In the span of just three weeks in 2015, stretched in the gray, rainy space between February and March, three former NBA players died unexpectedly from complications related to heart disease. Christian Welp and Jack Haley were 51. Anthony Mason, the former New York Knicks forward, was just 48.
The average lifespan of an American male, per OECD.org, was 76.4 as of 2015. An American man reaching age 65 today can expect to live, on average, until age 84.3, according to the U.S. government's Social Security website. One in four 65-year-olds today will live past age 90.
One out of 10 of those men or women will live past age 95.
In short, that players like Mason lost nearly three decades of life as compared to the average American male, is both astonishing and troubling. But are there deeper issues at play here? And, if so, what can be done?
Some say nothing.
In comparison to the aforementioned average American male, these men are giants. The average NBA player is just over 6-foot-5 and weighs approximately 216.1 pounds, per SeatSmart.com. As of 2012, the CDC suggested that the average American male is about 5-foot-8 and weighs 195.5 pounds. The smallest player in the NBA, Nate Robinson of the New Orleans Pelicans, is still 5-foot-9, and a svelte 180 pounds. Of course, not only are nearly all of these NBA players larger in stature, they're also world-class athletes, meaning these superstars, these near superhumans, exist in a physical world, tax their bodies to a degree that is simply beyond what people of smaller, less athletic proportions can, or should, ever dream of, let alone attempt.
The problem, these people argue, is endemic - nothing more than a byproduct of a professional basketball life.
Others, like former NBA player John Salley, disagree vehemently with that notion. Salley, through his own experiences, has become convinced that with the investment of some time and training, the NBA can, and should, teach its young stars not just to excel on the court, but off it as well, to treat their bodies as they should rightly be treated and, in turn, limit the health epidemic that has taken hold of the league.
"You see these great, unbelievable thoroughbreds, but they don't treat them like thoroughbreds," Salley tells Headlines & Global News recently. "They give the athletes the green, and they don't make sure that the thoroughbred eats green."
Salley's own storied NBA career spanned five teams, four NBA championships and three decades. As a power forward for the Detroit Pistons, Miami Heat, Toronto Raptors, Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers, Salley put his spindle-thin 7-foot frame to great effect night in and night out for 12 NBA seasons. To hear Salley tell it, though, all the natural physical gifts that came packed into his wiry, long-armed frame - a frame and a game developed in Brooklyn's Canarsie neighborhood and tested at Georgia Tech under coach Bobby Cremins - weren't the reason for his effective, successful career as a professional athlete. No, after tip-off at the 1986 NBA Draft, once his NBA career and Pistons tenure had begun, Salley found success and longevity not through innate ability, but through wellness - through a commitment to physical excellence, a plant-based diet and a lifestyle that he considers a form of "self-respect."
Salley, now 51 and far removed from his playing days, just as Welp and Haley, just as Meadowlark Lemon had been, has a host of interests occupying his time, including acting gigs, entrepreneurial endeavors, Operation Smile ambassadorship and fatherhood. But the interest nearest to his heart, the one that hits closest to home, is that of wellness, of veganism, and of ensuring that the NBA, at times so lax in its approach to the overall health of its players, its on-court product, the people that make the machine that is the professional basketball world turn, takes a refreshed look at the way its ask that product, its guys, to eat, to train and to live.
***
It's killing both ways. You kill the animal and eat it. Eventually, what you eat will kill you.
Salley doesn't think small. The former "The Best Damn Sports Show Period" Host has his hand in so many pies - literally and figuratively - sometimes it's hard to keep track of just what he's working on. But, like the VioLife vegan cheese that he liked so much, he joined the company and is now working to connect it to a Canadian pizza company called "Pizza Pizza" as well as a famous pizzeria in California called "Marbury Pizza," Salley always has and always will push the envelope when it comes to the things he cares about the most. And, as a devout vegan and committed PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) member in his post-playing life, Salley cares deeply about seeing an American commitment to vegetarianism.
"The first day [Barack Obama] became president, we watched FLOTUS, literally, say what she wanted to talk about - health and wellness in this country," Salley says, a quiet insistence in his voice.
"She started talking about animals and talking about stay healthy and keep it moving, and it's a big undertaking. The fact that she was even talking about vegetables, fruits and vegetables, that they put an organic garden at their house, and they were on that path and after eight years, besides Obama's gray hair, they still look like they can fit in the same suits and the same dresses as before they became president..."
Salley, in conjunction with PETA, put forth a petition asking Americans, and specifically First Lady Michelle Obama, to commit to a 30-day vegan pledge to start the New Year. In a letter to the first lady, posted to the PETA website, Salley writes that veganism - the practice of "abstaining from the use of animal products, particularly in diet, and an associated philosophy that rejects the commodity status of animals" - has become his "passion."
Interestingly, though, Salley admits that while he spent the majority of his playing days - from 1986 to 2000, he was a member of an NBA franchise, with a season in Greece playing for Panathinaikos in 1996 and two subsequent years in retirement the only outliers - as a vegetarian, he did so as a "lying" vegetarian.
"I would say I was a vegetarian, but I was lying about it," Salley says with a laugh. "What I mean by that is, I was eating fish, cheese and shrimp, drinking milk. And when I did have turkey, it was once a year."
Salley estimates that it was about a decade ago that he finally gave up meat for good. Now, whenever he sees or smells it, it elicits an immediate visceral reaction, something that fuels his desire to see the rest of America adopt a healthier, meatless lifestyle.
"I just look at it as; does it disgust you? And I say, well I spent a lot of my time growing up as the son of a caterer, so I was used to seeing it," he says. "But now when I smell it, I know it is decaying carcass being cooked. It's all I remember. And I see it that way. I don't see any nutrition. If I kill something, clean out the insides, put some water on it, salt, pepper, and season it and cook it, how could that dead carcass be good for me?"
Salley, like his fellow PETA members, has come to believe that eating meat is inherently wrong. And much like his animal rights brothers and sisters, who have become so well known for their graphic and oftentimes gut-wrenching depictions of animal abuse, Salley isn't above shocking people, or as he puts it, "slapping them in the face with the truth" when they don't want to be.
"I always tell people - and they always think I'm trying to be disgusting, but I'm not - 'would you cut a rat open and eat a rat?' And they say, 'no.'"
A possum? A squirrel? A parakeet? A pigeon?
"The bible says 'thou shalt not kill,' period," Salley says, his voice hardening. "It doesn't say 'man.'"
***
Like Heavy D said, "I'm not down with anybody, they all down with me."
Salley combines a relaxed disposition with a penchant for pointed jokes. He'll follow serious commentary about the abolishment of animal murder and a story about how his then-7-year-old daughter convinced him to stop eating chicken by pointing out that, cultural norms or not, it's still a bird, by cracking a joke about how eagle wings are bigger anyway.
But the devoted father carries just as much of a commitment to animals, to the cause of veganism and fighting climate change, as he does for his family.
For Salley, both ideals have been forged by blood.
"We're herbivores. There's nothing inside of us that says we have to have it. And, proven fact, look at all the slaves were brought over from the middle passage," he says, slowing to let the words sink in, hanging onto the moment before delivering the punchline. "I'm sure they weren't giving them steak and chicken. If they made it over - beans and rice."
To some, that's a dark joke. For Salley, it's just how you get your point across - it's that "slap" of truth that most people don't want because they don't even know they need it. A four-time NBA champion working his way into a bevy of entrepreneurial efforts and hoping to change the way the league trains and feeds its young stars, Salley knows the kind of sway he holds, the way his word carries.
He's not worried about disrupting others if it means helping - he welcomes it. He wants to change the system, wants to shift the landscape.
And if there are a few ruffled - if un-plucked - feathers along the way, so be it.
