy, and he goes, all right, young fella, I'm going to buy you lunch. And we're having an exhibition game in Milwaukee.

And so I ordered a cheeseburger with a strawberry shake and french fries. He starts laughing. I'm like, why are you laughing? He said nothing. He orders a sandwich with soup and then tells him to bring him another sandwich and soup at 4.30. This is at 1.30. It gets there about 2 o'clock. I eat it like a savage and i have to be

up and down the arena by six and he leaves at five style don't forget my bag don't forget this don't forget that you're a rookie you got to carry i miranda over there by you know 555 545 and uh and going over he's like how you feeling man i? I was like, man, I'm tired, man. He doesn't say anything. And I'm playing against the slowest guy in basketball, Jack Sigma and Randy Brewer. Two big seven-foot white dudes that were about 49 years. Yeah. Slow.

He moved. He went to Seattle. Big blonde white dude. Yeah. Slow, man. And they're beating me up and down court. I can't score. They're just destroying me. Chuck is looking at me like, what's wrong with you? Takes me out the game. I sit next to A.D. He goes, how's that cheeseburger treat? That was it right there. He says, Sal, your body is deciding to try to digest that dead animal.

body is deciding to try to digest that dead animal and you have cheese you had ketchup you had mayonnaise you had all this stuff you had bread with sugar you said your body is not thinking about playing basketball it's still trying to digest that food and that started it but then you know I started paying attention before I played what I ate and then my cholesterol got to 274. I was 25, 26 years old. Wow, that's super high, especially for a young person. Oh, yeah. And they were like, well, and I had a chef.

And she was a big old woman, and I didn't pay attention. She just made really good fried chicken. In other words, she just used more oil, more butter, and seasoned it. And I met Dr. Jewel Pookrum, who told me i had to change my diet if i was going to bring my cholesterol down or they were going to give me pills that stopped my penis from growing all you have because it was still growing it was still growing you know it just stopped at 40 and uh i she said that she said you're gonna have to take pills to make your penis work if you give

you the pills for your cholesterol telling you how she put it right so as soon as you start talking about the penis you're most guys worked up yeah pay attention yeah i still sleep with my hand on and uh i don't trust nobody uh but see i get colonic, and I think it was the best day of my life. And I go down to, I go first. It was one of those where there's the tube and you can see what's coming out, like where there's like the viewing station. Yeah, yeah. I got a great lady here in L.A. named Leah Joyner down at Oasis Spa on Venice Boulevard.

And I've had a lot of colonics in different places. And I would never let anybody enter me. I would have to put it in myself when I call you when a room comes. This girl's so fine, I just roll over. But she knows what she's doing, too. And I went microbiotic first. I lost, I guess it was not a a bad thing 15 pounds of undigested feces and then i started building my body back and my career got better my body got better my

game got better i got better and and and meanwhile i was like adrian dantley kind of mentoring you through this was he macrobiotic or just eating healthy you just you just went next level I went next level he was more narcissistic he liked to keep his waist at 32 and 34 go back and forth and be fit I I literally wanted to find out I wanted to be a doctor when I was young I went to Georgia Tech trying to be a doctor got into architecture then graduated with an industrial management degree. But I always wanted to be a doctor. So then I started studying natural medicine.

I started studying acupuncture, herbs. So I worked with Dr. Goss, who registered me as an ND. And I didn't really want the ND. It stands for Negro Doctor. And I didn't want anybody calling me that. No, I'm just joking. So I went and I just started paying attention. In 1999, I'm watching the Lakers play, and I call Phil Jackson,

and I go, when are you taking this job? And he goes, how did you know I was taking that job? And I was like, well, you got Kobe and Shaq losing. They need somebody there. He said, are you in shape? I stay in shape. I wasn't in shape. I got in shape, and I went back. That's when I met Dr. Goss and started working on my body again.

And then that one year just put me into it. And after that, in 2007, I decided to go to the next level. I was doing a PSA for PETA about being a vegetarian, but I was eating tons of cheese, tons of butter, and I was still getting 265, 271. No disrespect to magic, but he had gotten big, and somebody saw me walk in the club and thought I was magic. Not because of the greatness, but right. Right. And this is seven years after you're done playing. Right. And that was it. When I became a vegan, my weight is back down to what it was in 1989.

My cholesterol stable, my blood pressure stable, um, swelling. I'm seeing people disappear around me. I feel better. So I'm more raw vegan. So I disappear around me. I feel better. So I'm more raw vegan. So I eat like vegan food twice a day, maybe once a day. But most of the time I'm eating as many vegetables. I was just in Grand Rapids. They go, are you ever not eating?

I go, nope. I said, just like that cow right there, I'm going to graze on something. And I'm constantly putting something in, know what it is. I drink a gallon of water a day. I do yoga. My wife is a Pilates instructor. And that's a hard chick to work out with. But, you know, we get it in. I taught my meniscus trying to do insanity.

I don't know why I thought what I was doing doing jumps. Mainly because I thought I was a jumper. But I realized that's when I was in my 30s So now my meniscus is healed. I didn't get operated on And we'll see what's up. Right? So now you're what 49 50 50. Okay. Yeah, so just a couple years older than me Yeah, that's amazing. So when so when you when you kind of jump on this Macrobiotic bandwagon when you're playing and you're getting into colonics and stuff like that, I mean, are you getting a weird eye from the other players or everybody's just kind of doing their own thing? Like no one really knows what everybody else is doing.

I always got a weird eye from players. That's a whole other joke. But seriously, they used to think I was crazy. They did a story on me because I would bring my acupuncturist places, like if we would play those games and stuff. And my massage therapist, I liked that, gave them tickets and they flew in. I'd rather hang out with them and get my body tuned up. And everybody thought I was, why would you bring all these people?

And I said, have you guys ever watched NASCAR or Indy racing? They don't leave their mechanics at home. Yeah. I mean, look, you're, you're, you're, you're getting paid, you know, very handsomely and you're getting paid to perform and to entertain. Right. And especially as you're getting, you know, into the twilight of your career, it becomes all about trying to extend that. Right. And nutrition is the obvious kind of like a thing that people overlook. And I think what happens is, is because athletes are working out so much, it's just, it's about calories

and they look good on the outside. Everyone looks super fit and they're training really hard. So it's an excuse to just eat whatever and people think it doesn't matter. So kind of solving that equation, I think becomes difficult. And it seems to me that, especially with professional athletes,

they don't start really thinking about it until they see the the you know retirement in the in the near future and the end of those paychecks you know start paying attention to you know what's going on right and they don't think this is a thing that trips me out about teams i said it to phil and i'm saying it again now i always send them emails and i go, you really got to let me come in and talk. I told Doc Rivers, since I'm here in Los Angeles, you have to let me come in and work with the players because it's not just the money. Man, they're making enough money.

They know how to eat. You can't be that ignorant to think that they know how to eat. They don't know how to eat. They never. This is the funniest thing about when they talk about athletes that. They don't know how to eat. They don't, they never, this is the funniest thing about when they talk about athletes that lose their money or athletes that get injured, they only were told go.

They don't tell them how it goes. They don't think about anything. I always, I love race car driving and I know, they know exactly how much air is in a tire. They know exactly if you can ride on slicks, if you're out of gas, what gas to put in. It's insane. I had Landon Castle. He's a vegan NASCAR driver.

I had him over here. I had him on the podcast. And he's driving a car that isn't quite as well-funded as the Jimmy Johnsons. But he was kind of telling me about what the top-funded teams do. And it's just incredible how much science and money is going into those cars every single day and the, and everything down to, you know, the micrometer of this or that, and being in the wind tunnel, like literally all the time and shaving, you know, tiny little pieces of carbon off these cars. I mean, crazy stuff, right? And that's the way it should be. And that's, yeah, if you're a professional athlete in no matter what sport you are you should you should apply that level

of discipline to you know what you know you don't have a race car you have your body right so what are you doing for that and they don't this is when i was playing on a team i'm not going to say the name of the team miami heat um i got i got on a plane. And I was always the vet. And I had won the two championships. And we were always back and forth. I took all the money when I came in. Act like that was a bad thing.

And I saw guys get on the plane with Wendy's and the other company, McDonald's. And I said, dude, what are you doing? He said, man, I had to stop and get something to eat. I don't like the food on the plane. Now, we're on a private jet. And they didn't like the food on the plane. Now, we're on a private jet, and they didn't like the food on the plane. So they stopped and picked up dollar phone. I had to explain to them. I said, let me put it this way.

You're a $20 million player at that time, and you put a dollar worth of food in your pocket, in your food. I said, that's like having a Ferrari, and you're going to get the cheapest gas you can possibly get and putting it into Ferrari and expecting the Ferrari to perform as they told you it would before you gave him 226 million thousand dollars what kind of reaction you get when you give that speech I would have a sound right and then those guys are the ones that get the little nagging injuries they're the ones that don't heal quickly they're the ones that don't come back they're the ones that get the little nagging injuries. They're the ones that don't heal quickly. They're the ones that don't come back. They're the ones that always blame.

And those are the ones who, after a while, they say, oh, he's accident prone. Or he's, you know, you stay away from him because he stays injured. It's because they don't understand why they're injured. They don't understand that the body needs nutrition and minerals to and to heal itself they have no idea but it's not their fault i mean it seems like there should be somebody at each team who's responsible for making sure everyone understands that i mean i just i've told this story before but i i went out to the olympic training center i i was i got to give a talk to uh the usa swimming national junior team like the fastest 18 and under kids in the country.

And there's a bunch of national team guys that are training in Colorado Springs. Have you ever been to the Colorado Springs Training Center? It's like a college campus that's sole purpose is creating excellence for these athletes. Like they have every resource at their disposal. Like everything you can imagine is in this incredible multi-million dollar complex. Every kind of athlete is there and you go into the cafeteria and it's

just as much soda as you want as much, you know, soft serve ice cream and like burger patties that are soaking in green. It's like the worst food that you can imagine. Yeah. And they won't listen. My daughter's a top, she's 12 and top in California and shot put and high jump. And, and they, and they won't listen. My daughter is top. She's 12 and top in California in shot put and high jump. Oh, wow. And she has more muscles than everybody else, and she runs the 100-yard dash in 13.8. And everybody goes, wow, what a record for a female is 10.75. And she's 12.

Whoa. And so I said to her, I said, each year we got to take it. We got to take, by the time you're 16 years old, you need to be Usain Bolt. And she was like, huh? I said,

if he can run that speed, you can run that speed. That's all I'm telling you. I said, he's not even racing against the guy next to him. He's counting his steps in a matter of seconds. She was like, what do you mean?

I said, he knows how many steps it takes him to get a hundred yards. Of course. How many seconds it takes him to get 100 yards and how many seconds it takes him to get it. I said, so stop looking to your right and your left and think that way. I said, and when you get there in the morning, you don't have to worry

about if you've eaten properly, if you're trying to digest food because I'm your dad. She's sitting there and I said, well, I want protein. That protein is going to take about two hours to break down. So just have some of this green drink, eat this apple. I don't like bananas.

Oh, you're going to like it today. Uh, we're going to only have this quarter of it. Cause I literally watching where I sat with Brendan Brazen. We made, um, literally the gel with agave,

lime, water, um, and date. And so I told her, I said, this is the gel we're going, lime, water, and date. And so I told her, I said, this is the gel we're going to put in your body. I said, we're going to treat you just like you're running a triathlon. That's the way we're going to treat this body when you're performing. And I told her, she loves race cars because of me, and she loves when I bring fast cars home,

and she loves that I take her, and I go, I had to put high-octane gas in this car. And that's the way I look at it. I tell people, I'm a Mustang Sally built 1964, mint condition. I'm not going to. And I always say to people, I said, why is it when you get older, you feel you need to get bigger? And then first thing you do, you pat your intestines and say, good eating.

I said, obviously not, because your body won't give it up, won't lose it. So I go back to these teams. I even went to DJ. I was with James Derriden, and I said, you get tired in the third quarter. Just saw him not too long ago at Kanye's game. I said, in third quarter, about four minutes in third quarter, you disappear for about four minutes. They take you out for about two minutes. You come back you disappear the beginning of the fourth and then you take off

then you get with three minutes to go i can't find you he's like you watch the game that much i said i only watch what your body does and what your brain does i said you can't play 48 minutes straight without thinking about it and they talk about lance armstrong i'm gonna say anything about doping we'll leave that out he can focus and keep his heart rate and his breathing the same while pedaling and that's how his brain thinks if I stay on course and I keep doing this nobody else can keep up with it now if steroids help that god bless him whatever the dopings does whatever whatever whatever when I watch Tour de France I think about that I said these guys are on a bike and their brain,

and looking at their thighs, their brains are thinking, how I can stay focused for this amount of time. And you see guys going in and out. They get in foul trouble. They just make the dumbest mistakes. They happen in football, too. I tell them in football, I said, it has to be the food because you guys aren't really that stupid.

So, well, then maybe, again, some guys play for dollars. So, yeah, I do. So do you have, I mean, do you have the opportunity to go in and talk to players? I mean, does Phil Jackson bring you in? Did he ever bring you in? I mean, how does that work? I mean, there must be some demand for you to come in and kind of work with guys, younger guys.

No, I went in, when I was a Laker, we had yoga on Wednesdays. The yoga instructor was okay looking the first time. Nobody paid attention. Right. We went down to Manhattan Beach and got a really cute blonde with a nice bubble. And then everybody shows up. Everybody. Rick Fox was up front.

You know, Rick Fox is going to take up a spot. But literally we had no injuries. We won 19 games straight. We did this thing called One breath which phil would do tons of meditation and tons of breathing techniques and when these guys are all on the same accord they realize it worked they don't give a lot of credence to it but when they get older they start realizing yeah that's exactly how we went about it um people i was with the president of um meyer's uh grocery store which is a big grocery store in the middle of the country.

He lost 19 pounds. He said, I listened to you and a couple other people, and I lost tons of weight. And I said, it's not about losing weight. My program is the 22-Day Better Life Challenge. It's B-E-T-T-A. And it's about being better every day, today, tomorrow, and always. It's always trying to be better.

So the caveat is you lose weight. Right. Why just 22 days? Because 21 days changed the habit. My basketball number was 22. Yeah, that's right, 22. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I was so happy

Beyonce came out with the 22-day revolution. And everybody, you know, they don't pay attention. So they found me online instead. So I was able to get on at the right time so it's just easier to say 22 and then i tell people if you every 22 days you just you just keep getting better every 22 days just renew the subscription just keep going and they go how how many days i have to do it for i said 365 and they go what you said 22 i'm gonna keep redoing they don't realize

that i had to give them a small number before getting to me. Yeah, it's that weird thing where if you're trying to get somebody to change their lifestyle, it's too overwhelming. So you set these short windows of time, you know, so people can wrap their brains around it. But it's not about that short period of time. Like, what's the benefit if somebody just does that and then goes back to doing what they're doing before you know uh this is the this is the one thing when my cousin he was 385 uh he went down to 205 no longer needed to take his diabetes medicine the funny when he was walking though he still walked like he walked like he was carrying the weight because his body had to.

I said, why do you walk like that? He goes, I don't know how to walk. It's the only way I know how to walk. He went back up to 275 and now he goes, after seeing you and hearing what you said, and I told him, I said, I don't go to funerals. I'm not going to go to self-imposed funerals. My boy Alan wanted me to go to a wedding. I'm not going to self-imposed funerals and and you know my boy alan wanted me to go to a wedding i'm not going to self-imposed funerals so i said i said my man i'm and i used to be a preacher a teacher

now i say i'm just a sage i lay it out i have documents now we have a proven fact if they want to believe what they want to believe and i always always said, I said, why do you believe that the government will let you, they would say, well, the government wouldn't let it go out if it was bad for you. I go, what government you're talking about? Right. Yeah. That's, that's a problem right there. You don't have to like, you know, sort of scrub somebody's brain if that's what they're walking around, believe in that. Yeah, they do. They believe it. And they people that still get upset and believe things about i tell them all the time i said you can't rely on anybody else when it

comes to you you got to rely on yourself right so when somebody comes to you and says yeah but i'm eating you know i'm eating the paleo diet like i i feel good like i'm sure people say that to you all the time i mean how do you react to that i said the, the paleo diet. Yeah, that's how the cavemen were eating. I said, where are they? Well, come on. That's not a fair argument. It is. It's a very fair argument.

Plus, I give a little bit of history on that as well. So the cavemen, who they want to pay attention to, were from the Caspian Mountains, mostly known as Caucasians. And they didn't have, they had lighter skin and lighter eyes and because environmental situations, thinner noses, hair growing in different places, more to protect their body and less vegetation.

So they felt they needed to eat that way. If you go into the bush, no one is eating animals. So why is it those Africans in the middle of the bush that eat once in a while? How is it they live so well? How is it they didn't give slaves any meat? The only meat the slaves have, they still eat it. Chitlins, chicken wings, ox tail, ox tongue, pig feet. Those are slave, that's slave food. I couldn't go to a rich white folk and say, hey, you want some pig feet? They'd be like, why would I want the foot of a pig?

Well, the reason they had the foot of the pig is because the slave master, those were the bad parts of the animal. They threw them out. The slaves confiscated them, and then they cooked them. And that's why black people still eat slave food. But besides that, if you really wanted to be healthy and the one thing they always talk about in all the eight blue zones in this world is beans and and and

latins and blacks have been known for beans and rice beans and rice the protein and that starch that carries a ton of water that can hydrate you so when i look at it i tell them all the time your teeth are not made to cut into the skin of a of an animal just not matter of fact the funny thing is neither is the lion if you if they ever were to see you when they catch a lion and that lion kills them they turn it over and they eat from the soft part meaning the genitals up into the body oh i didn't know that yeah they got huge fangs how can that be true? Because their fangs go up and down.

They don't go side to side, so they have to cut and pull. And then they eat all the way through the intestines up and through the pig, up and through the wall of bees because the skins are too tight. So if you ever see an animal has been murdered by another animal, you only see the underbelly gone. They don't eat the top belly. And a great joke from Larry the Cable Guy would say uh why do they call it rut roast he said because nobody would buy cow ass yeah it's true man um so the other thing that people probably say to you all

the time is yeah you go around talking about vegan stuff but like you weren't vegan when you were playing like yeah so vegetarian there's no there's no proof in that right so how do you how do you kind of address that with i address it i went to the nba a couple of years ago and said we were going to run into a problem with players if we didn't help now and they looked at me like i was never played in the league and this past year five nba players four nba players died from heart disease heart related diseases three with heart before 52 the oldest was 52 years old players weren't living past that and if you see them they're walking hunched over they walked over their bodies are beat up no one really cares about them um and i tell people that all the time they don't

they get upset about baseball and steroids i hear this all the time and i go what difference does it make and i go oh what about the tradition of the game there's other guys they didn't use steroids i go no they use racism and um and cheaters to get to those points and those numbers and i said so why would you even want to hold on to that tradition like uh i tell cats all the time when i was playing, I was 25 years old. I changed my diet. Now that was 26 years ago. I just was with some of my teammates and my teammates are either above 350 or above, above 350, above 300 and 350.

Right. All the guys from your generation, except Isaiah Thomas decided to become a vegan. Oh, he did? I didn't know that. Yeah. Wow. All of a sudden he goes, Sal, you were right. I'm living this vegan diet, man.

He said, I'm on and off, man, but I'm like 60% vegan. I said, brother, don't worry. You'll be great one day. Yeah, that's amazing. I mean, I think that the life expectancy in the NFL is like 54, right? Is it similar in the NBA? Yeah, well, now it is because these guys still go to steakhouses, and they still go to every golf event.

And at every golf event, they give them the baked chicken. They give them the salmon. And I'm not – like this is so funny. I really don't talk about against meat companies, but I make this point very clear. I said I was watching the deadly catch when it first came out, and when they caught these fish, and all of a sudden they weighed the fish.

It was a bluefin dolphin, they were so happy. The guy took the bluefin dolphin, threw it in ice, a speedboat came and got it, took it in, they put it on a private jet, and they flew it to Japan. They paid $250,000 for one bluefin fish took it in they put on a private jet and they flew it to Japan they paid two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for one bluefin fish because they extinction there are no more bluefish tuna in the ocean I don't uh blue bluefin bluefin right they have farmed it or I'm sorry fished it out so to get that fish it was a thousand dollars a pound

and i was like wow that's amazing the top buyer but then they showed that they they bring the fishing they weigh it they bring it and they clean it they auction it it then goes into bins they then send it to by the time you get that fish it had been a month mm-hmm now the only person I know that hadn't been buried right soon was was James Brown he stayed out of the ground for like nine months until everybody figured out who was gonna get money but if you if somebody dies their body heads to our we can modest immediately that's what has its nature mm-hmm a month to get that fish and then to tell me this is good fish.

Yeah. That's that can't be good. Plus that the carbon footprint of that is insane. Right? Yeah. You think that, no, that that's the whole,

no, that's a different discussion. No one is even caring about, they are not paying attention. They will know when they pay attention. They watched the book of Eli with, with, with Denzel,

which kind of explained what can happen. Uh, the Kingsman with Samuel Jackson, which kind of explained what can happen. The Kingsman with Samuel L. Jackson saying, we're just going to have to kill everybody. Everybody has to die so this planet can live. Right. And that's the way they're going to look at it. Well, we're the virus. We're the plague. The planet would do just much better without us.

We're the one who's sucking it dry. But since I'm here, I'm going to try to stay as long as possible. My mom had a heart attack at 81. I brought her out here and we did healing work on her, did a whole bunch of things. She's 92 now. Wow. And I said,

my, you want to come back out? She goes, nah, my brothers and sisters are dead. All my friends are dead. I'm gonna let, I'm gonna let it go.

Take his course. I said, it is his course. You had me as a child. You need to come out here get some air get some get some water get some real food she goes maybe but you i i told her she can come for two weeks i kept her for six months wow and but your dad died when your dad died pretty young right of diabetes yeah he died of uh he had diabetes he died died of cancer, lung cancer.

He smoked cigarettes, but that wasn't the total thing he had. He worked with asbestos. So he's 73 years old. Wow. And after seeing that, I said, many of my people I'm around, if I can get them not to put more cancerous cells or free radical cells in their system, we're going to try not to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. free radical cells in their system we're gonna try not to yeah yeah yeah and i mean especially when you look at like pcrm and dr neil barnard and what he's been able to do in terms of educating people about how they can reverse diabetes which you know that's a plague on the african-american community i mean as it is it's a plague on everybody but it's particularly acute in the

african-american community but they like you know somebody said to me, I did this show on Magic Johnson's channel called Aspire. She goes, you know black people like their barbecue? I said, you know black people also like diabetes. Yeah. This is, I tell this stat, and

I say it, and people look at me like I'm crazy because if you tell everybody, we're all becoming zombies, or there's too many zombies. Well, you can't tell it to the zombies because the zombies don't think anything is wrong with them. So I say to these black women, I said, three out of every four black women is obese. That's three out of every four. They go, I'm not. I like being big. That's, that's, that's three out of every four. They go, I'm not, I like being big.

That's what, that's what they say. And I say, oh yeah, I like, I like certain parts of you being big, but I don't like the whole body being big from inflammation of this situation. Well, this is the way it is. My mama was built like this. I go, no, not necessarily. So she may have been a big bone as we would say, but not sitting around around with disease just eating right at the head and when I say this to people in the in the black community they get stuck in their mind that it's okay I always go back to the cheese I go my mom's made me wait online for that government cheese and I remember taking that cheese and putting it on traps and I grew up in a project in Brooklyn

and no rats ate it. Now, if a rat wouldn't eat it, and a rat eats everything. If a rat wouldn't eat it, there was no roaches on it. It was nothing. I said, my, this is not cheese. Oh, you're going to eat that

and you're going to stop being proud. I said, it's not that I'm proud, which I am, but this is not food. I kept saying it. And then look what everybody has now. Look at the baby boomers that are going to die and have Alzheimer's. And all these different things, they go back and start paying attention to what we were putting in our body.

When I used to have to wait for my mother to cook, now they throw it in the microwave. My microwave has dishes in it. We don't even have one well i couldn't get rid of it because my wife tried to non get rid of a thing i moved it out and i started cleaning like um marijuana pipes with it thinking that was the smell was gonna you got to clean glass pipes in the microwave that's the only way to clean it she was like i'm still gonna use the microwave i'm gonna wipe it out so it it's, well, we got to hurry up and eat. I go, you don't have to hurry up and eat.

You just have to eat. You don't have to hurry up. Matter of fact, you should take your time and not talk and chew very, very, very finely. Enjoy your food. Think about how wonderful the food is. I tell them all the time, you should enjoy this meal as opposed to thinking you got to hurry up and get to work to kill yourself or somebody else. Yeah, cultural norms have changed, right? When suddenly everybody's big and you go to the airport and everybody's in a golf cart, you just start to think that that's normal.

And it becomes easier and easier to not flip that mirror and look at yourself objectively and really understand what it really kind of like, you know, understand what it is that you're doing to yourself. Right. If everybody's big, if everybody's eating lousy food, then you're the crazy outlier. When you say, you know, I'm actually going to feed myself something that's good for me. Yeah. You're a crazy person. Yeah. I'm a, I am a crazy person. I, and I tell them all the time, I said, I'm crazy to think that I worked my whole life to get to this point, to live well, and then to kill myself. That makes no sense. And, you know, Rich, you made me think just a few seconds ago. I really did reach out to, I think, four teams about how you train your athletes, right? And the coaches don't know any better.

And they feel that these guys are great and i tell these guys so where you going to eat and there's only time we're going to mention a company well i won't say it they go into the steakhouse and i go the steakhouse in beverly hills they go yeah i go you you eat there they go yeah man it's great food i go anybody can go there right i said then so anybody can be a pro no so there's one out of every one million people in america is a professional basketball player so that means professional basketball players are one in a million i said you cannot eat the same place the rest of the right it's a it's a the difference between uh responsibility and entitlement, right?

Like because I'm a professional basketball player, I'm entitled to do these things versus I have a certain responsibility to myself that other people don't have because I'm in this privileged position. Right. And this is the deal. They go, well, I'm just blessed to be in this privileged position. No, you're a hard worker to be in this privilege. Because I know a lot of great ballplayers that didn't make it to the pros Oh, I thought were great ballplayers and they didn't do well in the pros or they didn't make it to the pro and if you Don't make it to the pros. You can see those guys working ten times harder than a guy who's in the pros and I'm from an era where you can be cut tomorrow

This is guaranteed money thing is great now, but I came in just as it started. I mean, it just started to guarantee money. If they didn't like the way you look, though, they can trade you or cut you, and no problem. There's a guy named Josh Smith that just signed with someone else, but he signed with Houston. They fired him in Detroit. They cut him and didn't want to trade him to anybody.

They didn't want anybody else to have that situation, they said. So you've got to watch yourself. You've got to pay attention to what you do. This is the only time you're going to have this shot. I tell my daughter, who's 27, you're not going to be 27 next year. You'll only be 27 once. So every day is the blessing, and every day you should figure out how to make it to the next

day what's the average career length of for for an nba player four years four years that's it and that's only because they give rookie four-year contracts if they didn't give them guaranteed four-year contracts it'd be back down to 3.2 right so you have you've got four rings i just played on okay you played on three dynastic teams right and and got rings in three different decades right so really long career you came back to the lakers after retiring um so although you weren't completely vegan, you were taking care of yourself, right? I was a lying vegetarian. Right.

I was a lying vegetarian. I was giving myself, I cut out the eggs when I found out they were 100% cholesterol. And that was driving me crazy. So I said, well, I can have them once a week with ketchup on them. And so I had cholesterol.

Because that's so good. Oh. You just can't do without that, right? Right, I can't do that. And so I had cholesterol. Because that's so good. Oh. You just can't do without that, right? Right. I can't do that. And you know what? I'm only going to have one sausage. Even though I know the eating of a pig is probably the worst of all of them, it still

tastes good and it's okay. And when I went back and saw the cholesterol in every single thing I was putting in my body, and I went back and I realized that I wasn't eating the good part of the pig, which there is none. I was eating the gristle. I was having, when I explain to people what goes in the hot dogs, they don't want to talk to me anymore. Yeah, people don't, well, they don't want to know. You know what I mean? They just want to be blissfully ignorant of that.

But the millennials are different because everything has to be transparent in this time and age. They want to hear it now, right now. They want to know why it is and if you say it, they want to look it up. So this is they're less trusting. But it's so funny.

That's an oxymoron of me saying it. They're less trusting. That's the wrong word. They're less trusting because they believe Wikipedia and anything Google tells them. But it'll be about seven different references as opposed to when we were younger and I had to go and pick up the psychopedia. Well, could you imagine when we were kids, if you had this thing in your hand that could answer any question that you ever had, I'd be the teacher. It's crazy. I said that to my daughter. I said, why are you going to college? We can't even imagine how different that is. Like that changes everything. I don't think we really spend enough time, you know, kind of pondering the gravity of that

because it's insane. Right. So of course they're going to perceive the world differently when, you know, they can go to, they can go to vice.com and read a whole other, of course, they're going to perceive the world differently when, you know, they can go to they can go to vice.com and read a whole other aspect of the news that when we were kids, three networks, you know, Dan Rather is going to tell you the way it is. You have your textbook in school and, you know, that's that's the truth. Right. There is no other book. That's the one book. And now you can get conflicting opinions on all sorts of stuff. So, of course, they're they're going to have a more um open-minded and analytical you know approach to things and and i think that that is so true like they demand it's you know they demand the transparency like a company that isn't going to tell you how it

makes something that doesn't make sense why would i patronize that company right funny you say it's different that's a you know it's a it's completely a generational thing that I think is amazing. Yeah. And I went to, my daughter would say something to me, and we would look, and I would ask a question, somebody would say something. She does the kid thing. She puts her head down, and then while I'm talking,

she hands me a phone. It's like, if you want to answer it. And I said, you're really good at getting that. I said, so why am I paying $50,000 a year for you to go to college? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, you know, she was like, oh, I want the college experience. I go, well, we can do it virtually. We'll put you on a video game.

I think that's it. I think I'm going to have a college experience on a video game. That's good, yeah. I'd rather, yeah. Put on virtual reality glasses and go to a frat party or something. I think I should do that, too.

It'd be less than the $250,000 for this job. There's a, uh, there's a blogger and a podcaster. His name's James Altucher. And he's like, he's got a next level brain. And his whole thing is like college is the biggest scam ever. Like he's a highly educated guy. And he's just like, look at it, look at how much money they spend. What are they offering now? It's just different. You know, like you can self-create the experience that you want for $0.10 on that dollar and come out on the other side of it much more qualified than you would just going and living in a dorm and going blindly into these classes. It's different if you want to be a doctor or you want to be an engineer or a lawyer. It's appropriate. But we're in a service economy now.

If you want to learn how to code or if you want to learn Final Cut Pro or learn how to use Pro Tools and all these sorts of things, you can work. So what are we doing? We need to rethink the whole thing. I'm starting a plumbing company too.

You always talk about that. We only got into the wine thing. We didn't get into the 10 other other businesses like i i found that this this very very smart man lives in hawaii and he has like 35 different avenues that money comes into and he meditates for 12 maybe no i go back he starts meditation at 3 o'clock in the morning. And at 9, he comes out. And he sits there and he goes swimming. He goes surfing. I met him. He was one of the first guys doing power yoga. He was one of the only gringos or white folks that they allowed in the temples learning it from the yogis. So he teaches this lady

some powers. Next thing you know, she writes a book. So I meet him, I hear his whole story. I said, what do you do every day? He said, I surf. And I go,

no, the whole day. He said, I surf. And I go, well, where do you live? He said, oh,

we got about 10 acres up here. I grow my own food. We're off the grid. I got three kids. We homeschool them. I was like, what? He goes,

yeah, my kid speaks French and speaks English and Spanish. I was like, what? He goes, yeah, my kid speaks French and speaks English and Spanish. And I go, where's the money? He goes, what money? He goes, you, he said, money is 99% energy. It's 1% material. The same paper they make the $1 bill, they make the $100 bill.

He said, if you get caught in that, you're going to be chasing paper and the paper's not running i said well how do you do it he said i make money while i'm asleep to pay the bills i need to be paid besides that i meditate and i surf he says my life that's what i want to do yeah who is this guy oh he's a great dude i'll take you i'll take you to conan i said it a big island, right? Yeah. I think I might know who this guy is. I lost my daughter for like 10 minutes. Nobody called child services, all right? I turned this way, turned that way. She was

three and she wasn't around and I panicked. Next thing you know, she was sitting in the chair. She goes, I knew you. Where were you? I was looking for you. I panicked in all this stress because I thought somebody stole my baby girl and this girl was working the chair out there. She goes, you got to come upstairs, man. I got to call and all this stress because I thought somebody stole my baby girl and this girl was working the chair out there. She goes, you got to come upstairs, man. I got to call, get this guy.

He'll be by and he'll work you out. He comes by with the roughest feet in the world and he's standing on my back and he's working on my back and he's talking to me and then he puts a towel by my neck and he's talking to me and then he and I start crying. I was like, how'd you do that? I was like how'd you do that release i said how'd

you do that he was like you you hold everything in because you were trying to be tough in front of your daughter but this is what you need to do and then i was in i was like okay how do i do it and that was it my mind said if i start something like a plumbing company the one thing they can't outsource in america is plumbing materials they can but you still somebody's still got to come to your house on that malibu or compton when when your shitter breaks somebody got to come in so that's why i said you know what i think i'm going to move into things where they can't be outsourced you have to use them wine beer gin tequila

all those things can be vegan people are gonna gonna drink it's a beverage company water good water all the things

I can put in that could make money while I'm asleep out of businesses I got into addictive substances and indispensable services exactly

those are two good businesses to be in pimping ain't easy but somebody has to do it. All right, so the wine, the plumbing, what else do you have? What else you got going on? I got television, so I got a new show that's going to change America called The American. It's going to change the world because we got our meetings with Netflix

in August, and I got an American Idol for politics. It's pretty slick. Oh, wow. And I worked with... So you're shopping this right now? Yeah. I'm only taking it to Netflix. And I had a meeting set up at Showtime for something else. I'm going next month

on the 9th or the 13th to Fort Lee and we're working with 3,000 soldiers on training. Then we're doing yoga, and then we're getting a video of 3,000 American soldiers in a lotus position, all meditating. Oh, wow, that's cool. And some of them, a lot of veterans,

because we have to literally, why that post-traumatic syndrome is you had a traumatic situation going on in your life. And since that time in Hawaii, I think it was 1997, since that time when this guy talked to me and was working and then released that energy. And I realized you have the traumatic syndrome because you've seen something that you locked in. And as a soldier, you're supposed to be able to do it and keep moving. You can't be emotional. You have to be a soldier.

And I feel that's the first part of the post-traumatic syndrome. So we have to get in and show them how to release it by breathing, by meditating, by not making okay with it, but realizing it happened and you have to move past it. So this one colonel heard me speak and he was like, I need you to come in and talk. And the military already has, like, it's funny.

This guy said, I want you to advertise this to show the world that we're working on our military. And I said, if you don't change the way the military eats at all, we're going to have guys who are in war to have to say, timeout. I got to take,

I have to take a shot or I got to test my blood. If, if our soldiers become diabetic, we're in trouble. Big trouble, man. Yeah. I mean, we got, we have big issues there. Uh, for sure. Um, I got a buddy who is a Marine, he's been deployed and, uh, he's plant-based and he wrote an article and like whatever the magazine is that all the Marines get like a whole big long article about like you know how about that very problem and about how plant-based is like such an amazing solution for these guys and actually it was like pretty well received which is interesting because you think there'd be kind of you know quite a bit of pushback on something like that but something's got to change you should come you know i would love to they're going to give me

46 other installations those are just in america so we have 150 military bases around the world but the 46 installations that we can deal with they have to and they realize in it that like i said about athletes if you want to perform at the best level you have to stop eating where everybody else eats you have to do if you're going to be it's like to the VIP I was at the ESPYs for the first time and it was Derek Jeter and LeBron in this VIP section which is like you know everybody look at the animals in the zoo yeah type thing and when I'm on that section my wife is I went to the bathroom and couldn't get in she was you know they were like you can't get in

there so when she finally got in, she goes, you didn't come get me, you didn't hear me, you didn't answer your phone. And I go, I started thinking, this is the VIP section.

This is supposed to be the very important people section. And these very important people don't think that way. And I'm not saying you got to think you're better than anybody. Don't think what way?

That everything you do is important. That everything you put in your body is important. Places you go. Somebody said to me, hey, man, you don't want to come hang out with the crew no more? No, I don't. Oh, you too big to hang with us? Not that I'm too big.

I just know the last time we hung out with you, we got shot at. We went places that we shouldn't do. I just don't do the dumb things I did because as you said, I'm not entitled to be in this position. I worked for it, but I'm responsible too for the next kid that's coming in. So everything I do, I realize it's not just for me. It's the, it's the road behind me. Yeah. Well, kind of related to, uh, the PTSD of the soldiers. I mean, I feel like there's, there's a similar kind of analogous scenario with, uh, professional athletes when they retire, right? Like you're somebody, uh, I'm interested in kind

of how you made that transition to becoming, you know, successful off the court. I mean, you have this, you have a huge personality, you know, you have, you got crazy mad people skills and all these sorts of things that have obviously, you know, voted well for you and benefited you. crazy mad people skills and all these sorts of things that have obviously, you know, voted well for you and benefited you. Um, but I think the typical scenario is, you know, athletes that haven't really put much thought into what they want to do for the, I mean, they have their whole life ahead of them. Right. And so, you know, whether it's PTSD or some kind of low grade form of that, you see a lot of depression. Um, you lot of lost people i went through you know and you you spend all your money and then suddenly they're out of money and they don't really know what to do and

they don't have their whole life was was oriented around being an athlete and suddenly that's like overnight it's gone well you gotta like live in the world right that's and i'm just gonna say because a lot of people say man that guy lost all his all his money. And I say it all the time. I go, he really never had his money. And when he was six years old. Money had him. Yeah. You can tell he was a little special in basketball. Then all of a sudden he doesn't talk very well or he's not comfortable in front of people.

But then you put him on the court. He's Dennis Rodman. Dennis Rodman is the perfect example of what I'm talking about. Dennis Rodman in a social setting is the perfect example of what I'm talking about. Dennis Rodman, in a social setting, is the most uncomfortable person in the world. If you put him on a stage or you put him on the court, he turns into Dennis Rodman. Yeah, I would think that. See, I wouldn't know that. I would think he's full on, you know, lights on Dennis Rodman 24-7.

No, he's so the other way. You think you're hanging around Kurt Cobain. I mean, he's like that. He's like, not saying he's suicidal. Well, he did go to North Korea. But not saying he's suicidal, but I am saying he was unbelievably introverted, and I'm extroverted. So it made it so much easier.

I was raised a Jehovah Witness so I'm used to people slamming the doors in your face calling your name and sticking dogs on you just go to the next door and I think about that every day so it would never bother me but somebody who wasn't used to having the fame then get the fame

and then that becomes their fuel and when the fame goes away they become depressed when the cheering stops, when the fame goes away, they become depressed. When the cheering stops, when the air goes out of the ball, when nobody's kissing your butt, when you have to wait in line to get into some place, they can't deal with it because of that entitlement feeling. I don't have that. I love to, yesterday, I was going to buy some flowers,

and I went in the Vons because it was late. And I got them, and then I got home, and then I had to take the thorns off it Michael Jordan couldn't do that Magic Johnson can't walk in the Vons mm-hmm not they send people but they can't get that effect we went to vegan bear fest at the Rose Bowl right I think about a thousand selfies I got this thing called hashtag selfie with Sally. My daughter made me get the hashtag.

All right. Well, we got to do that when we're done here, by the way. Yeah, we got to get it. But I take a thousand. I didn't get to enjoy the vegan beer fest. I got to taste a couple of the beers, and I took pictures with some cute girls. Yeah, you had to be on point for everybody else. Right.

But I was able to be there. And that's the difference. Kobe couldn't be there. And I felt, going back to the VIP and being around Jeter and all that, I felt sorry for those guys. They got all the fame, all the money, but they can't do anything with it.

They have to look at it. They don't even buy art. Look at this wonderful art in this place. These cats wouldn't even know. You know, you should go buy some art, some really good art, not the bad stuff. Go buy some art, the stuff that's going to have value on your wall. They don't get it.

They'll go buy sneakers and wear them. They'll go buy cars that's going to go out of style that they didn't take care of. They put rims on them. So it's a lot of things when I go back in to talk about that is over their head and on the back of the wall by the time I finish talking. Right, well, I think you have an innate curiosity. I mean, you're looking into a macrobiotic diet

and colonics and doing all this kind of crazy stuff when you were playing. So by your nature, I would presume from that that you kind of have a tendency to think outside the box or try new things or kind know kind of be adventuresome in that regard whereas everyone else perhaps it's just you know they're on their program you know and that's that but but even so you said that when you retired you still went through that kind of you know depression i had to go how did you like weather that and then get to the other side of

that i went to marriage counseling for a second because my wife was like, this light doesn't work. And this over here doesn't do something. I said, hey, who did all that when I wasn't here? Right. That's like the soldier who comes home and suddenly he's pushing a cart down at the grocery store. And, you know, 48 hours before he was worried about getting fragged. Exactly. And so what I did is I got, I did my, as soon as I finished with the Lakers, I did a DVD called Yoga Flavor with this yogi named Robin Downs.

So we did yoga to smooth R&B music, which was funny because we really didn't. We did the yoga, and then they put the music in behind it. And we got in trouble because we didn't know you had to clear the music. But literally my life changed when I was doing yoga every day. And I'm telling you because I was looking forward to it. It wasn't as stressful as it was jumping down in 24-hour fitness. And that's a cool thing too. But it still was trouble for me.

I'm still an athlete. I'm a thoroughbred. So you see a girl walk by and you put it on. And so I just decided that wasn't the environment I wanted to go into. I wanted to go into literally doing something where I can just focus on healing something inside me.

And I was able to not put out the fire, but to put the fire to the side and pay attention. So a lot of times, I usually only hang around women because men make me hunt. And then I started hanging around Alan who has a wife and is really into his wife and he's my moral compass.

And it could be what it could be some broads coming around me a certain way. And he was like, Hey, you know, I had to learn to calm it down, you know, cause I want to, I want to,

I want to prance like, you know, like a stallion. Yeah. The ego kicks up. Yeah. It kicks up up and i've been working really hard at being um egoless that's a good word did i make that up egoless egoless i think i just made that up less ego egoless that is so jesse jackson made up a word just now except i could understand what you're saying. Yeah, you know black people don't even know what Jesse is saying. I know.

He just shows up. All right, but that's coming more recent, right? But you started doing that when you were trying to figure out what your next move was going to be post-basketball. Yeah, I did television. I had my own late-night talk show. I had it set, Rich. I loved Johnny Carson since I was 11. I said I was going to play 10 years in the NBA,

and then I was going to Hollywood, and I was going to get a late night talk show, and I did, and I got on Disney, and then they decided to give a show to Keenan Ivan Wayans and to Magic. Keenan, you got to get Keenan in here, too. Keenan's body is unbelievable. He is definitely like,

he pays attention to every single thing. And I missed my job. I was 32 years old. And I thought it was over. And then I realized it was a blessing because I didn't know enough. It's like Jimmy Fallon has a really hard job. Adam has a really hard job.

When you have to every day be up on current events and be funny about it, it's kind of hard. It's unbelievably hard. You know, you look at Jimmy Kimmel and what those guys do. I mean, yeah, but they have a career of being a stand-up comic and a writer and all that kind of experience, you know, that has informed that. So that when they get to that point, they're ready to go and they're surrounded by incredible writers and talent. Well, I did stand up while I was playing. Everybody else was going to the nightclub

and I was finding where the comedy joint was. And then I would go, I'm going to get five minutes. And they were like, you want to get on stage? I was like, these people hate you already. I go, good.

Let's see if I'm funny or not. So I still host some comedy things that did Stan I did Caroline's so I host I do my comedy then I bring on the guests so I I just thought it was so good to tell the truth with jest as opposed to telling the truth and being morbid and and it sounds even now when they do a joke they got to say too soon you never had to say that back in the day you did it because it it it brought more awareness to what it was and you figured out you had to laugh at it and you had to laugh at it and laugh it out and it's going to be okay it's what happened you move so i watch

comedians like ross and and i saw don rick, which nobody listening beside you and I know who he is. And I asked him to insult me just so I can know what it felt like to be insulted by Don Rickles, because that's the comedy I used to watch. And now everybody's offended. Everybody is sensitive. Yeah. Well, there's a chilling effect on comedy now because everybody's got a phone, you know, and they take it to the comedy club and they'll grab a video clip and they'll upload it and it's out of context. And it's a clickbait story that you can create all this kind of false, you know, outrage around and that drives, you know, website traffic. And it's insane. It's comedy, you know, it's, it's meant to be, you know, enjoyed in the moment and in the context. And if it's not provoking you,

then it's not doing its job. You're not a politician running for office. You're a comedian. I'd say the same thing. And somebody said, well, they're insensitive people who died. And I go, yeah, man, two people were born. One person dies every, I think, second

or every two seconds on this planet. It's just the way it works. But I don't take it too serious, man. I'm doing this documentary. I'm finally editing with my two partners, Rebecca and Chantel. It's called The Missing Piece. We got to go to India and meet

the Dalai Lama and we have Moby on it, Pink, Josh Stone, Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, John Black, a comedian, me. So I got to go to India, do this, and sit in front of him. And it was 2009, 2008, and I finally got all the footage. And so I'm editing that, and hopefully you'll get to see that too. That's cool.

What's it called again? The Missing Piece. Do you have distribution for that, or what's the plan? I'm just going straight to Netflix. Oh, you are? I'm literally dumping on Netflix, and everybody asks me, excuse me, why? It's because I think they have the most unbelievable platform, and I think the way they do it, here's the money, bring me the product,

unbelievable platform and I think the way they do it here's the money bring me the product as opposed to having somebody who has absolutely no idea critiquing it before anybody sees a bunch of development execs who are trying to hold on to their job and it's it's just safer to say no or they have to rationalize their position by giving a bunch of ideas to you that make no sense give me example man I was on ESPN and I had a product that I used to work with called Vermax and it was a male enhancement pill. It was the first time I got into this so-called close to pharmaceutical sale over the counter. And so I'm doing the interview and the guy goes,

well, what are these pills? I said, well, it's male enhancement. Well, what do they do? I said, well, you know, it enhances a male in a situation. It keeps blood in the area. He goes, exactly. I go, it makes your penis hot. We go to commercial, and they tell me that I can't be on ESPN radio anymore

because I said the word penis. And I go, there's a whole bunch of dicks running the company. And they didn't like that. That was the end of that. That was the end of that. That was the end of that. And then I met the ESPN the other day, and they used the word penis more on ESPN than I did on a radio show.

So I literally found my boy, and I said, is that guy still running this station? Yeah. I said, can I get his number? He goes, yeah. I said, hey, did you watch the ESPYs? He goes, yeah. I said, did you see how many times he said penis on ABC?

And he didn't say a word. I said said but i can't come back on the radio because i said yeah they can do it on television yeah but look you've been around hollywood to know if you're looking for the uh the apology or the recognition that they they did something wrong you're gonna be waiting for a long time i said you don't work fire everybody. So you did radio, but you also had, what happened to your podcast, man? Well, that my man, henchman, I love henchmen. We had hench in the spider, right? And then you had your own one. Yeah. And then, but they kept wanting to tell me what I was going to talk about. Like we could have never done this. And I told that guy, I said, you can't tell me.

Because you were at Podcast One? Yeah. I said, you can't tell me what to do. And he goes, yeah, I can. And I said, okay. Interesting. And so they said, well, they're having a problem. I said, I don't have a problem with this.

Right, so they owned your show. That was another thing. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that doesn't make sense. And I kept saying, how do you own my show? He said, well, you're using our studios. I said, well, how about I don't use your studios? And they go, well, we still own 50% of your show.

So I got out of it. But Henchman became a writer for Tim Allen on the Tim Allen show. And he's Adam Carolla's writing partner on all his stuff. Yeah, that's how I got in. Plus, Adam has been, if somebody wants to fight Adam, I'm stepping in first and punching you in the face he gave me an unbelievable shot he's a great dude

unbelievably surprisingly brilliant he really is I don't think he gets his due for how intelligent that guy is and the business that he's built around his podcast and his podcast network is extraordinary he's a and his podcast and his podcast network is is extraordinary yeah he's a he's a he's a and he got a he got a uh a liquor out called i know the man guria man guria

yeah 18 alcohol hi i'm here to invade your liver that guy's no fool man no you know yeah he's he knows how to work it but he's i mean look talk about a guy who works hard you know he does that show five days a week and then he's got like five other podcasts that he's doing and he's got mangreer and he's traveling and doing you know he's making he made two movies this year i mean that guy you know is on fire he said i grew up in the valley in a middle class family he said i know what that feels like now Now? He said, I did that already. I tell people that all the time. I said, my hard work comes from the fact that I had to run up to the eighth floor when the elevator was broke.

And I had to wait for somebody to get out of my bathroom. Because me, my brothers, my mother, my father had to wait for somebody. I'm the youngest. Had to wait for my brothers to get out of the bathroom. You don't want to go in the bathroom after them. And I had to literally have been told my whole life, well, we can't afford it. So I work really, really, really hard so I don't have to say those things anymore. But in fairness, there's a lot of guys that grew up that way that also ended up in the NBA or the NFL

up that way that also ended up in the NBA or the NFL and, and don't have the kind of, you know, uh, work ethic or vision or, you know, kind of entrepreneurial flair that you have. Like, how do you, you know, if you had to like qualify how you distinguish yourself or what it is that's different about you, that's allowed you to succeed in this way. I mean, what would that be? be? Persistence. I would say, I would say literally I am always evolving and which we all are, but I pay attention to it.

I pay attention to the fact that yesterday was yesterday and I posted on Instagram. People don't, you know, don't't make your future your habits make your future so I make sure that my habits are beneficial for my future so what I plant today what I do today will benefit me tomorrow and I'm not happy I'm not I'm not sad that I worked that hard today so I can have it the benefit tomorrow. It's just how my mentality is. And a lot of guys grew up like that, and I said the same thing. When I was younger, I told people I was going to be a pro.

And they were like, you're the worst guy on the squad. I go, well, today I am. I said, but I got here early, and when y'all ran out, I stayed and closed the gym. And when you guys went to the nightclub when I was in college on Friday and Saturday, I didn't have any money to go to the club. I took my weighted ball, my boom box, my tape. Then my boy sent me all the new hip-hop. And I had a key to the freshman gym.

And when they'd be in the gym from 10 to 2 and get back after eating that IHOP, get back at 3, they would come by the gym. And that's how I knew it was time to get out. So I was spending 6 hours, 12 hours a weekend more than they were to be where I am. And I've seen the benefit of it. Not a life hack. No. No shortcut.

No. No, you put it in, you get it out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you look back on on your career and i mean you have the fortune the good fortune of playing on like some amazing teams under you know a variety of amazing coaches perhaps the most amazing coach being phil jackson when you think about you know those players and those coaches i mean you know what did you you know what are some of the characteristics of of being around that kind of greatness you know, what did you, you know, what are some of the characteristics of being around that kind of greatness, you know, that you were able to kind of intuit from that experience? Well, Phil Jackson liked that I was coachable and he liked that I was Chuck Daly.

God rest his soul, said I had the best mental health of any athlete he's ever been around. So that was a compliment to me. And what it meant, they go, where'd he get that? Well, he can yell at me and I would nod and then go do what he said. He can yell at another guy and the other guy will respond back and then respond poorly. I always looked at coaches, that's what they do, is yell. When they stop yelling at you, you either know it all or he's done with you. So being around Phil Jackson, he was about preparation.

And he would raise his voice sometimes in practice if he said to do it a certain way and the guy didn't do it and we did it again and he said to do it and you didn't get it. Then we get in the game, you do it wrong. He would get in practice and raise his voice. He said, obviously, I need to put more emphasis on this here. And Phil's whole thing was we don't need to worry about their defense we need to execute our offense that right there tells you everything what it means is don't worry about

anybody else they can't stop you if you do what you're supposed to do and you stay to this system I said to Brian Shaw one of my best friends in the NBA became the coach of Denver and I said you need to trust the triangle more and I don't watch sports that well I just watch one of my best friends in the NBA became the coach of Denver and I said you need to trust the triangle more and I don't watch sports that well I just watched one of his games said you need to trust the triangle don't worry about what they're telling you trust the triangle he got fired middle of season he didn't trust the triangle and everyone said man the Knicks this and the Knicks that and the Knicks this and watch what happened I'm telling everybody right now the New York Knicks will be in the Eastern Conference Finals next year yeah you're saying it now I'm telling everybody right now the New York Knicks will be in the Eastern Conference Finals next year. Yeah, you're saying it now.

I'm saying it right now. I said it, matter of fact. Because? Because they are implementing the triangle offense. And when you implement a system and people stay within the system and everybody is trained not to do this system, they're going to

lose. And I can prove it. Phil Jackson won five championships in Los Angeles in 10 years. There's no other coach that can say that. He won six championships in 12 years, in 11 years in Chicago. Now, if this guy has won championships, meaning he's the best, with a system, you go, well, he had Kobe and Shaq. Well, we proved this situation this past year with lebron okay how good you may be if you don't have a team doing the same

thing with the same effort with the same mentality you're not going to win you're always going to win in a team sport when the team is on the same page but what are the things that he did to kind of foster that you know that team mentality? Okay, so I'll give you the story. We're playing in Chicago. It's 1986. We had literally played poorly the game before. So he tells everybody, everybody get taped.

We're scrimmaging for minutes. And he walks away. Now, that's a big thing to a professional athlete. Your minutes are more important than how much you get paid. And so guys are getting taped. They're putting the extra tape on their fingers, and it's going to be a real scrimmage. I want minutes. And he goes, everybody meet.

Minutes meaning playing time. Minutes, yeah, playing time. So we get into practice. Phil sits around, tells us what he was upset about. MJ is sitting there ready to go. Scotty's ready to go. Ron Harper, Dennis Rah MJ is sitting there ready to go. Scotty is ready to go. Ron Harper, Dennis Rodman, everybody's ready to go. He goes, before we get going up to the film room.

So everybody goes up to the film room and a guy named George Mumford is in there. And George sits around and these guys hold hands and we literally breathe for 45 minutes. And that was the end of practice. You go down, cut your tape off. We won 20 games in a row. That's such a trip.

Everybody else would have put you on court and made you run suicides and twist and turn and run into this guy and have a fight and make you feel like that's the way it's supposed to be. He felt we needed to literally deal with each other and breathe the same air and realize we're one team so when you get that oneness

can't be beaten and when you got the number one player in some people's mind ever played a game and he's doing it when MJ is doing it you cannot not do it right so I think Phil knew exactly how to get that and he knew that I was really good with Shaquille. He knew I was really good with Kobe. And he would put people around that were, because he can't be around you the whole time. So he was really good at also not, like he didn't yell at Dennis Rodman.

So Dennis Rodman wouldn't listen to the pregame. Because that doesn't work. No, because he doesn't even hear himself think. So how are you going to yell at him and get him to think? And Dennis would be on the bike watching film of the guy he got to play. He doesn't do anything but watch the film. He doesn't come out and warm up. And Phil is talking, and Dennis is not in his chair.

And I'm wanting to be like, oh, you know, any other time. So Dennis walks past Phil from in the other room while Phil is talking, goes into the shower, takes a shower, comes back out. out by the time we're going out Dennis is ready to go and I'm just staring at him because I ain't been around him in a while I said Phil what's that he goes oh he knows what to do I go huh he goes he knows what to do I only talk to people that need to be told what to do and he goes I don't need to yell at him I need him to do what he does because what he does, I can't teach. When you got a guy that smart, man, and knows, understanding how to make the best out of everybody here,

he's managing 12 small companies. Right. And everybody's got different buttons installed. You push the wrong button on the wrong guy and you're getting a different result. No matter how much you pay him. What works for you isn't going to work for Dennis. No. So how do you find that?

How do you get everybody to mesh? So when you said that you worked well with Shaq, does that mean off the field too? That's the only time. Like, hey, hang out with this guy? Right. I tell people they had this new show with The Rock on HBO. I think it showed one of them.

It's called Ballers. I pitched that in 2000, something about the NBA. And I kept saying, the first thing you have to promise is you won't show guys playing sport. Because that's 48 minutes. That's two hours a night, three nights a week. That's ridiculous. To show the game is stupid because during the game we can see the girl in row 16 with the white pants on everybody can see her so if during the

game everyone can see the girl with the white pants on who's sitting down we all saw her walk up and sit in row 16 the first thing we look down at the bench and go who who gave our tickets that's how athletes are thinking that because what we do on the court on the field is like urinating that's you know how to do that when your body wants to do it you just do it i tell people all the time when i got in the race car driving they said you're going to get so used to going fast that everything else is going to slow down. I say that because when you run into these guys, everything is moving too fast, this is this and everything. We don't pay attention to the game.

That's why it doesn't seem like guys care when they lose. They do care, but they realize that game is over already. So I work well with Shaq when we shoot five shots on Sunday nights. When I would tell him we're in Boston, he said, yeah, we're getting ready to go out. He said, you can't go with Shaq when we would shoot five shots on Sunday nights when I would tell him we in Boston he said if he's getting ready to go out so you can't go Shaq what do you mean I can't go you can't tell me I can't go I kind of can you know you can't go out in Boston he goes why not I said well they stabbed Paul Pierce and that's their star player what do you think they're going to do to you if they stabbed their star player we can't have we can't take that risk Wow so I was I was really good at also if I had to arrange things I was good at

arranging them where we'll never hear about no Bill Cosby situation whatever happened you know if you not not the drug part but whatever yeah if you got our range things is when these guys don't realize that they have totally lost the anonymity is where they run into a problem and and just for the record because I'm on the air Tiger did not have sex with all 15 of those waitresses I get all right and then we just say that because if anybody goes back and looks up the name of the waitresses they can't find them. What?

No, you can't find those waitresses. The women who came out and made the claims? Name one. I mean, I don't know. Exactly. Well, I didn't follow it that closely. I don't know. I don't know what's true and what's not.

Not one. And I sat there and I went, wow, somebody damaged that kid's reputation because they could. And then he had to go on and apologize to who? For having sex with 15 women? I said, why did he apologize? I went through this whole thing. I said, this is real bad management. And he had one sense.

Well, certainly. Had one big sense. Reputation is more fragile than ever. I mean, you can't, you know ever i mean you can't you know even if you're you know just the most nominal of celebrities you can't go out into the world without an expectation that every single thing you do is being filmed and photographed everywhere you go all the time it is right so it's a you know it's a it's an invasion of privacy in some regards and you know people will say well you know what you, what are you complaining about your slate, whatever. But like, it's a thing,

you know, like you, you know, you, it is like big brother is on you all the time. And so know that ultimate. Yeah. Like I think everybody needs to know that. I say like this, I say, Hey man, you know, welcome to the NBA. And they go, man, I made it. I go go so now you don't belong to you anymore right Walter Payton God rest his soul said to me I said how do you deal with being Walter Payton he was the biggest thing when I was growing up right he's sweetness he broke Jim Brown's record or whatever he was his sweetness and he goes in your house you belong to you and your family outside you belong to the public when your family is with you outside they need to realize you belong to the people outside so if you don't get that if you're not willing to sign up for that you can't take the check

yeah that's that's really what you're getting paid for right you know because i have to deal with all yeah because the i was the seventh guy off the bench and people still want to take pictures of me because I was in that room. I did some really good things on film too. Every time that CBS came, my game got better. CBS. Every time I saw that national television, my game got really good. Local, whatever.

But it gets confused too because there's an expectation that a professional athlete is also a role model and you have to carry that mantle when in truth, they're just athletes, man. And they got more testosterone flowing through their system than the average dude, which means they're more likely to get in trouble and make clouded decisions about their personal life and all that sort of stuff. So it's set up to be a disaster from the beginning. And then again, it's back to the fake outrage. You know, I don't think anyone really cares,

but we all have to pretend we're so outraged when, you know, player X does whatever and it makes headlines. I tell these guys. And that's not to excuse, you know, some really bad behavior that goes on, just to be clear. But, you know, the average kind of misstep, you know, where we all like act like it's the end of the world

when it's nothing that like, you you know a lot of people who are anonymous are probably doing all the time I read one time in the Bible is that bad association spoils useful habits bad association so sometimes you can get in a situation they always why do they get their money stolen from a bad agent or a bad money guy why did they have an entourage with guys hanging around who are doing things? It's because they don't know because they are horses. I tell them they are thoroughbreds. All they know is when you bring them out, they run, they play on the field,

they get fed, they get washed. That's all they know. They don't have time to learn how to judge people's character. They're spending all that time to judging whether this guy is a pump fakes or whether he goes left-handed whether he's right they don't have time to think about the rest so they only know to trust trust people who seem to be in their best interest how much responsibility do you think the nfl or the nba or the nhl should shoulder in kind of you, helping athletes make that transition

out of professional sports and into real life or just managing those kind of life skills. Like here's your, here's what you're going to have to deal with. Nope. Right. Like, do you think that they should though? No. And the reason why, if the athletes are not, they're not, they're not qualified to handle all of that and it creates so many self-implosions. Right. But this is the deal. As I explained to an NBA player, one out of a million. One out of a mere American.

But all the more reason to protect that investment by giving them some skills to help them figure out how to not make those mistakes. But I can give you an example. There was a guy named P so caught um Pals uh how yeah yeah pal from the from the Lakers yeah see what I just Spanish I did that on purpose yeah right just to let you go oh yeah pal yeah yeah that's why I did that because I guess all right people say pockets are I'm gonna say oh well who was center before Pau? I don't know.

Exactly. So that's why. They come and go like a mosquito in the wind, bro. And they have to worry about Matt. Think of what Goodell has to do with football right now with Brady, who is the MVP and the Super Bowl champion. How do you handle that some guy decided to say, well, he told me to take the air out of the ball?

That's why OJ's in jail right now because somebody said he told me to bring the gun. Not that OJ did anything, but you made him bring the gun so you're the terrorist. You know what I'm saying? So guys run into these situations, people don't care. And people used to love OJ in this country, love. You say that word,

Orange Juice doesn't even use the word OJ anymore because of that. It's so crazy that Ford stopped making Broncos because of that. I mean, we're so important in the country, but yet not so important. During September 11th, know what the most

important thing was? Is the baseball game going to be played tonight? That was the most important question. Should we play the game? I know we just got, you know, but is it important for us to play the game? That's all that was important. So they really don't care. They just need to be entertained. I found out a long time ago when David Stern said, if you take the names off the bat, no one will care. They only care about the name on the front. I look at it differently. I don't think

that's true. Oh yeah? Yankees. I say it all the time. Yankees. Basketball is different. Yankees do it. No, I'm telling you. The Yankees proved that point so big. You know, just say, oh, man, number two was good. I can't even hit you right now. Tell me what Alex Rodriguez's number is.

I don't know. But, like, I don't follow. I'm like the worst example because I don't follow that stuff that closely. So I'm the wrong guy to ask. There's a million guys that could answer that question. But then they would tell you, this is his number. Like I remember

these guys get a number that has no name on the back so they have to realize the most important name is the one on the front. I got to go, man. Yeah. All right, man.

I got to go pick up my car. I love you, man. All right. Thank you for doing this. Thanks so much, dude. And you got your vegan food chip band on? I do.

I got it, man. Thanks a lot, man. And we got to take our selfie with Sally right now. All right. We got to do that. So if people are digging on John John Sally dot-com the John Sally on Instagram and Twitter right no it's not Sally on Instagram and the John Sally on Twitter yeah okay somebody won't give me my stuff but I'm certified

though all right I got Facebook to certify brother brother. Where else should people go? You should go to Whole Foods and ask for the vegan vine wine. And I am literally going to be, you can just go vegan food share. You'll see a bunch of pictures and a bunch of things I'm doing. And I show up in all the cool places. You do, man. Yes, sir. Mind, body, green.

I got my new article. I know. 22 Reasons to Be a Vegan. Oh, I haven't seen that one yet. Yeah, man. We just sent it in to them. that you do man yes sir you're mine by the green i got i got my new article i know 22 reasons to be a vegan oh i haven't seen that one yeah man we just we just sent it into them so it's an ongoing series i give you two reasons each time till we get to 22 and then we drop all 22 reasons to be a vegan cool man all right all right man thanks a lot dude thank you you're an inspiration definitely look who's talking dude yeah all right man peace plants all right you guys what'd you think of that you guys enjoy that i hope you did let me know what you think in the comment section at richroll.com on the episode page uh it's tough it's tough with

guys like john uh he's such a pro He's so used to interviewing people and being interviewed that what comes with that kind of professionalism sometimes is it makes it a little bit more difficult, a little trickier for a guy like me to kind of try to crack the shell. I'm always trying to find a way to connect emotionally or get something unique or perhaps a little bit more vulnerable and authentic from my guests. I don't always succeed in that regard. I'm not sure I did today, but nonetheless, I enjoyed that conversation and I hope you guys did too. He's a kick, right? A couple announcements. If you live in LA or your travels take you to this part of the world, my part of the world, I wanted to let you guys know that it would be great if you could check out a couple of the businesses that I'm partnered in. Joy Cafe. I haven't talked about Joy in a little while, but Joy Cafe.

It's our organic, plant-based, and gluten-free eatery located in the Westlake Village area of Los Angeles. It's kind of like the northwest section of town. You'll often see me eating there. I eat lunch there all the time. So if you want to come and meet me and share a bite, that's the best place to do it. And I'm also partnered in a company called the Karma Baker, which is a vegan and gluten-free bakery that's also located in the Westlake Village area. And it just feels really good to serve the global community with my podcast it just feels really good to serve the global community with my podcast and to also be able to serve the local community with food that is consistent with

my values. So I'd love it for you guys to check out both of these businesses if you happen to be in the hood. I'm really proud to be associated with them, and I think you guys will enjoy them as well. For all your plant power needs, visit richroll.com. We've got all kinds of great nutritional products and garments there. Pick up our book, The Plant Power Way, if you haven't yet, our cookbook and lifestyle guide. We have signed copies of Finding Ultra at richroll.com. We've got nutrition products, 100% organic cotton garments, plant power tech teas, sticker packs, basically all kinds of cool stuff to take your health and your life to the next level. I've got two online courses at mindbodygreen.com, the art of living with purpose and the ultimate guide to plant-based nutrition. Go to mindbodygreen.com and click on

video courses. You'll find out lots more information about those there. Thanks so much for sharing a couple hours of your precious time with me today. Thanks for telling a friend about the show, sharing it on social media, and for always using the Amazon banner at ritual.com for all your Amazon purchases. Thanks so much, you guys. It means so much to me to have you guys on board as an audience. I do not take it for granted. And each week I commit myself to do better, find the right people to share the right messages with you guys. So I'll see you guys in a couple days with another episode of the podcast.

And until then, make it a great one. Peace. Plants. Did you listen to that? I did.