Stephen Jackson was a fine professional basketball player and a heavy marijuana smoker.
If you think NBA players never touch the stuff, Jackson has some news for you: he and other basketball players used to get high during the NBA season.
The former NBA swingman and current ESPN basketball analyst admitted last week during his appearance on the on the “I Am Rapaport” podcast with Michael Rapaport that he used to smoke marijuana during the season and even before games.
“I just gotta be real, you know, it’s been a couple games where I smoked before games and had great games,” Jackson said, per ESPN. “It’s been some games where I smoked before the game and was on the bench after three minutes sitting on the sideline, ‘Please calm down. This high has to calm down’ — I done shot three shots that went over the backboard, like, I’m going to be honest, like, ‘Ahh, I gotta calm down.'”
Jackson said NBA players were tested for drugs at the beginning of the season during his 14-year career. Once they passed, players would light up, and their teammates and coaches often knew about it.
That was the case when he played for the Golden State Warriors under head coach Don Nelson.
“We’re in Utah, and the (NBA’s) drug test people are around, you know, to get our last drug test so we can smoke, right? Don Nelson, we talked about weed all the time. He was cool with talking about weed. We got our last test in Utah, right? So me and (teammate) Baron (Davis) are coming out the locker room just screaming, excited with our last pink slip saying we could smoke for the rest of the season, and Don Nelson hauls ass down there giving us high-fives, like, ‘Yeah, we can smoke now!’ It was cool, the fact that he knows what’s going on off the court with his players, which was great, man. We enjoyed it. That’s why we were a great team.”
The NBA still bans Marijuana use, and players face up to four random tests during the regular season and two in the offseason, according to CBS’ James’ Herbert.
We’ll leave it up your imagination to determine how a smoking Jackson would have fared in today’s NBA.
Thumbnail photo via Thomas Campbell/USA TODAY Sports Images
