Wine is postgame drink for some of NBA’s greatest

Miami Heat shooting guard Dwyane Wade may not be the first professional basketball player to get into the California wine industry — Yao Ming and Sasha Vujacic, for example, preceded him by a couple of years — but D Wade Cellars was created with a unique business mission: to reach the growing fine-wine marketplace in China. We chatted with Wade about how he got into wine, the vision behind D Wade Cellars and why he thinks wine has taken off as the NBA’s latest obsession.

San Francisco Chronicle: Would you say that interest in wine has grown in the NBA in recent years?

Dwyane Wade: When I first got into the NBA, everybody would drink Patrón (Tequila) when they went out. Now, you’ve got the older guys — myself, Carmelo (Anthony) and LeBron (James) — who have been drawn in by wine. So I see it as our responsibility to share our passion for wine with the next generation. It’s definitely caught fire in the NBA, with guys trading and gifting wine and ordering wines at dinner.

SFC: How did you first get interested in wine? Was it through your wife, or any other players and mentors?

DW: Growing up, I didn’t really experience wine. It wasn’t part of the culture. And even when I got older and I got to the NBA, it still wasn’t part of the culture. I probably didn’t have my first drink until I was in my late 20s. I tried a little Riesling because it was approachable and easy to enjoy. It really just went from there with me, LeBron, Chris Paul and Carmelo trading pictures of different wines we were trying throughout the year.

Read the full interview online at www.sfchronicle.com/lifestyle/travel. the road. Players from other countries, like France-born Tony Parker, would be instructed to pick out bottles from their homeland to share with the team. That introduced the players to great food and wine — and also brought them closer together.

The team dinner tradition “has now really proliferated around the league,” Griffin says. “Kerr learned it from Pop and brought it to Phoenix, and I learned it from Kerr and took it to Cleveland.” Does every team do it? “Those of us who are winning do,” Griffin says, laughing.

Team bonding, he insists, is not a trivial matter: It translates to better chemistry on the court. And now, much of that bonding is happening at restaurants where players are competing over who can order the coolest bottle of wine that his teammates haven’t heard of.

As the coach of the U.S. national basketball team, Popovich’s influence expands beyond the Spurs roster to the NBA’s elite. Coach K, the Silver Oak die-hard, was also a Team USA coach. It’s certainly possible that a player like LeBron James could have been indoctrinated into fine wine through his time on the Olympic team (he has played on the team three times).

James’ Napa connections likely originated with his friends the Schottenstein family, billionaires from his home state of Ohio (and the benefactors of the basketball arena at Ohio State University, which counts James as its most enthusiastic fan). The Schottensteins own Mayacamas Vineyards.

“So you have a guy like LeBron, an elder statesman in the league, passing down his values, his love of wine,” Hawes says. “He passes that influence throughout the league. Then they have these team dinners. They’re taking wine tours before the season as a way to build team camaraderie.” Suddenly, it’s not just the older or retired players who are collecting wine — it’s the young players in their 20s, too.

“They all collect something,” Griffin says. “Everybody thinks these guys own a million cars. Damn near every one of them collects tennis shoes. But what’s now becoming more of the norm are the guys that collect wine. It’s becoming a thing. It’s been becoming a thing.”

Of course, wealthy people — a category that certainly includes professional athletes — have long enjoyed expensive wines. Roberts recalls his days working in Houston restaurants 20 years ago, when he frequently served Cristal Champagne to Shaquille O’Neal. (“Yo, little man, bring me two bottle of the Cris!” in Roberts’ recollection.) But until social media came along, nobody knew about it.

Before the advent of Instagram and Twitter, “the only coverage you got was on “SportsCenter” or the daily paper,” says Hawes. “The coverage was either about the game, or the player was in the news for something they probably shouldn’t have been in the news for.” No matter what, “they certainly weren’t going to write about a player’s hobbies.”

Now NBA players can broadcast their hobbies themselves. “They’re able to say, ‘This is who I am, this is my identity,’ ” Hawes says. “They’re in control of their media presence.” They can post about their family, their trip to Paris Fashion Week, their Halloween costume — and the wine on their dinner table.

Wine is a symbol of athletes’ newfound control over their own image, but that control has deeper implications beyond the ability to celebrate their hobbies. Consider how political the NBA has gotten — and how much commissioner Adam Silver has encouraged it. James campaigned with Hillary Clinton. Warriors coach Steve Kerr has condemned many policies of President Trump, mostly notably on gun control. The Sacramento Kings were among many NBA teams that headed getout-the-vote efforts for this year’s midterms.

“It’s night and day when you look at the NBA compared to the NFL,” Hawes says. “Silver wants his athletes to take a stance.” He wants them to express who they are — as full, wellrounded individuals. In this respect, the evolution of wine culture in the NBA helps us track the evolution of NBA players themselves, from pigeonholed athletes to Renaissance men.

It helps us track the evolution of a culture of wellness within the league, too. “Wine represents a different way of taking care of your body,” says Adonal Foyle, who played for the Warriors for a decade beginning in 1997.

A wine collector since 2000, Foyle was doing yoga in an era when few players were even doing hamstring stretches. He was among the first Warriors to bring in his own physical and massage therapists, and he was also the older-brother figure who introduced many of his teammates to wine, recommending special bottles when they had dates lined up. (Retired since 2010, Foyle now keeps a nearly 900-bottle wine collection at his home in Orinda and has hosted more than 100 wine dinners at his home to benefit Bay Area charities, including his own Kerosene Lamp Foundation.)

Foyle sees the rising popularity of wine among basketball players as inextricable from the growing emphasis on health. “Around 2008, 2009, you started seeing guys get more involved with wine,” Foyle says, just as yoga and stretching suddenly became important. “Now everyone has nutrition coaches, cryo chambers, sleep trackers. They’re so much more attuned to their health.”

They’re also more attuned to their lives after basketball — and staying healthy is only one aspect of that. In a far cry from incidents like Antoine Walker filing for bankruptcy less than two years after retiring from a $180 million career, or Gilbert Arenas’ claims of being penniless despite a $111 million contract, now players like Andre Iguodala are major investors in Silicon Valley startups. The Trail Blazers’ CJ McCollum, a journalism major at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, has a podcast and looks poised for a successful media career, should he ever leave basketball.

To those who have tasted wine with Love, Paul, James, Green and others, there’s little question that their interest in the intricacies of wine is genuine. But establishing a visible connection to wine also seems to provide a strategic advantage as these players build their celebrity off the court.

“It’s almost like golf used to be,” says Stanley. “People felt like you had to play golf because that’s where all the business deals were getting done. Well, now wine has become the center of that business culture.”

And Dwyane Wade, of course, is growing D Wade Cellars into a major wine business. “I love the game of basketball, but ultimately, there was a point in my career where I knew I had to think about my life after the game,” says Wade. “Wine is a big part of that.”

“Players know they can’t play forever, but there’s a loss of identity when they stop,” says Foyle, who is currently interviewing athletes about life after basketball for a book he is writing about transitions. “The search is finding identity beyond your sport.”

Draymond Green, for his part, does not rule out the possibility of getting into the wine business. Perched on a mat in the Warriors’ Oakland practice facility, he smiles mischievously when asked whether a side career in wine might be on his horizon. “It’s possible,” he says. “It’s definitely possible.”

Esther Mobley is The San Francisco Chronicle’s wine critic. Email: emobley@ sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Esther_mobley Instagram: @esthermob

Paul Chinn / The Chronicle