Dwyane Wade, LeBron James, Chris Paul, and Carmelo Anthony all play for different teams, but that doesn’t stop the four 30-something NBA stars from being in constant communication. The banana boat crew — named for their famous vacation picture of Wade, James and Paul riding a banana float with Wade’s wife Gabrielle Union — is like any group of friends in 2017 that are separated by distance in that they have a group text together.
Like any group text, this is mostly used for three of them to make fun of one of the members. All four like to see themselves as fashionable individuals on different levels — Wade is the one most involved in the fashion community — and so when one of them wears a terrible outfit, it gets roasted in the group chat.
Let’s let Wade explain it to Sports Illustrated in a recent interview with Rohan Nadkarni:
Nadkarni: “Does the banana boat crew ever use the group text to talk about clothes?”
Wade: “Only when someone wears something the other guys want to talk about it.”
N: “Have you ever taken a photo of an outfit, sent it to LeBron and said, ‘Should I wear this?'”
W: “No, no. Never. No. [Laughs]”
N: “When was the last time you guys roasted someone for something they wore?”
W: “Chris Paul recently, when he was out with his thumb injury, he had wore this, it was really like this diarrhea brown—not diarrhea green—diarrhea brown turtleneck with the jacket. Oh man, I went right to the group chat with the eye emoji like “What the?” But they do the same to me. So we definitely have some fun with each other on things like that.”
I would love to see some other moments where the group chat turned into a roasting session on someone’s outfits. For example, when Carmelo Anthony wore that aggressive fur ensemble earlier this year, did the group chat follow Twitter’s lead and fry him unmercifully for his hat/coat combo? I hope so.
This entire revelation that NBA superstars make fun of each other in group chats makes me feel much closer to them. Like they’re really one of us, just with millions of dollars and far more talent and athleticism than I’ve ever dreamed of.
