Why five? Why do any of these players do the things they do? Also, before he gets into any game, he takes five sips of his drink. Rasual Butler – More along the lines of what you’d expect from simple, everyday superstitions, Butler makes sure he gets dressed left to right, starting with getting his left leg through his game shorts before his right leg. That didn’t have much to do with the team’s six championships (especially since several subsequent Bulls teams also wore the black socks and shoes in the playoffs with considerably less success), but it sure did look snappy. The Chicago Bulls – During the Michael Jordan era, the Bulls would switch from white socks and shoes to black socks and shoes for the playoffs. Now, he’s got a massive collection of authentic NBA team shorts, which has to be one of the most expensive pajama collections in existence. He and Mike Bibby started doing it when they were teammates at the University of Arizona, but only Terry has kept it up. What he hasn’t stopped, however, is his habit of wearing the following night’s opponents’ shorts to bed. Jason Terry – Once upon a time, Jason Terry would eat chicken fingers before every game, but has since stopped the habit. Without all that Mountain Dew, he has less reason to stay calm all game anyway. Eventually, league rules prevented him from chewing them anywhere but on the sidelines. Ever since he was a teenager, chewing straws calmed him down, and for most of his pro career he chewed 12 of them per game. He also used to have a nasty straw-chewing habit, which he eventually curtailed. He’d drink half the bottle before the game and half the bottle during halftime, with the outcome being a sugar-buzzed Butler bolting up and down the sidelines like a greyhound chasing a mechanical rabbit. That sounds more than vaguely obsessive-compulsive, but it’s hard to argue with how the game’s greatest player handles his business.Ĭaron Butler – As recently as 2007, Caron Butler drank an entire two-liter of Mountain Dew over the course of every game he played, dating back to his days at the University of Connecticut. James has a special handshake for each of his teammates, and he has to go through them all one at a time before every game in order to feel at peace with himself. LeBron James – While the chalk toss before every game is King James’ most famous pre-game ritual, it’s not the oddest one. While Orlando didn’t win the title this year, they did bring back Incandela to sing more anthems, and at the time it definitely was the team’s belief that it helped. All four times that she sang the anthem in that year’s postseason, the Magic won. The Orlando Magic – During Orlando’s incredible 2009 playoff run, an interesting superstition started when someone realized the team seemed always to win their home games when 7-year-old Gina Marie Incandela sang the National Anthem. Actually, that’s why he started wearing the longer shorts that have since become a standard fashion in the league – he wanted to make sure his Bulls shorts were long enough to cover his UNC under-things. He’d take any advantage he could get over his opponents, even if it was just a belief in luck and superstition, which is why he wore his North Carolina practice shorts under his game shorts for his entire career. Michael Jordan – Everybody knows how hyper-competitive Jordan was in his playing days. But if those players are great, who’s to say their quirks aren’t working? Odd or reasonable, here’s a look at some of the most famous and fascinating superstitions around the NBA: Sometimes, players cross over from routine and quirky superstition to borderline OCD. You’ve got to be automatic to be a successful basketball player, and these little bits of routine help make that possible. Almost all of them have a specific set of rituals they perform on game days, which include eating certain foods at certain times, taking naps of certain lengths, and getting to the arena and completing certain warm-ups in a certain order. Please enable Javascript to watch this videoĪthletes are creatures of habit.
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