Marijunana in the NBA. A weed run rampant.

With the aftermath of "The Decision" and South Beach fever catching all over, well, just South Beach, a story got pushed to the wayside that we're sure you NBA nuts out there took notice to. That of course was the fire sale of the former collegiate superstar Michael Beasley. It was inevitable that he would have to leave to make the salary cap space available for Miami's big three and because of the obvious need to get rid of him it was pretty assured that the team receiving him would get him on the cheap. However, when you look deeper into the trade which sent two of Minnesota's second round picks to Miami you realize that Minnesota overpaid. Badly. Replace Minnesota with the kid who auctions off his ham and cheese sandwich in the Hillshire Farms commercial and and he gets a worse deal going with Beasley than with the pony. Imagine yourself giving a schizophrenic bum in New York five dollars to buy the Brooklyn Bridge and you've made a better deal than David Kahn's Timberwolves. Why, you might ask, would getting nothing be better than getting Michael Beasley? Because he's worth less than nothing for any NBA franchise. Four little letters make this case all too apparent. Four little letters that put together mean a lack of motivation, desire and a guaranteed ten extra pounds of munchy weight. Yes folks, we're talking about W-E-E-D. Our boy Beasley has a serious ganja craving and he's got the history to prove it. Caught at the rookie symposium, the very place where the association teaches young athletes about the perils of drug use for your career, MB was smoking the kind bud in his hotel room. Fast forward a year and he's in drug rehab (not for weed but for South Beach's number three export after botox and tanned asses, cocaine). Fast forward another year and he's saying shit like this AFTER he's traded, "Do I think the Wolves took a gamble on me? Definitely," and "People don't know that I'm actually a good guy," Beasley said with a smile. "I actually love kids and dogs and long walks in the park." David Kahn insists Beasley's done smoking but as we all know, that's a hard friend to turn away from.

Take our good ol' pal Damon Stoudamire for example. Now over the years we have made many jokes on his behalf, but lets be serious for a moment, smoking marijuana can ruin your life. Can you imagine being paid millions of dollars to play a game? Thousands of people chanting your name and wearing your products? Little kids wanting to be just like you? Wow, sounds like a hell on earth to us. How is a person, let alone a professional athlete supposed to get away from that type of terror? Calling up your old girlfriend Mary Jane Watson and blazing over in your big yellow Hummer. As you all know, its not just Damon though. This is a weed running up the short leg of a short Jewish man and trying to destroy everything he stands for. This is not a piece to be taken lightly this will be a hard hitting expose on this devil lettuce and its wildest moments in the NBA.

Lets get the The Jailblazer era of the NBA out of the way first because it's so close to our hearts. No player or team exemplifies the problem of the high life like the Blazers did a few years back. If Marv Albert were going to do a Wild Jokes and Bloopers-Weed Related, it might as well just have been the '03-'04 highlight reel. Passing is one of the key fundamentals in basketball, it just seemed like most of the Blazers forgot that it doesn't include the puff, puff part. Whether it was Damon's tinfoil surprise, or Z-Bo's weed related DUI at 5:30 in the morning after a children's charity event we were all the belles of the ganja ball. But the trailblazer fun with weed doesn't stop there. Darius Miles, more famous for banging Scar Jo on the set of "The Perfect Score" than anything he did on the basketball court, started burning the midnight green dragon after the Rose Garden's knee monster jumped out of his cave and ate his knee. Apparently the weed didn't do anything to help the healing process as Darius spent most of the rest of his career sitting on the bench and becoming a tool in the Memphis Grizzlies plan to decimate the Trailblazer's cap space. Other famous blazers who were caught (we know we're better than this but... whatever) "blazing" are Qyntel Woods (caught smoking during a stint with the Greek basketball team Olympiacos but is more famous for this incident: Woods was cited in March of 2004 when he was stopped for speeding and an officer smelled marijuana wafting from his Cadillac. Woods reportedly offered only his basketball trading card and two credit cards as identification, leading to charges of driving while uninsured and operating a motor vehicle without a driver's license), J.R. Rider (caught smoking weed while a blazer, probably wasn't in a high state of mind when he also spit on a heckling fan), Shawn Kemp (arrested with a friend when a police officer found more than two ounces of weed and some coke in his truck) and Bill Walton (If you've seen pictures of young Bill Walton you KNOW that guy was constantly smoking the chiba). It's not that surprising that Portland is the largest market for both visine and funyuns in North America.

For those of you reading this outside the Portland, Oregon area let's get one thing clear; weed use is not limited to the Rose City. The current champion of marijuana usage in the Association isn't even a player.It's a former masoct for God's sake. Thus proving just how out of control this situation really is. Da Bull is identified on the Bulls Web site as the slam-dunking cousin of the team's other mascot, Benny the Bull. Chester Brewer, 31, who has worked as Da Bull since 1996, was arrested in late 2004 after officers found six ounces of marijuana on Brewer and a scale in his trunk. Sounds to us like a new job might have opened up for Dennis Rodman to get back in with the bulls. Come on, that guy loves to wear costumes. Even former NBA Legends viewed as basketball gods get down with Puff and his Magic Dragon. Kareem is higher then Snoop Dogg right now down in LA.

There appears to be no solution to this ever growing epidemic. Charles Oakley said of the NBA, “You got guys out there playing high every night...You got 60 percent of your league on marijuana. What can you do?” Many people have put the percentage of people who smoke in the NBA higher than that. All that we can really recommend is that David Stern invests in a few clinical case studies organized by Dr. Dre with a followup flag football match with Snopp Dogg and Ricky Williams. How do you say Yamabethur? AHHH YES!


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