I grew up in the late 1980s-early 1990s and got into sports around middle school age. Hockey was my first love because everyone from Minnesota has to love hockey — it’s beaten into you with a stick, pun intended.
But I also liked baseball and basketball just to be different. And I used to enjoy going to my local library and reading old magazines and sports sections of newspapers on microfilm (YES, THIS DID EXIST AT ONE POINT, ALL CAPS!).
So even though I was way too young to remember or understand the cocaine scandal in Major League Baseball, technically called the Pittsburgh Drug Trials in 1985, I read about it as a pre-teen. Most big names were implicated like Dave Parker, Dale Berra, Vida Blue and Keith Hernandez.
I loathe Keith Hernandez.
No, actually I don’t but that’s a “Seinfeld” reference that Boss Man Paul M. Banks would appreciate.
But Boss Man Paul M. Banks would not appreciate news from me about the Kardashian family and rightly so. But Boss Man Paul M. Banks does like basketball and the NBA and for that I felt the need to put together this post.
TMZ is reporting that drug use in the NBA is way more widespread than people think. What does this have to do with the Kardashians? Drug use in the NBA is in the news again because Khloe Kardashian’s husband Lamar Odom, formerly of the Dallas Mavericks and now the Los Angeles Lakers, is struggling with a drug addiction. Reports have tied Lamar Odom to crack cocaine and other drugs.
So TMZ did this SPECIAL REPORT about drug use in the NBA and (surprise!) pot is the most commonly used drug by far for many players. And the story says many players don’t even hide their marijuana use.
The NBA tests players about four times a year and after the fourth test, players can go bonkers and do whatever drugs they want. Apparently, one drug that NBA players concocted is called Lean and it’s a mixture of Codeine cough syrup and Sprite. Ewww. I guess the Sprite helps the medicine go down. There’s a Julie Andrews/”Mary Poppins” reference in there somewhere.
The story says Lean was used a lot during this season’s playoffs and is the players’ drug of choice along with Ecstasy and Molly, which is an offshoot of Ecstasy.
And if social media can be used for something positive, the story says players are less likely to use hard drugs knowing that photos of them using can pop up on Twitter or Facebook at any time.