Caption
Close
Former Spur Stephen Jackson once was one of the most popular and flamboyant members of the team because of his personality and his willingness to take control of action on the court.
Jackson told actor Michael Rapaport during a recent podcast that he occasionally used drugs before playing in games.
His admission is coming after more professional athletes and their unions are advocating for a less punitive approach to dealing with the recreational use of marijuana.
The Washington Post reported that NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith plans to make a formal proposal to the league after discussion the union’s board of player representatives.
“We have to do a better job of knowing if our players are suffering from other potentially dangerous psychological issues like depression,” Smith told the Post. “So if I look at this myopically as just a recreational use of marijuana and miss the fact we have players suffering from depression, what have I fixed?”
Jackson told Rapaport his performance varied when he used marijuana.
“I just gotta be real, you know, it’s been a couple games where I smoked before games and had great games,” Jackson said.”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.'”
Jackson was last a member of the Spurs in the 2012-13 season and concluded his professional career during a nine-game stint with the Los Angeles Clippers in 2014.
Interestingly, Jackson told Rapaport on the podcast that Don Nelson, his former coach with Golden State, knew that Jackson smoked marijuana.
“We’re in Utah, and the [league’s] 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,” Jackson said. “He was cool with talking about weed.
“We got our last test in Utah, right? So me and [teammate] Baron [Davis] 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 — down there giving us high-fives, like, ‘Yeah, we can smoke now!'” Jackson recalled. “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.”
Jackson had the most success of his 14-season NBA career while playing with Nelson for four seasons in Golden State. He averaged 15.1 points, 3.9 rebounds and 3.1 assists per game over his 14-year career, 858-game NBA career.
Tgriffin@express-news.net
Twitter: @TimGriffinBig12
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
