Photo Credit: Jennifer Stewart-USA TODAY Sports
Stephen Jackson Who Smoked Weed His Entire Career Talks About NBA’s Marijuana Ban
Stephen Jackson had a great career. He playerd in the NBA for 14-years and won a championship in 2003 with the San Antonio Spurs. But he also was one of the most contoversial players around, something that continued when his active career ended.
Now, Jackson told TMZ that he smoked marijuana his entire career. He added that the NBA should remove it from their banned substances list.
He also said that he never played while under the influence.
“Nobody can play high, especially in the NBA — it’s a high-level of competition, and guys are great, so nobody can play high. If anybody says they need to be high during the games they don’t know what the f–k they’re talking about,”
This statement though, contradicts with a former statement of his. Before re-living a night where he, teammate Baron Davis, and head coach Don Nelson drank “two or three bottles of McCallan 12” a night before the beginning of a season, the one-time champion told an insane story on Michael Rapaport’s I Am Rapaport podcast about smoking weed with his teammates and even coach Nelson before games during his time in Golden State. Jackson was a member of the Warriors from 2006-2010.
Check out the slick way Jackson and Baron Davis got around the NBA’s drug testing policy.
“Nobody knows this story, so this is the first time somebody is hearing this. We’re in Utah and the 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 Baron 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.”
At the time, Golden State was one of the most exciting teams to watch in the NBA and Stephen Jackson was at the forefront of it averaging 20+ points per game in two of his for seasons with the team.
Jackson remembers what it was like during the games when he was playing with weed in his system.
“I can’t speak for nobody else. Me personally, I’ve done a lot of shit before games sometimes and still was able to go out there and be productive. I just gotta be real, you know, it’s been a couple games where I smoked before games and had great games. 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.’”
Maybe he was stoned when giving both the interviews, too.
