Earlier this year, GQ crowned Cleveland Cavaliers guard Iman Shumpert and wife Teyana Taylor the Sexiest Couple on Earth. But after a tough loss to the Golden State Warriors in his third straight NBA Finals, Shumpert had took a month off to decompress. That allowed him to enjoy some of the comfort food he has to mostly avoid during the rigors of the NBA season. We sat down with Shumpert earlier this month at his sixth annual Iman Shumpert Youth Basketball camp held at his alma mater (Oak Park River and Forest High School) to discuss how he approaches dieting, fatherhood, and the particular eating habits of some of his teammates.
GQ: You’ve enjoyed three straight extended postseason runs. You mentioned to the campers that you do take a month off to allow yourself to be regular and eat anything you can’t eat during the season. What exactly are you putting into your body during that month off?
Iman Shumpert: I’m a taco guy, so I like Mexican food and any form of a taco, I’m going to eat it. During the season, I’ll make it a grilled chicken taco. But after the season, give me a regular beef taco and fill it to capacity. I need meat, cheese, sour cream, lettuce, Pico de Gallo, and everything you got. There’s fried chicken wings; I eat a bunch of those. Hot wings, pizza puffs, Italian beef with lots of peppers, just tearing my stomach up and making it hard for whoever has to use the bathroom after me. That’s my goal in the summer. [laughs]
How long before your body starts feeling the effects of that?
It takes about a week. I can have a milkshake and I can feel it just sitting there [in my stomach]. I don’t know how much of it is just me getting older too. But I didn’t feel it early on. Now, I can feel it for a while. My stomach will be all messed up, no control over the bowel movements and it’s just all bad.
So right from the rigors of an extended season to your family facing the rigors of your upset stomach?
[Laughs] You have to think, all year, I’m eating great. I’m eating so clean and drinking so much water. Even with the bad food I might eat, I’m getting it out of my system quickly. I go from that to not working out and eating terrible, it’s a bad combination. So I’ll reset my body. I’ll do a cleanse where I’ll do all juices for a week, all water, grilled and baked chicken and fish, and if it’s not organic, I don’t eat it. That will be for a week to reset my body. Then I can have the Caesar salads, the sandwiches.
But even that first week, I might not have the bread or pastas because I’m not playing in games to run that stuff off. Once I get into the latter stages of my training going into the season, now I need the pastas because I’m doing hard three-hour sessions to prepare myself for in-game action. It’s a process but the older you get in the league, you start to realize how to do it, when to turn it off and on, how to be a family man and have that balance.
How difficult was applying that process of knowing what and when to eat when you first entered the league?
I never cared much about my diet until the summer before I dislocated my shoulder [in 2014]. I had gotten a chef because I was very irritated all the time because I wasn’t eating on time. I might not eat breakfast and I’ll start my day and I’m already irritated. Whether it be my wife, mother, coaches; people begin to complain and they were asking me “Are you alright?” This is before the day has really started and I’m thinking maybe its because I just got up. But it’s really because I didn’t eat breakfast on time, or I didn’t eat lunch because I only ate breakfast, something came up and I’m eating “lunch” at 5 in the evening. To get that better, I was willing to do whatever it took. I had a chef at first who would commute from LA and it just wasn’t working out. My father took over and when he did, I got my weight down, I felt like I was eating on time, I was a nicer person, my wife wasn’t complaining and I figured this is how we’re going to do it from now on.
Speaking of your wife, what has it been like to have a wife in Teyana Taylor who takes fitness and nutrition just as serious as you have to?
Well, she doesn’t take nutrition that seriously at all. She still eats terribly but she’s always been active. She’s always big on whether you’re working out, dancing, playing a sport, or just hustling to get things done; you should be exercising to get things accomplished. You should be exercising because you’re walking 20 blocks in New York to make it to your next meeting. In her mind, that’s how you stay in shape. You should be doing all these things to where there’s no time to get fat. If you are one of those people who has a job where you’re in a situation where you got overweight, and you want to fix that and have a healthier lifestyle, she believes you have to find a way to make that happen. We were talking about friends who had gotten out of shape, and had all this time. The reason they run away from working out to drop the weight is because they’re at a place where if they work out, tomorrow, they’re going to be so sore that they can’t get their work done. So they don’t give up because they don’t want to lose the weight, they’re worried about hurting because they’re accustomed to not doing anything and they back away from it.
So she’s made a dance routine, where you’re having fun, and even if you’re sore the next day, you can do it because in your mind, you’re thinking, ‘I can do this because I’m only dancing with Teyana.’ Having her around me, it’s more of the hustle in her that motivates me. With her, it’s always constantly, “How can I do this, add a creative spin on this?” She makes me feels like there are no closed doors. People always talk about a small window of opportunity and in her mind that whole notion of a window doesn’t exist. It’s either I can do it, and they’re going to follow because I’m doing it, or I’m not going to do it. I love that mindset of her's because not many people can stand in a room full of people saying what they can’t do and tell them “Yes I can.” To have her around is dope.
Now with being a dad, does that heighten your concern about what foods your daughter is putting in her body? Because coming up in Chicago and Oak Park, there’s nothing but fast food places and small restaurants that I know you’ve enjoyed. But now having the knowledge of how that food affects you, are you more concentrated on withholding certain things from her?
I know with me, until she reaches an age where she’s on a day-to-day commitment with school, she’s not going to be eating terrible anyway because she’s going to be eating at home, or something we’ve made her. I’m going to be big on making sure I make her lunch before school and that’s going to be my thing. With the obligations that I have with basketball, I’m going to miss a lot of things. So the least I can do is make lunches before I go to work... Even though my wife doesn’t eat half the stuff me and my daughter eats, my daughter eats these things now because I think it’s ingrained in her from me forcing my wife to eat it.
I talked to your teammate Kevin Love during the playoffs about his diet and just how calculated and down to detail it is. With being a very nutrition-cautious team, how much fun do you guys make of each other’s diets?
Kevin has the fat-boy, drop-step build [laughs]. He has to stay on top of his [diet]. Kevin is such a professional in everything that he does. Even with basketball, he won’t touch the floor until he’s lifted weights, watched film. After a game, he needs a certain amount of time to take everything in and process what just happened, ice his knees and ankles. Having a routine makes for a better professional. All the guys that have a routine or insane diet have success. Ray Allen’s diet was insane. He was trying to break it down to me what he ate and how disciplined he tries to stay. When you’re a 21 year-old, you’re not used to that. He was doing Paleo and experimenting with all types of things.
The reason you’re starting to see why these kids are doing these things at a younger age is because the older guys are telling them the information. The diet is a serious element. Their generation was like trail and error. We could research and get the information and be better earlier. That’s one of those things where you should talk to your vets and OG’s. They’ll give you advice, recommend a chef and things to help. With Kevin, he always noticed that I eat a salad after practice, so [Tristan Thompson] started calling me “Salad Shump.” We joke on each other diets. We’ll laugh at Kevin for always having Almond Butter like he’s too good for peanut butter. Same thing with [LeBron], who doesn’t eat pork. We’ll be like, “Your momma never gave you a piece of bacon, and you didn’t get to the NBA without eating bacon?” We all do it to each other but we all understand everybody’s body is different.
Some guys can eat a terrible meal, be straight and go play. J.R. [Smith] can drink a pop and go play.
And not cramp?
That’s what I’m saying and everyone is different. I’m cramping after drinking all the water and Gatorade in the world. I’ve seen J.R., in his Sixth Man of the Year award season eat something, and didn’t like the taste. He drunk water and Gatorade and said it made it taste worse. He downed a Pepsi and went out, played and got 30. So everyone’s body is different.
With all you’ve learned about developing a routine that worked for you as far as your diet, what advice would you impart to yourself when you entered the league in 2011?
Believe it or not, it wouldn’t be anything to do with my eating. I think early on in the league, my biggest problem was I tried to put out what I believe was an innocent fire because I felt it was a conflict with other stars. Even with Melo, I felt I had to step back on certain things because he was already at that level. I would tell my younger self to “Keep going.” If you and Melo have to fight, you have to fight. But realize you’re together and don’t change who you are because you’re not helping him by holding back. That’s some of the regret I have about my time in New York because I took a step back thinking I was helping and I’m [made] it worse by doing that. I would tell the younger me, “You know how to play, and that’s why they picked you.” Stop worrying about this other shit like trying to make the GM and all the coaches happy. Just play basketball and try and win every game.
Playing in pressure situations with so many stars like Jason Kidd, Melo, there’s so many of these moments that you have where you know in your heart what you should be doing but you’re thinking like ‘I’m on this rookie contract, so if I do something [wrong], I might not play again.’ You’re just trying to satisfy too many people.
You were also a guy coming to a team with playoff expectations in the biggest market in the league and with some established names, where a lot of guys are going to teams with guys still looking to establish themselves. Do you think it was more so stepping back because you thought it wasn’t your place yet to be aggressive offensively or you just wanted them happy with you?
I had all those questions about why I was stepping back, being hesitant and the answer was it was all out of sheer respect to Melo, J.R. Jason Kidd, STAT (Amar’e Stoudemire). The guys that I was in a pool with, we had sort of the same complaints. They were able to figure it out because they didn’t have a Melo, so they could just try things and get good at it. They had the freedom to do that. Do you know how many games early on where I would come down and not want to guard a guy like John Wall the way they were making me guard him? I didn’t want to go under on screens because I’m not going to get any steals and dunks that way. That’s six points a game for me. I remember watching John dribble to the elbow and all those shots he used to miss, having to deal with people saying he can’t shoot. Now, you see he’s trying to get to that spot and making it consistently because he didn’t care what was said or what people might have been thinking when he kept taking them. I wish I would have gave myself that.
It took about last summer going into the season that [things] slow down, and to see I was overthinking things and just trying to please everyone. It had to go; the catching the ball and thinking about the time, score, thinking about how many threes we’ve shot when my defender is going under a screen, I’m open for three and this is my one touch out of 20. I had to get out of that and just focus on making the right basketball play. I feel like I took a big step this year and that’s going to continue into next year.