These Guys Are Young: Tyreke Evans

The NBA is the most up close and personal professional sports league around.  No helmets and pads covering the players.  No hats.  Just shorts, uniforms, shoes and, in Stephen Jackson's case, a tremendous amount of McDavid or Nike body armour.  These guys look so smart out on the court doing things we can only dream of doing on a Nerf hoop.  But then there are stories you read which make you realize that a lot of these guys are still very, very young.

This recent story (thanks to TrueHoop) in the Sac Bee about 21 year old Tyreke Evans is proof.  Here's last years Rookie of the Year (Steph Curry was a close 2nd) just eating a crap load of fast food.  Then his mom Bonita and grandma Alice come stay with him over the Holiday Season making him home cooked soul food meals and he procedes to lose weight and get faster on the court, as confirmed by Coach Westphal.

Which brings up this obvious question: Shouldn't these teams invest more in nutrition?  A smart Owner/GM would probably hire a nutritionist and a cook onto their training staff to make sure that these huge investments are being taken care of.  Many of them wouldn't listen (unless it's Steve Nash telling Jared Dudley what to eat) but if you get 5 good meals a week into your guys when the alternative is them going out after practice and hitting up Arby's I think it's probably worth it.  Maybe over time their diets and attitudes towards their fuel change and the team performs better.  You're talking about at least +1 win a year.  I'm not about to search the internets for how much each win is worth to an organization but it's got to be more than what you pay to have a nutrionist or cook on payroll.  And if I were to guess/google, I bet that Mark Cuban has a whole friging craft services company at the becon call of any Maverick player.

Of course, I eat like crap so who am I to say anything.

Oh yeah, here's Tyreke's car chase last Memorial Day during his rookie season.  It sure is fun having little immature kids as the focal point of your organization (contrast to: Steph Curry).