Captain Jack was getting high at night.
Stephen Jackson, the retired NBA champion, revealed to Michael Rapaport that he would occasionally toke up before tip off.
“I just gotta be real, you know, it’s been a couple games where I smoked before games and had great games,” he told Rapaport, insisting that he was only speaking for himself.
“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 gonna be honest, like ‘aaaaahhhhh, I gotta calm down.”
It’s not the most shocking revelation.
Just last month, former NBA champ Chauncey Billups said that he had teammates who played better when they were high — it was part of a larger discussion about weed in the NBA — and Warriors coach Steve Kerr has admitted to trying pot to ease his chronic back pain. Kerr also said that he felt players should be able to use pot for pain management. Cliff “Uncle Spliffy” Robinson is a partner in a marijuana grow operation.
Jackson, who played for the Nets, Spurs, Hawks, Pacers, Raptors, Warriors, Bobcats, Bucks and Clippers in his career said that Don Nelson was cool with his players smoking weed.
He told Rapaport about the last drug test he and Baron Davis took during a season when they were teammates with the Warriors, and how they celebrated afterwards, knowing they were free to get high without worrying about further testing.
“So me and Baron are coming out of 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 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.”
