Cade Cunningham Is the Number One Pick in the NBA Draft

Cade Cunningham is the number one pick in the NBA draft, and he's vegan. The Detroit Pistons took the 19-year-old point guard first overall at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn tonight (Thursday, July 29), ahead of Jalen Green, who went second to the Houston Rockets, according to the draft results.

The 6ft 8in Texan spent one season at Oklahoma State, where he was named Big 12 Player of the Year. He was the favorite to go first for months. Detroit now has a franchise point guard to build around.

Moments after his name was called, Cunningham was asked by the ESPN crew why he went vegan. His answer, reported by VegNews, was refreshingly simple:

I think, bigger than anything, I just wanted to try something new for my body and see how my body reacted to it. So, once I tried it, I did it for two weeks.

He did slip once. On a Team USA trip to Greece for the 2019 FIBA World Cup he ate McDonald's because "we weren't accustomed to the food that we had out there", but he said that trip settled it: "I told myself, 'I'm going back to vegan, and I'm sticking to it.'" He has been vegan since 2019, and he's already an ambassador for Eat Just, the company behind JUST Egg. A Detroit cafe is even putting a plant-based "Cade Stack" sandwich on its menu.

He's walking into a league full of plant-powered players. Chris Paul led Phoenix to his first NBA Finals last month, Kyrie Irving scored 50 on his Brooklyn debut, JaVale McGee won a third NBA title and Enes Kanter went plant-based after the NBA bubble.

The number one pick is powered by plants.