Did you have much interest or experience in manscaping before partnering with them?
A little bit, but nothing crazy. Like I have a little bit of facial hair, but it’s nothing to go home and show off to people about. But it requires maintenance—it’s that stuff, chest hair, like just normal body hair that people don’t realize guys have.
Well and now you’re a public figure, you’re going out and doing shirtless postgame interviews before millions of people.
That was impromptu. I’m not gonna lie, I’d already drank a couple Michelobs in the back and I was in party mode.
Deservedly so. Talk to me a bit about the headband. You said it gave you superpowers on the court. When did you start wearing it and what about it changes your gameplay?
My former teammate JaVale McGee, shoutout to JaVale, he hooked me up with a barber and got me a nice little cut. After that he said I had to rock the headband. I think I rocked it in practice, I played well in practice and was like, well I’ll keep it for the game. And then I had a dunk or a play or something, and they started doing the little headband celebration. And fans loved it, so it just kind of stuck.
Low key, I’ve been missing it this year because we haven’t had fans.
I’m sure it’ll be a whole stadium of people doing the gesture. It’s kind of rare to see, not just in basketball but any sport, the defense get the hype that you’ve gotten. Has that surprised you at all?
Yes and no. People love talking about the Lakers, people love just having eyes on us and anything we do. But for me, it’s just about trying to win the games. If we hadn’t gotten to the Finals and lost last year, I don’t think people would have been that interested in interviewing me about, you know, how well the headband did.
Well, you probably saw, or I don’t know if you guys pay attention to this, but the Space Jam trailer finally came out.
Oh yeah, we saw it. We saw it for sure.
What was the team’s reaction?
Of course we saw LeBron at the facility—we were gassing him up! That’s just kind of the culture we have on the team. People have been joking with me about how they love the Manscaped commercial. When it first came out, they were calling me “Hollywood”—telling me that I’ve changed.
