Stephen Jackson admits to smoking weed before games

Sure, marijuana may be legal in some states, but for the most part, it’s still looked down upon. Don’t tell that to Stephen Jackson, however. 

During his playing days, swingman Stephen Jackson was known for mixing things up from time-to-time. The Houston native never backed down from a challenge on the hardwood, which is one of the primary reasons he was able to play 17 years in the association.

However, one thing we didn’t know about Jackson was his fascination with marijuana. Yes, we hear about players failing drug tests all the time, but I can’t recall a time a player admitted to getting high before NBA games.

When Jackson was in Golden State under then head coach Don Nelson, apparently that’s exactly what he did sometimes. When he appeared on Michael Rapaport’s “I Am Rapaport” podcast, Jackson poured everything on the table.

"“This is crazy, nobody knows this story, so this is the first time somebody is hearing this story,” Jackson said. “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.”"

Calling them a ‘great team’ is definitely a bit of an overstatement, to say the least. During Jackson’s time in the Bay Area, they only made the playoffs once, where they lost in the conference semifinals.

"“I can’t speak for nobody else,” Jackson said. “Me personally, 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.”"

Now, the NBA can randomly drug test players up to four times in the regular season and twice during the offseason.