Stephen Jackson is a big advocate of the country and NBA relaxing its rules about marijuana. That’s probably because he loved it so much he even used to smoke before games.
The 14-year NBA veteran was on actor Michael Rapoport’s podcast last week and talked with him about his experiences with smoking weed before NBA games.
“I can’t speak for nobody else. Me personally, I’ve done a lot of s— before games sometimes and still was able to go out there and be productive,” Jackson told Rapoport, as transcribed by Dime. “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.’”
The great stories about Jackson and marijuana didn’t end there.
According to Jackson, who most notably spent four seasons with the Warriors and Spurs, he, Baron Davis and Don Nelson used to talk about weed together in Golden State. In fact, he says Nelson celebrated with the team when the league’s drug tests ended for the season.
“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 a– down there giving us hi-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 ’06-’07 Warriors team coached by Nelson and starring Jackson and Davis pulled off one of the biggest upsets in NBA playoff history when they defeated the No. 1 seed Mavericks in the first round of the playoffs. Not only were they a good team, but they were major fan favorites. Stories like this make it easy to see why. And such stories also make you wonder whether Jackson was high when he had this to say.
H/T Deadspin
