- If I could switch wine cellars with any player in a one-
on-one game, I would switch with—
- Take a little sip on that one.
- I got to take a sip on that one.
Who do you think's got a better wine cellar: JJ [Redick] or Jimmy Butler?
- Jimmy Butler has the most diversity in his cellar.
I'm not going to beat him one-on-one,
but if I could...
We are here on Full-Bodied today with the pride and joy
of the Lehigh Mountain Hawks; the man, the myth,
the legend of the Portland Trail Blazers;
the skills and drills master, CJ McCollum.
Thank you again for coming in and having
a glass or glasses with us.
So all three of these wines meant something not only to me
in my story to you, but I felt like in relation
to your story, your life story.
Let's start with your wine first.
You know how the game is a business. At the same time, how
have you dealt with not only trade rumors,
but maybe sometimes not always getting the credit you have
deserved for evolving your game?
- To start with development, it's just been the story of my life.
Just work hard, work for what you want
and kind of continue to have to prove yourself
over and over again.
As I continued to work and finally got a chance,
I just didn't want to blow it.
And I think throughout the course of my career,
I've had to kind of reinvent myself and kind of prove myself
each year.
Prove my consistency, prove I can score first at this level,
then prove I can be a facilitator at this level.
And I think eight years later, five years as a starter, Dame
and I have been able to make the playoffs seven straight years.
We've been able to coexist, we've
been able to thrive together, empower each other, and my game
has evolved to the point where this year,
and obviously before I got hurt,
I was shooting 10, 11 threes a game, hitting
four or five threes a night.
I was averaging five assists.
I was helping lead our team in a lot
of different statistical categories
but also from a leadership standpoint.
- You were balling, now. You was different.
Let me give you credit because you've
taken your role of leadership. I'm
like, dang, like, this dude is taking it to the next level.
Something to correlate that to your wine,
I think to have the opportunity to be in this business
and to not only put your signature on your wine
but to make sure that you're trying to get better at it
every single day is ridiculously tight,
and I'm pretty excited to be in this business with you.
If you had to play somebody one- on-one for their wine cellar,
who would it be?
- Ooh. Hmm.
- You got to take a little sip on that one.
- I got to take a sip on that one.
If I could switch wine cellars with any player in a one-
on-one game, I would switch with—
who do you think’s got a better wine cellar?
JJ or Jimmy Butler?
- Jimmy Butler has the most diversity in his cellar.
I'm not going to beat him one- on-one, but if I could—right?—
I would get his cellar.
I like somebody where you could say what part of the world
do you want to go to?
Do you have a Riesling in your cellar?
Do you have a Chilean wine in your cellar?
Do you have some New Worlds, you know, Sonoma Coast?
Do you have some Walla Walla Merlot or some Red Mountain
Cabernet from Washington. So that is what I like.
Like, wine is so vast.
- That's why I mentioned Jimmy because I
know he's well-versed in traveling throughout Europe
and being in France.
- Oh, for sure.
- Being in some of these areas, so he would bring me,
he would expose me to some things I haven't tasted.
Like, Melo loves white Burgundy.
JJ loves white Burgundy.
They got a nice mixture of things
that I wouldn't normally have in my rotation.
- Describe these players with specifically
the bottle or varietal of wine. - Wow.
- So we're going to start with LeBron.
- Wow, man. He's like, I mean, what would you want?
American? You want Burgundy?
- No, no, no.
Worldly. Worldly.
We can go all over the world.
I'm with you.
- You know, you got Bron, who’s arguably the best
player to ever play the game.
So, like, depending on what your favorite wine is that exists,
I mean, he's a Chateau Margaux, man,
in terms of what I would drink. He was great early.
You know, he was deemed The Chosen One, and he's
been able to kind of extend his career 18 years later to where
he's sharper.
He's a better jump-shooter than he was when he first
got into the league.
Still able to empower his teammates, still able to make
his team win and still— depending on who you argue with—
is still the best player in the NBA.
So I think from a price-point standpoint,
you looked at Top Shot, you see how he's moving the needle.
- Oh, yeah.
- Trading cards, everything in that realm,
and then it's impact off the court.
I think you look at wines and what
they've been able to do for people,
you talked about bringing families together,
being able to gift people wines, share
wines with certain people.
I think he's done the same thing with his platform.
He's shared to communities, he shared
to the kids that come from where we come from.
So I would say he's top-shelf.
He's the type of wine that you know your wife won't
touch while you're out of town.
- All right, so how about I'm going
to go to young fella LaMelo Ball.
- LaMelo Ball, he is probably, I mean, definitely New World.
- OK. OK.
He's so young, you know what I mean.
He's got potential to be like Opus, you know what I mean. - Ooh.
- Yeah, I said it. He's got the potential
to be Opus. The ceiling is very, very high, a lot of upside.
I would definitely say the acidity levels are high.
- [Laughing]
- You know, the game is like, it leaves you like “wow.”
He's ahead of his time from a vision standpoint.
When Mike [Jordan] is saying that he's better
than we thought, you know you're doing what you supposed to do.
- Let's go to the next one, right?
And I think the next one would be my wine.
You are really good at a lot of things outside of basketball,
whether you're the vice president of the NBPA, whether you're
doing stuff when it comes to Bitcoin and NFTs,
whether you're doing the mental health, whether you're
doing a show.
So how do you do that?
Like, how do you find time for all these things,
and what is your motivation to being like that?
Is there a question to kids who are 14 or 15
where people tell them just stick to basketball?
- Basketball has always been an escape,
and I've always wanted to use the game.
I think a lot of times we allow the game to use us, right?
You know, we put our heart and soul into it.
We don't really have plans on
what we're like outside of basketball.
We have no identity outside of basketball, and then
when it stops, we struggle.
We struggle financially or we struggle mentally.
We struggle physically from an exercise standpoint
because we've depended on sport for so long. We have nothing.
Being a guy who didn't have a lot of scholarships,
was able to go to a school like Lehigh, get a degree and pursue
a career in journalism,
I just wanted to make sure that I had everything in place
outside of basketball as well.
- Right, totally.
- Basketball has always been my Plan A,
but my Plan A involved using basketball
to get Plan B: podcast. Plan C: sharpen up my college degree
from a journalism standpoint.
Part D: make sure I'm exposing myself to different avenues
so that I have different streams of income.
I think for the 14- or 15-year-old
that's listening to this, people are
going to tell you a lot of things aren't possible.
They're going to tell you a lot of things
can't happen to you because it didn't happen for them.
- Let's go to that last wine. That's Alexana.
You know, journeys have to begin somewhere,
and this summer actually I had a chance to come here.
Because some people can make wine,
but there's other people that put passion inside their wine,
which makes it taste better.
And so I liken this to you as like they just don't do wine
from the Willamette Valley. They do
a little wine from Argentina, they do some stuff from Napa,
they make a Riesling, which is next level here.
But you, you do different things at a top level, and one thing
that's new that I try to explain to people is the NBA Top Shot.
And so from your perspective, where is that going?
How is that evolving?
- People are starting to learn more about it,
the highlight factor, and I would have likened it
to...it's similar to the trading card
industry in which the quantity kind of determines
the quality a lot of times.
This is a LeBron dunk on Jason Terry.
Do they only make five of them, or do they
make 20 of them?
Yeah, like that was an iconic play.
It was like a once-in-a-lifetime situation to which if Top
Shot puts that out, I bet you they probably only put 23 out.
For one, because he's number 23, and for two,
because it's an iconic moment, and that kind of drives
the market value.
But I think Top Shot is the future.
I think NFT is the future, and being
able to have a collection that you can store online that
can be safe and encrypted is much easier
than me trying to remember trading cards that I had
when I was [inaudible] years old.
So I think this new space of being able to store things
online in general is the way.
I think NFT is the future when you
find the right products to buy, and I
think Top Shot is smart for capitalizing on sports.
It sucks that I have to pay for my own moments. - [Laughing]
- You know what I mean? Like, I'm trying to buy, like, my moment.
Like, my pull-up, which is crazy.
- So we wanted to do a small little game, right?
And those have been already poured.
- I'm ain’t gonna lie to you, I'm not very good at these games.
- That's all right. It’s taped.
- I will tell you that I did a blind tasting with Melo,
and he had the year down. We actually went to Alexana,
and he was getting the years.
- Oh, was he?
- One of these isn't from Oregon or two of them
aren’t from Oregon?
- Well, you got to figure it out.
- This one is not from Oregon for sure.
- I know what I just had is definitely a Pinot.
- This is not from here.
I don't know where it's from, but it isn’t from here.
- You know what's crazy, I can almost tell you.
Oh, no, it's definitely not a Pinot.
Oh. This is the Oregon Pinot.
Wow, that has a lot of talents, but I still
don't think it's old world wine.
- Did you do the swish?
- Oh, yeah. you have to do the swish.
You got to feel that grip on the teeth.
I'm just going to say that is the Oregon
Pinot right there, right?
Like Oregon--
- This is from somewhere else.
This is from another country.
- Yeah, yeah. This one's definitely from another country.
We all agreed that the second one is a Pinot.
One of them is not from America, and the other one has to be—
- I think one of them might be a Cab?
- You know what, yes.
- Let me check the bottles.
- Yeah, what do we got?
- We got a Revana, which is Napa, and then
we got Alexana Pinot.
- I should have known that.
I appreciate your time.
This has been great.
Thank you for being on Full-Bodied.
- Thank you for having me on, man.
I just want to say as a Black man who’s entering the wine space
continue to break barriers and continue
to enjoy all the hard work you put it on and off the court
and continue to be that celebrity that you are.
- Cheers to that, big dog.