John Salley

“No one asks the cow or the chicken where it gets its protein. I eat about 4,000 or 5,000 calories a day, and I cook for myself. I also have a line of cooks that work with me - some raw, some vegan.”

“Any kind of blockage is heart disease; when you have a blood clot anywhere, that's heart disease. When Wilt Chamberlain died, strongest man I ever met in my life, I started paying attention.”

“The hardest guy I had to guard: Hakeem Olajuwon. No one can guard Hakeem. And then, Kevin McHale.”

“I explain to athletes, you're supposed to be a well-oiled machine. You're supposed to be in better shape than the people watching you. You're supposed to be an unbelievable specimen of a human being. You have to treat your body different while you're performing.”

“I went into raw vegan for a while, but I prefer cooked food, the way it smells, the way it feels going through your system.”

“I was a vegetarian first. I had high blood pressure at 27, everybody in my family died of cancer, and I knew it was in the food, so I changed my diet.”

“There's no reason that America should be No. 1 in obesity; we have the greatest country in the world.”

“The thing about the NBA, any pro sport, is, guys don't know how to take care of their body.”

“In 1981, when I went down to visit Georgia Tech, I watched Michael Jordan play and literally get ridiculed for taking a jump shot in the championship game that went off the backboard, and they won. People are forgetting that Michael was just one of the players when they went to the Dream Team.”

“I'm a Michael Jordan fan just like everyone else. I just don't think he's the greatest player ever.”

“I think the greatest player I've ever played against was Magic Johnson. Next, was Larry Bird. Then, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.”

“I eat a lot of kale, and I drink about half a gallon to a gallon of water a day.”

“If you're a professional athlete, and after the game, you're eating at the same place that somebody in the audience is eating at? You're making a mistake.”

“You fouled a guy who needs to be fouled. If he's going to the basket, you don't give a knick-knack foul and then argue with the ref. You foul him so he knows, so the next guy coming behind him knows, so his team knows you can't go in the lane.”

“I'm John Salley, and I'm a vegan. I'm a vegan because I'm only four pounds heaver than I was in 1989.”