- I mean, it's got some good food in there.
It's just a cool spot, like,
they got a little bit of everything.
- [Narrator] The NBA's obsession
with The Cheesecake Factory is well-documented.
Karl-Anthony Towns of the Minnesota Timberwolves is known
to take his teammates out for cheesecake.
While Russell Westbrook calls
their brown bread “the BOMB.com”.
There was even once a Twitter account dedicated to tracking
NBA player sightings at the chain.
The love has also trickled down to celebrities
linked to the league.
The Kardashians have been captured
at Cheesecake by Just Jared, US Weekly and X17.
And Drake, who serves as global ambassador
for the Toronto Raptors,
even featured it in one of his music videos.
So, why is it that so many of them are obsessively flocking
to a casual dining chain typically found in shopping malls?
For one, it could be that The Cheesecake Factory
has locations surrounding every NBA city.
Meaning players can eat there whether they're at home
or traveling for an away game.
And since it's a chain, the food is typically
pretty consistent whether you're in LA, Chicago or Dallas.
- The Cheesecake Factory for the players, I'd say,
represents, one: familiarity.
41 games out of the regular season they're on the road.
So, they wanna eat food that they know is good
and they know they can rely on it.
You know, when they go to play in their hometown
their friends and their family are gonna come out
and they wanna go eat somewhere that can accommodate
all of them.
So, they're going to Cheesecake Factory
and they're taking them all there.
It's just a really good, dope scene.
- [Narrator] Also, as anyone who's ever been
to The Cheesecake Factory knows,
the menu is so big it's spiral-bound.
With dishes ranging from filet mignon to Tex-Mex egg rolls
and the portions are notoriously oversized.
- It can get real bad in there.
Like, you can get 8,000 calories on a meal in there.
- I try to try something different every time but,
you know, I could eat the same thing every single time.
- My go to is the egg roll, the Tex, yeah, yeah.
I get that all the time.
- Buffalo Blast is probably the best things on the menu.
- [Narrator] Aside from huge portions,
what else keeps players going back
to The Cheesecake Factory night after night?
- A lot of these guys are huge.
You look at Draymond Green, you look at Demarcus Cousins,
these are borderline seven-footers.
And, they're not skinny, these are big guys.
Cheesecake Factory has the seating arrangements
in a way that you could sit down and it's not a tiny seat.
These guys need space, they need to lay their bodies out
and have a good time and Cheesecake Factory has that space.
- [Narrator] So, for all the fans hoping to catch a glimpse
of their favorite NBA player, The Cheesecake Factory
might be almost as good as the court itself.
- Do I like The Cheesecake Factory?
Yeah, I like The Cheesecake Factory, man,
they got so much good food.
Can we go there right now?
Let's go.
- Yo, it's big, so he's like, yeah, you gotta help me.
(laughing)
So, I tried a piece and, yo, the rest is really history.
- What are you looking for, like, in a pizza?