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Stephen Jackson has shared yet another crazy story about what it’s really like being an NBA player.

Marijuana use in the NBA has been a topic that has picked up a lot of traction in recent months as more states where NBA teams are located have legalized marijuana use for medicinal and recreational purposes.

Even though these laws can keep the police from arresting you depending on the quantity that you have and where you’re smoking it, it still doesn’t keep you from getting fired from your job if your employer prohibits drug use on the job. The NBA is one such employer. They test their players throughout the season and will suspend them if they fail.

But, that fear of suspension has not kept players from smoking. In a roundtable discussion on ESPN, former NBA Champion and All-Star guard Chauncey Billups said that many of his teammates not only smoked during the season, but right before the game. Sometimes, he admits, it made them play better.

Former player Stephen Jackson has now come forth to admit that he was a player who enjoyed a toke or two before games too.

In an interview on Michael Rappaport’s I Am Rappaport podcast, he says:

“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.’”

Revelations like this all but confirm that you might have been right when you said “that boy out there high” when watching a player on your favorite team throw a pass out of bounds to take a bad 3-pointer.

Jackson also shared a funny story about his time with the Golden State Warriors where he would smoke with Baron Davis and head coach Don Nelson.

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 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.

Current Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr recently revealed that he smoked marijuana to aide with his back pain after surgery last season. He’s stated that the NBA should consider allowing players to smoke to treat injuries.

Photo: Instagram