J.R. Smith Says Smoking Weed Was The Only Way To “Function” During 2020 NBA Bubble In Orlando

Former professional basketball player J.R. Smith says connecting your mind, body, and soul is “all you want” on the court, and he saw those moments come to life for himself and others thanks to a little marijuana inside Orlando‘s NBA bubble in 2020. 

Smith recently appeared on the All the Smoke podcast with Stephen Jackson and Matt Barnes; Complex reports that Smith was using his time on the show to spread the word about how cannabis was letting players reach “the best level of basketball” during the 2020 NBA bubble.

Not only was the plant helping players discover their new potential in terms of focus and mental clarity, but Smith says that all any basketball player wants is to “be at peace with your mind, your body, and your soul, and you can go out there and just hoop.” Perhaps a little weed was their saving grace. 

However, Smith added that to maintain sanity and not go crazy, he says smoking “was the only way you could really function in that joint,” adding that the NBA players in Orlando were “blowing it down in there.”

It helped that the “best level of basketball” Smith recalls wasn’t in front of thousands of people. 

Complex reports Smith explaining, “But when you go to the bubble basketball, some of them dudes was — granted, it was like practice games, and some of ’em really can’t play that well in front of 30,000 — but at the same time you saw some of the best levels of basketball.”

Maybe some high basketball was needed. According to Smith, not only was it “cool,” but he’s “glad it happened because it finally broke that barrier and that stigma that you couldn’t play and all of this, it was a drug, it was this and that.”