Captain Jack sits down with Michael Rapaport
This week, Stephen Jackson was guest on Michael Rapaport’s I AM RAPAPORT podcast to discuss his time in the league. The former NBA player, shared some hilarious stories from his time off the court.
During the conversation, he opened up on why most ballers use marijuana for recreational purposes – to deal with the body pain and stress the league provides them 9 months out of the year.
Most notably, he shared some hilarious stories about former Warriors head coach, Don Nelson and Baron Davis. Just days prior to their 2008 season campaign, where they had just upset the Dallas Mavericks in the playoffs a few months before, he revealed that the three got wasted at a bar.
Take a listen above to the entire hour-long conversation about weed in the NBA, and some of the memorable moments from Captain Jack and Mike Rap’s meeting below.
On former head coach Don Nelson being cool with his usage.
“This is crazy, nobody knows this story. We’re in Utah and the drug test people are around, you know, to get our last drug test, so we can smoke, right? And 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, right, 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. And that’s why we were a great team.” LMFAO!Why players around the league smoke.
“Listen, man, one thing about basketball, it’s no PEDs, no steroids, it’s nothing like that. From my experience in the league, players that I’ve been around, guys don’t even really drink — some guys do drink, some guys don’t smoke. I think it’s a higher percentage of guys that smoke than drink. I know coming in, especially in my time, everybody smoked. After games, when I came into the league, there was only one drug test. And that was in the beginning of the season, in training camp. You knew when it was coming. You could smoke the rest of the season. That was the good days. A lot of guys do it because that’s the best way to relax. You take so much stuff to get up for the games, and guys don’t like taking all those pills and stuff to heal. Go home, smoke your blunt, man. You’ll sleep good.”Smoking marijuana before games.
“I can’t speak for nobody else. I’ve done a lot of shit before games sometimes and still was out there 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, saying, ‘Please calm down, this high has to calm down.’ I done shot three shots that went over the backboard.”
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