Social Media Rumors

Tony Parker explained that having been raised in France, he started drinking wine at home at the age of 17, but when he first joined the NBA, players were all about hard liquor and cocktail culture. Parker says he was much more into wine, and his initial reaction was, “Oh, I don’t want to drink this.” The tide turned within a few years, and Parker posits that it was the 2005 NBA dress code, requiring players to wear “business casual” dress including sports coats, that influenced drinking culture. He explained, “The NBA changed; they added the dress code, and everybody had to dress nicely and we got into fashion. Everybody started to drink wine slowly but surely and then started to post wine on Instagram. Now you can see LeBron James showing what he drinks, what kind of Bordeaux he drank that night. For me it was pretty cool to see the evolution.”