Photo: Verse Photography via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0, cropped. This adapted image is also licensed CC BY-SA 2.0.
Plant-based point guard Chris Paul is an NBA All-Star for the 10th time. The league named him a Western Conference reserve on Thursday, January 30, and he will play in the All-Star Game at Chicago's United Center on Sunday, February 16, the NBA has confirmed.
Paul makes the bench alongside Russell Westbrook, the man he was traded for last summer. Plenty of people wrote off Oklahoma City when they sent Paul there from Houston, and plenty wrote off Paul, now 34. Instead he is an All-Star again in his 15th season. The other West reserves are Rudy Gobert, Brandon Ingram, Damian Lillard, Nikola Jokić and Donovan Mitchell.
He has been the glue in a Thunder side that has surprised everyone, often playing alongside two other point guards. He gave the credit to the group, telling the Thunder:
That's the thing about our team. It's not just one guy, and it's fun seeing guys to get off like that. That's what's fun about this team and why we do have the ability to be a lot better than what other people think.
Paul went plant-based last year, after working on The Game Changers documentary, and he credits it for how good he still feels this deep into his career. He has said he first made the change for performance, but once he saw how his body changed and how he felt, it became a change for life, VegNews reports. He says he no longer wakes up with the aches that once kept him from running around with his kids. Fried chicken and burgers used to be his favorite pre-game foods. These days it is vegan pancakes.
We covered Paul going plant-based after working on The Game Changers last summer. The film became the best-selling documentary in iTunes history, and in October fellow plant-based guard Kyrie Irving scored a record 50 points on his Brooklyn debut.
Ten All-Star selections and still going. Powered by plants.