Hornets' Jefferson on losing 20-plus pounds: No fried chicken

At the end of last season, Charlotte Hornets big man Al Jefferson said he wanted to lose 25 pounds before this season tipped off. He appears to be most of the way there, but he's had to make sacrifices.

"Every Popeye's (chicken) commercial I see, I have to turn the TV off," Jefferson told the Charlotte Observer's Rick Bonnell, saying he craves fried chicken. However, the 30-year-old has almost reached his goal.

"Twenty-plus," he said. "One thing about losing weight: it becomes a lot easier once you become disciplined about what you're eating. Cutting out the sugar and the starch ... I knew what I was doing it for, to take some of the weight off my knees."

Jefferson missed 17 games last season in large part due to a lingering right knee issue.

The 6-foot-10 Jefferson is still one of the best low-post scorers in the NBA - in an era where the skill has seemingly taken a back seat to floor-stretching. Having been in the league since 2004, the Mississippi native told Bonnell that the shift happened right in front of him:

It happened right in front of my eyes. When I came into the league it was still a big man's game ... I think (Kevin Garnett) probably set the tone, but Dirk (Nowitzki) took it to a different level. Dirk made it okay to be that shooting (power forward) and then when (Andrea) Bargnani came into the league as the No. 1 pick, he became a poor man's Dirk. General managers started looking for those guys.

Jefferson said the weight loss should help him in an NBA where ball movement is key. When he sat last season, Charlotte moved the rock much better.

"I agree with (Hornets coach Steve Clifford) that when I was out the ball moved," Jefferson said. "That's part of the reason I needed to slim down, so that I wouldn't slow it down when the ball was moving."

The Hornets figure to be in the mix for a playoff spot this season after fading down the stretch last spring.