The NBA's most Caffeinated team: The Utah Jazz

 
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 21, 2016 4:50 pm    Post subject: The NBA's most Caffeinated team: The Utah Jazz

Rather ironic given the amount of Mormons in the Utah Jazz fanbase....

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-nbas-most-caffeinated-team-plays-in-utah-1476895083

Quote:


The NBA’s Most Caffeinated Team Plays in Utah


Utah Jazz forward Joe Ingles was immediately excited when his team traded for Boris Diaw this summer. But not because of what Diaw might bring to the basketball court. Ingles was thinking about something else: coffee.

Like nearly everyone in the NBA, Ingles knew his new teammate was a coffee nut. That’s why he decided to welcome Diaw by tweeting coffee emojis at him. He had a feeling Diaw would appreciate the hospitality. It turns out they had visited a Salt Lake City coffeeshop even when they were on different teams.


“This was the first place I came,” Diaw said this week in that same coffeeshop.

The Jazz are widely expected to leap into the NBA’s elite when the season begins next week. They are one of the league’s only teams with the versatility to play any style of basketball. They are one of the league’s only teams with the roster continuity necessary to win in today’s NBA. And they are one of the league’s only teams with a coffee klatch.

Utah is not the first NBA city that a coffee addict would choose to live. In fact it’s the last. While caffeine itself is not off limits to Mormons, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ prohibition of “hot drinks” is taught to include coffee and tea, according to the church. Which means there may be fewer coffee drinkers per capita here than anywhere else in the country.


But the Jazz’s growing coffee group already includes several players, coaches and executives who sip espresso before practices and home games and visit hip coffeeshops on the road.

The person most responsible for their awakening is Diaw, who brews espresso for the Jazz, because he believes drinking coffee is a team-building exercise. The other reason Diaw stops by his local coffeeshop at least once a day is that he is simply obsessed. He has an espresso machine at home. He has one in Utah’s practice facility. He’s already working on a third for the Jazz’s arena. He also has informed opinions about Nespresso pods. And he keeps a mental list of the best coffeeshops in NBA cities based on their walking distance from the team hotel.

For as long as the NBA has existed—decades before the recent wave of research on the performance-enhancing benefits of caffeine—basketball players have downed coffee before games. But no one drinks more or knows more about coffee than Diaw. He is, after all, French. Diaw has been steeped in coffee culture ever since he made France’s national team. He was only 19 years old, but he liked socializing with older players, which meant he learned how to drink espresso. Diaw had to take his coffee with sugar back then. That was a long time ago.


“I drink it straight,” said Diaw, who is 34, between drinks of an espresso-based blonde mocha and bites of avocado toast.

Diaw’s interest was apparent as soon as he entered the NBA. He brought a cappucino to his very first workout, and he still walks into practice holding a cup. But it was in San Antonio where his basketball career and his coffee behavior changed. Diaw not only won a title with the Spurs, but also helped usher in the era of small ball, which has transformed the game in such a fundamental way that one NBA executive last season privately called Diaw a “transcendent player.”

He was also a caffeinated player. Diaw’s coffee habits became widely known only when the Spurs renovated their arena and Diaw happened to discover an electrical outlet in his locker. He then had the brilliant idea to bring a Nespresso machine to work. And having his own personal espresso maker instantly made Diaw such a source of curiosity that before the season was over Spurs fans were asking him to sign their coffee machines.

Diaw takes his espresso machine on NBA road trips. He also takes it on actual road trips. When he drove from San Antonio to Salt Lake City this summer, it was right there with him, keeping him company at the Grand Canyon and White Sands National Monument.


When he arrived, he encountered a team that was modeled after his old team, and not by coincidence. Utah general manager Dennis Lindsey was a Spurs executive before he came to the Jazz, signed a bunch of international players and encouraged their offense to be built around ball movement. Then he stole their Borista.

Diaw had done reconnaissance in Salt Lake City before he moved. The Spurs’ coffee club was particular about which places it visited for afternoon coffee on game days. Starbucks only sufficed when there was nothing else around. Instead, they searched Yelp for independently owned local options that have popped up in even the NBA’s smallest markets. They kept meticulous notes about their scouting trips. What they valued more than anything else was atmosphere (“chill”), music (cool, “but not too loud”) and the coffee (“gotta be good”).

He didn’t have to hunt for a coffeeshop here that met those criteria. When the Spurs were in town last season, Ingles took Diaw to Publik, a relatively new small-batch roastery, where one barista recently wore a T-shirt with the phrase “MAKE AMERICANOS GREAT AGAIN.” Diaw is now a regular.


His influence is being felt around the team, too. Lindsey, the general manager, was a drip-coffee drinker before this season. But under Diaw’s influence, he’s already drinking several espressos per week, Lindsey admitted. Ingles himself is the proud new owner of a Nespresso courtesy of Diaw, he said.

Jazz star Rudy Gobert seemed like another logical addition to Diaw’s club. He, too, is French. Which makes it almost shocking that Gobert can’t stand the stuff. “I’m already too energetic,” he said. “If I drink coffee, I go crazy.”

Diaw is used to these heretics. Spurs guard Tony Parker, also French, likes hot chocolate. At the Rio Olympics, where he procured yet another espresso maker, Diaw’s teammates reminded him that not everyone from France is a fan of a coffee. “Some were rebellious,” Diaw said, “and got a tea.”

The Jazz’s coffee group is open to anyone who wants to be a member. Utah guard George Hill was initiated on a trip to Los Angeles last week. The club went to a specific outpost of Intelligentsia Coffee that had been on Diaw’s list since its appearance in “Barista,” a documentary about the U.S. national coffee championships, which he watched on a flight this summer.

Diaw’s next pressing need is to try some of the world’s most expensive coffee. It comes from coffee beans that have been digested, and then defecated, by cats and elephants. “I heard about that,” Diaw said, “and was like oh I gotta try it.”
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dubaholic1
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 22, 2016 3:31 pm    Post subject:

Nice article thanks.

The last line of the article refers to the coffee bean digested by the civet cat. I was curious and ordered a $40 bag of it, which made about 1 full pot.

It was bright, with a citrus finish and aromatic, but not worth $40 for the bag.
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 22, 2016 4:29 pm    Post subject:

Jazz are gonna give one of the Top teams a scare in the West. I'm excited to see them this year.
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 23, 2016 1:01 pm    Post subject:

I'm not really big on espresso. I spent a few weeks in Europe (France, Italy, Spain) this summer and you can't just ask for a "coffee". They'll give you espresso. Like that is their default. I tried it a few times but it did nothing for me.
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