The New Yorker just put together an interesting piece about a personal trainer named Idan Ravin, who has crowned himself the "Hoops Whisperer." His nickname is pretty fitting, seeing as how Ravin's client list is basically a who's who of NBA players. Everyone from LeBron James and Kevin Durant to Chris Paul and Stephen Curry keeps Ravin on their payroll because of the services that he offers. So in The New Yorker's feature on him, we learned a bunch of interesting things both about Ravin and some of his clients. Here are a few of them:
- Steve Francis gave Ravin the nickname "Crouton" when he attended the University of Maryland because he thought Ravin was "cooler than a regular cracker." Francis was Ravin's first NBA client.
- Ravin has witnessed J.R. Smith throwing up in the middle of a private workout on at least four different occasions.
- One of the workouts that Ravin does regularly with Carmelo Anthony was used in a Nike commercial.
But the most interesting part of the piece, to us at least, is when New Yorker writer Reeves Wiedeman describes something that happened when he shadowed Rivan during a workout with Skylar Diggins. Prior to the workout, Rivan bought a Gatorade for himself from a vending machine but failed to take the quarter that the machine gave him back as change. And when he was asked why he didn't take it, he said that he never takes small change because, according to him, he's picked up the habit from LeBron James who doesn't feel the need to use $1 bills. James "deems one-dollar bills too small to bother with," according to Wiedeman's story.
"Shit, I'd take a dollar," Diggins told Rivan after he relayed the story about LBJ's hatred of singles to her.
"Those guys are just on a different planet," Ravin then told her.
"That's why some of them go broke," Diggins said.
Something tells us King James isn't going to go broke anytime soon. But how crazy is that? According to Ravin, LeBron hates $1 bills! It kind of reminds us of this photo of Diddy having a close encounter with a $1 bill that got mixed up with all of his hundreds one time:
Ah, it must be nice to be that rich.
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[via The New Yorker]
