VIDEO: Starters MUSCLEWATCH
ALL BALL NERVE CENTER — It’s that time of year when we have to ask, are you strong enough to be our man?
MUSCLEWATCH season is upon is, and we are nearing the time when we declare a champion. Kyle Lowry and Andrew Bogut seem to be frontrunners, with no true winner decided as of yet.
But first, before we get to the muscles, what, you may ask, is MUSCLEWATCH? Basically, it began decades ago when my friend Matt and I noticed our local paper would always report that players had gained 15 pounds of MUSCLE in the off-season. No matter the sport, it was never 12 pounds, never 16, never 9, never 18, but it always seemed to be “15 pounds of muscle.” So we began keeping an eye on the papers looking for references to the magic 15 pounds of MUSCLE. Eventually, MUSCLEWATCH became about more than just the “15 pounds of muscle” and more about guys who had either gained or lost a lot of weight. Previous winners include Thaddeus Young and Rudy Gay.
And remember, MUSCLEWATCH cannot be successful without your help. The most effective way to let us here at MUSCLEWATCH HQ know if you see any MUSCLEWATCH news is to tweet and use the hashtag #MUSCLEWATCH.
Let’s go!
• As we learned this week, MUSCLEWATCH can be divisive. Our friend(?) Tas Melas from NBATV’s “The Starters” announced in the clip above that he was done with MUSCLEWATCH, sadly, before eventually relenting and halfheartedly announcing he was back in. SMH.
I guess our favorite member of “The Starters” needs to be Trey Kerby, who reported his own MUSCLEWATCH update a few weeks ago. MUSCLEWATCH salutes you, Taco Trey!
• For many NBA players, keeping weight on is just as hard as adding weight, considering how much running they do throughout the course of a season. In this article about Hawks big man Mike Muscala, he details his daily eating schedule during the season. Don’t forget to eat your breakfast!
• We may need to consider some sort of lifetime MUSCLEWATCH achievement award for Mike Conley, who didn’t actually gain any muscle, but did get a weight room named after him at his alma mater, Ohio State. That’s got to be worth something, right?
• We’re still looking on an exact number of weight lost from Kyle Lowry, who clearly dropped a lot but has thus far refused to give an exact amount. Lowry has looked amazing in the preseason, averaging 30 points a game, so obviously it’s working.
Can we do some detective work? Last season Lowry was listed at 205 pounds, and this year he’s being listed at 196. He certainly looks as though he lost more than 9 pounds, but maybe that’s just because he’s not seven feet tall. I was considering Lowry a front-runner for a MUSCLEWATCH title, but perhaps that was just all the MUSCLEWATCH in my eyes.
• As we mentioned before, Andrew Bogut lost 22 pounds by cutting out processed sugar. Now he’s leading fast breaks and pulling dribbling tricks…
• Orlando’s Aaron Gordon is back from a broken jaw, but he lost 10 pounds while on a liquid diet.
• Nets big man Cory Jefferson has added the magic “15 pounds of muscle”!! Congrats, CJ…
• Does Kawhi Leonard belong in MUSCLEWATCH? Perhaps we will never know.
• Also a few vague updates on a couple of Knicks players. We need details!!
• Zach LaVine has added 10 pounds. Couldn’t find five more, huh?
