Sheba Coffey was not about to swing through a McDonald’s Drive Thru with her kids.

It didn’t matter how hectic life was for three basketball-playing siblings, how much they were craving it – or to what lengths Amir and his older sisters Sydney and Nia went to try to persuade her to make an exception as they shuttled between games and practices in Minnesota.

“I carried a loaf of bread and I carried sandwich meat and mustard because we are not going to McDonald’s!” Sheba Coffey said last year during an appearance on the always revealing Court-Side Moms podcast. “We’re not eating processed food! And my kids hated it, absolutely hated it!”

That’s a fact, said Amir – the Clippers’ 24-year-old wing who, in his third NBA season, is averaging 8.5 points per game on a healthy 46.2% shooting, including going 5 for 9 in a 14-point effort in Friday’s victory over the Lakers.

“You know the drive home, you want McDonald’s?” Amir asked. “But she would always have stuff in the back for us to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, so we came up with a plan to get over that a little bit.

“Threw it out the window.”

Not all of Tyronn Lue’s in-game adjustments work, and neither did this particular scheme from the Coffey siblings – for which Amir readily pointed his finger not at Nia, the WNBA player, but at his eldest sister, Sydney, who played at Marist before playing professionally overseas.

“I think it was a little bit of everybody, but Sydney definitely was the mastermind behind it,” Amir Coffey said, grinning as he tattled. “We were at a store and Sydney got out and she threw it out. When we were driving home, we were like, ‘We want McDonald’s!’ Of course, she thought her was stuff in the back. But there wasn’t.

“She caught on to us,” Amir recalled. “It didn’t work: ‘Yeah, got to wait until you get home.’

“But it was worth the try, though.”

Coffey said he has had McDonald’s (he’s a McNuggets and barbecue sauce guy), though not often, and not recently.

“I mean, I’ve had it – but not with my mom,” Coffey said. “When you’re a kid, you don’t think about that, about it (not) being healthy and not good for you. But you can appreciate it as you grow older. I don’t know if that had any effect on it but I can understand where she was coming from.”

Come join ‘Q&A W/ Sheba Coffey WNBA & NBA mom’ on Locker Room!!https://t.co/AOhBBDyiWU

— Court-Side Moms (@courtside_moms) April 2, 2021

Related Articles

OPPORTUNITY AWAITS HOOD, OJELEYE

Rodney Hood and Semi Ojeleye have appeared in just two games apiece since joining the Clippers after the trade deadline, when they were acquired in the Feb. 10 deal that sent veteran center Serge Ibaka to Milwaukee.

Ojeleye has scored seven points in his 13 minutes as a Clipper, and Hood hasn’t yet scored in 14 minutes with the team – but Lue applauded their professionalism and said they may yet get an opportunity to contribute, even as he’s whittled his regular rotation to nine players.

“Just their work ethic and how they’ve been preparing to get a chance and an opportunity, that hasn’t come as of right now, but they’re pros,” Lue said, via Zoom, before the Clippers took on Houston on Sunday, in the first of two consecutive games against the Rockets.

“They come into work every single day, trying to get better, trying to learn the offense, trying to learn our defensive principles, and so they’ve been great. Their opportunity is gonna come.”