Meet Michael Porter Jr., self-proclaimed ‘best player in the draft’ and raw vegan

Michael Porter Jr. is not your typical lottery pick. Case in point — he and his family have been following a vegan diet for a decade and recently moved to raw veganism.

Michael Porter Jr. was seen as a potential top pick in the 2018 draft before a back injury caused him to miss his entire freshman season at Missouri. Now fully healthy as he participates in (part of) the draft combine in Chicago, he’s showing that a season away from the game hasn’t hurt his confidence.

Porter told reporters that he still considers himself “the best player in the draft” and added that “everyone will know that soon”.

He also spoke about his overall improved health, how he’s progressed since Missouri’s season ended, and what he’s been doing to prepare for the combine and upcoming draft — including his vegan diet.

Last fall, the Kansas City Star published a story about the Porter family’s diet and how it has changed since the family brought in a “performance consultant”. Lisa Porter, especially, saw the importance of diet in helping her sons Michael and Jontay (also a freshman at Mizzou who is entering the draft) maximize their physical abilities as they prepared to play basketball in college and the NBA. As the matriarch of the Porter family, Lisa brought in Doug Graham, a doctor of chiropractic medicine from outside of London, to coach her and the rest of the ten-person household on proper nutrition.

Graham had been advising the family on their diet for some time but last year he spent several days as a live-in chef and nutritionist, teaching lessons in the kitchen around the benefits of consuming a raw vegan diet. According to Graham, “cooking food can produce ‘detriments’ to the body, anti-nutrients that increase the need for specific minerals, vitamins and antioxidants”. Recipes that Graham taught the Porters included vegan pizza with a zucchini crust, raw cinnamon buns, kale chips, and cashew-based cheese sauces to use in Mexican dishes.

I don’t know how to digest this story anymore than I’d know what to do with zucchini-crusted pizza. Stories of athletes like Tom Brady, LeBron James, and others following insanely strict diets have become commonplace over the last couple years. But these are athletes who have made millions and adopted these practices as they aim to prolong the primes of their careers. LBbron and Brady had been able to see R-rated movies for over a decade before they considered their diets the way the Porters had been most of their lives.

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What happened to stories like Derrick Rose’s diet of gummy bears, Starbursts, honey buns and Twizzlers? Or Larry Bird drinking beer throughout the year and famously hurting his back tarring his mom’s driveway right before one season?

I don’t want to make mountains out of mole hills, but Michael Porter Jr. grew up with a nutritionist/performance consultant. He spent his senior year of high school playing in Seattle. The only other five-star prospect in the state of Washington was his brother and teammate, Jontay. He appeared in only three games in very limited minutes in college. It just doesn’t sound like he’s really experienced much of a challenge so far. As skilled as he may be for his size, the NBA sounds like it could be a rude awakening, or at the very least quite an adjustment.