From unknown to memorable: Kobe Sanders' breakout game against the Warriors

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From unknown to memorable: Kobe Sanders' breakout game against the Warriors

2026-01-06 15:54 Last Updated At：16:00

INGLEWOOD, Calif. (AP) — Kobe Sanders found out just before gametime that he'd starting for the Los Angeles Clippers against Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors.

With James Harden a late scratch because of shoulder stiffness, it would be up to Sanders and fellow guard Kris Dunn to contain Curry.

It wasn’t his first start of the season, but he made it his best one yet.

Sanders scored a career-high 20 points and had seven rebounds (all defensive) in 36 minutes of a 103-102 victory.

“I knew nothing about him,” Snoop Dogg admitted to Clippers star Kawhi Leonard in a postgame interview on the Peacock streaming service.

Now, the rapper and a whole of others know the 23-year-old.

Sanders was a second-round pick out of Nevada last year by the New York Knicks, who traded him to the Clippers. He spent four years at Cal Poly, where he was a 1,000-point scorer, before transferring to Nevada and earning All-Mountain West honors while playing a fifth year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Although I'm a rook, I've played a lot of basketball in my life,” said Sanders, who is from Spring Valley, California, an unincorporated town east of San Diego. “Just playing basketball for such a long time, you pick up IQ, you pick up just little things here and there.”

And no, he isn't named after the late Los Angeles Lakers superstar Kobe Bryant. Sanders' parents named him for Kobe Japanese Steak House near Palm Springs, California, their favorite getaway spot.

Sanders knew he was going to play a lot of minutes with Harden out, so he wasn't nervous about getting yanked if he made a mistake.

“I think I felt that freedom most of the season,” he said. “They instill a lot of confidence in me, telling me to be aggressive, telling me to keep going.”

Leonard is among those in Sanders' ear.

“I always tell him to keep being aggressive in the game,” Leonard told Snoop Dogg. “That’s your time to get better right there so don’t shy away from it, just keep executing.”

Curry fouled out late for the first time since 2021 after scoring 27 points, and Sanders said he felt “a little bit of relief.”

The Clippers have struggled with a slew of injuries this season and have a 13-22 record. But they're 7-3 in their last 10 games, having recently won six in a row.

“With James being down, we had 20 turnovers, but we didn't have a lot extra ballhandling on the floor, so for him to carry that load, I thought was really good,” coach Tyronn Lue said, ticking off some of Sanders' attributes. “His poise, his ability to understand what we're doing defensively and offensively, and just getting more and more confident."

Teammate John Collins described Sanders’ performance as “big time.”

“He’s had a rough intro to the league, playing, not playing,” he said. “Having this start probably shocked him a little bit, but he did exactly what we all expected him to do and proud of him.”

The Clippers are known for rarely playing rookies, but that doesn't dissuade Sanders.

“You learn a new thing every game,” he said. “The NBA is consistency and opportunity. I was blessed with the opportunity and I'm just trying to stay consistent.”

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New dietary guidelines urge Americans to avoid processed foods and added sugar

Americans should eat more whole foods and protein, fewer highly processed foods and less added sugar, according to the latest edition of federal nutrition advice released Wednesday by the Trump administration.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins issued the 2025-2030 U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which offer updated recommendations for a healthy diet and provide the foundation for federal nutrition programs and policies. They come as Kennedy has for months stressed overhauling the U.S. food supply as part of his Make America Healthy Again agenda.

“Our message is clear: Eat real food,” Kennedy told reporters at a White House briefing.

The guidelines emphasize consumption of fresh vegetables, whole grains and dairy products, long advised as part of a healthy eating plan. Officials released a new graphic depicting an inverted version of the long-abandoned food pyramid, with protein, dairy, healthy fats and fruits and vegetables at the top and whole grains at the bottom.

But they also take a new stance on “highly processed” foods, and refined carbohydrates, urging consumers to avoid “packaged, prepared, ready-to-eat or other foods that are salty or sweet, such as chips, cookies and candy." That's a different term for ultraprocessed foods, the super-tasty, energy-dense products that make up more than half of the calories in the U.S. diet and have been linked to chronic diseases such as diabetes and obesity.

The new guidance backs away from revoking long-standing advice to limit saturated fats, despite signals from Kennedy and Food and Drug Commissioner Marty Makary that the administration would push for more consumption of animal fats to end the “war” on saturated fats.

Instead, the document suggests that Americans should choose whole-food sources of saturated fat — such as meat, whole-fat dairy or avocados — while continuing to limit saturated fat consumption to no more than 10% of daily calories. The guidance says “other options can include butter or beef tallow,” despite previous recommendations to avoid those fats.

The dietary guidelines, required by law to be updated every five years, provide a template for a healthy diet. But in a country where more than half of adults have a diet-related chronic disease, few Americans actually follow the guidance, research shows.

The new recommendations drew praise from some prominent nutrition and medical experts.

"There should be broad agreement that eating more whole foods and reducing highly processed carbohydrates is a major advance in how we approach diet and health,” said Dr. David Kessler, a former FDA commissioner who has written books about diet and nutrition and has sent a petition to the FDA to remove key ingredients in ultraprocessed foods.

“The guidelines affirm that food is medicine and offer clear direction patients and physicians can use to improve health,” said Dr. Bobby Mukkamala, president of the American Medical Association.

Other experts expressed relief after worrying that the guidelines would go against decades of nutrition evidence linking saturated fat to higher LDL or “bad” cholesterol and heart disease.

“I guess whoever is writing these had to admit that the science hasn't changed,” said Marion Nestle, a nutritionist and food policy expert who advised previous editions of the guidelines. “They haven't changed in any fundamental way except for the emphasis on eating whole foods.”

The new document is just 10 pages, upholding Kennedy's pledge to create a simple, understandable guideline. Previous editions of the dietary guidelines have grown over the years, from a 19-page pamphlet in 1980 to the 164-page document issued in 2020, which included a four-page executive summary.

The guidance will have the most profound effect on the federally funded National School Lunch Program, which is required to follow the guidelines to feed nearly 30 million U.S. children on a typical school day.

The Agriculture Department will have to translate the recommendations into specific requirements for school meals, a process that can take years, said Diane Pratt-Heavner, spokesperson for the School Nutrition Association. The latest school nutrition standards were proposed in 2023 but won't be fully implemented until 2027, she noted.

The new guidelines skip the advice of a 20-member panel of nutrition experts, who met for nearly two years to review the latest scientific evidence on diet and health.

That panel didn’t make recommendations about ultraprocessed food. Although a host of studies have showed links between ultraprocessed foods and poor health outcomes, the nutrition experts had concerns with the quality of the research reviewed and the certainty that those foods, and not other factors, were the cause of the problems.

The recommendations on highly processed foods drew cautiously positive reactions. The FDA and the Agriculture Department are already working on a definition of ultraprocessed foods, but it’s expected to take time.

Not all highly processed foods are unhealthy, said Dr. David Ludwig, an endocrinologist and researcher at Boston Children’s Hospital.

“I think the focus should be on highly processed carbohydrates,” he said, noting that processing of protein or fats can be benign or even helpful.

The guidelines made a few other notable changes, including a call to potentially double protein consumption.

The previous recommended dietary allowance called for 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight — about 54 grams daily for a 150-pound person. The new recommendation is 1.2 to 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. An average American man consumes about 100 grams of protein per day, or about twice the previously recommended limit.

Makary said the new advice supersedes protein guidance that was based on the “bare minimum” required for health.

Ludwig also noted that the earlier recommendation was the minimum amount needed to prevent protein deficiency and higher amounts of protein might be beneficial.

“I think a moderate increase in protein to help displace the processed carbohydrates makes sense,” he said.

Officials with the American Heart Association, however, called for more research on protein consumption and the best sources of protein for optimal health.

“Pending that research, we encourage consumers to prioritize plant-based proteins, seafood and lean meats and to limit high-fat animal products including red meat, butter, lard and tallow, which are linked to increased cardiovascular risk,” the group said in a statement.

The guidelines advise avoiding or sharply limiting added sugars or non-nutritive sweeteners, saying “no amount” is considered part of a healthy diet.

No one meal should contain more than 10 grams of added sugars, or about 2 teaspoons, the new guidelines say.

Previous federal guidelines recommended limiting added sugars to less than 10% of daily calories for people older than 2, but to aim for less. That's about 12 teaspoons a day in a 2,000-calorie daily diet. Children younger than 2 should have no added sugars at all, the older guidance said.

In general, most Americans consume about 17 teaspoons of added sugars per day, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The new guidelines roll back previous recommendations to limit alcohol to 1 drink or less per day for women and 2 drinks or less per day for men.

Instead, the guidance advises Americans to “consume less alcohol for better health." They also say that alcohol should be avoided by pregnant women, people recovering from alcohol use disorder and those who are unable to control the amount they drink.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.