The contestants on I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Outta Here have a lot to contend with. They’ll be in the jungles of Costa Rica surviving off their wits and the natural surroundings. They have to get along with all the egos and survive rounds and rounds of elimination. They’ve also got a giant former pro b-baller, John Salley, in the competition with them.

Crave Online: How do you think basketball prepares you for…

John Salley: Oh, adversity?

Crave Online: Well, how would you compare the competitions?

John Salley: The competition is different. When you’re playing professional athletics, you already know what the stakes are. I’ve trained since I was six years old to be a professional ball player. You play and you play and you play. No one prepares you to go in the middle of the jungle with people you don’t know as your teammates. I knew what the finished goal was. It was going to start the game at 7:30, be over at 9:30. I’d be back in my car and back home or on a jet somewhere. That’s not the deal. The deal is these people are going to throw challenges at you that they haven’t trained us to do and I’m 44 years old. So I’m not going to be able to do the same things I would do when I was younger but the preparation is the same as far as mental strength. They tell you to do something, you know it’s going to be over soon.

Crave Online: And you don’t have teammates in the jungle.

John Salley: No, you don’t have any teammates. You have to develop these guys as teammates. We’re not playing against another team and we’re put against elements that we’ve only seen on television, really become very comfortable.

Crave Online: Isn’t that tenuous, since someone’s always voted off?

John Salley: Yeah, they’re going to get voted off but somebody in professional sports is always going to get traded. Same difference, but you get traded, but you’re going to get somebody and replace them. This right here are people who are sitting in a very comfortable place being judged. Although Mother Theresa said, “Don’t judge people. You don’t have time to love ‘em” so I’m glad somebody else is judging.

Crave Online: When do you shoot?

John Salley: We leave on the 27^th, we’re in the jungle on the 30^th and they start taping on the 1^st.

Crave Online: Can you do anything to prepare?

John Salley: Yeah, I’m a Vegan and part of what I do is promote lifestyles, healthy lifestyles and when they ask me about obesity in the black and Latino world with these young kids, so I would teach about food and how food can help you and nourish you and the best thing about this is they’re going to put me in a jungle around a lot of green foliage and I can show you what the raw diet will do for your body. I’m going in with all green products if they’ll let me where it. I’ll just show you that you can be part of the environment.

Crave Online: So it won’t be as big of a shock to your diet.

John Salley: Well, I don’t eat anything that has the right to live, meaning, I say this to all those Christians. God said thou shalt not kill. That means everything, not just humans.

Crave Online: Have you ever been to the luxurious parts of Costa Rica?

John Salley: No. I’ve seen the Ritz Carlton ads in Robb Report. I don’t think I’m going to be close to that place. I think they’re going to make sure we’re very far away from that.

Crave Online: Do you expect height to be an advantage or disadvantage?

John Salley: Height, it depends. If I was racing Porsches, it would be a disadvantage. That’s about it.

Crave Online: What made you decide on a reality competition?

John Salley: Because one, I get to cut my cell phone off. When I left Best Damn Sports Show, my transition was for seven years I was on the Best Damn Sports Show Period on Fox. When they let me go in October, I had six months to make a decision on what part of my career I was going to go back to. Being a producer, I was in Confessions of a Shopaholic doing acting in between, I wanted to produce television. When Chuck LaBella who I’ve known for a while called me and said this is a great opportunity to reboost, because everybody had me stuck in the mind that I was only working for Fox, this would help me.

Crave Online: Could there be more commentating gigs for you after this is over?

John Salley: Once this is over, I’m doing a show right now on the internet with Red Lever and Adconion. It’s called One on One with John Salley so I’m putting together my Roy Firestone/Barbara Walters. That’s where I took the idea. I want to do what Roy Firestone did by knowing the players and making them feel comfortable and get in depth questions like Barbara Walters.