The NBA bubble was something the NBA had to do at the time but it was a very unique experience for everyone involved.
No one could really leave, the players didn’t have family there for the first part, and there were literally stuck in a bubble with not much to do. It was mentally taxing on them to say the least.
How did some deal with it? According to J.R. Smith, they smoked weed.
While on an episode of All The Smoke with Stephen Jackson and Matt Barnes, J.R., who was with the Lakers at the time, talked about how players smoked a lot of weed while in the bubble and said it was the only way they could function in there. Stephen Jackson even says they were on FaceTime rolling up and telling him how miserable he was in there.
Luckily the league doesn’t test for weed anymore.
The NBA has agreed to not randomly test players for marijuana this season, a continuation of the policy that was put in place last year for the COVID-19 “restart bubble” and has remained since.
Drug testing will continue for things such as human growth hormone and performance-enhancers, along with what the league calls “drugs of abuse” — such as methamphetamine, cocaine and opiates. But the league’s agreement with the National Basketball Players Association over random marijuana tests will continue for at least another season.
“We have agreed with the NBPA to extend the suspension of random testing for marijuana for the 2021-22 season and focus our random testing program on performance-enhancing products and drugs of abuse,” NBA spokesman Mike Bass said Wednesday.
The league suspended testing in March 2020 when play was suspended in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, then agreed with the players to test for performance-enhancers in the bubble at Walt Disney World that summer.
But marijuana wasn’t on that list, wasn’t tested for last season and now won’t be this season either.
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