There have been a lot of conversations about weed and the sports community as of late. Former NBA coach Don Nelson is another name you can add to the mix.
The retired head coach who made his name coaching the Milwaukee Bucks, Golden State Warriors, New York Knicks and Dallas Mavericks from 1976 through 2010 has a “green” pastime while living in Hawaii, growing cannabis.
In an interview with the New York Times, Nelson revealed he his strain is “Nellie Kush.”
“Oh, it’s great. Great stuff. It’s called Nellie Kush,” he explained, per Williams. “It’s O.G. and Hindu Kush. Hindu Kush is really good. It comes from India and the guy that brought it over mixed the two of them, so we’ve got Nellie Kush now.”
Nelson said he no longer drinks alcohol and prefers cannabis because “you don’t have the aftereffect. There’s no hangover.”
When any athlete gets old, every injury you have sustained seems to resurrect. It helps me deal with the pain without pain pills, and helps with that stress.
Another vote to make medicinal marijuana – or at least CBD’s – legal in the NBA. Nelson’s former player Stephen Jackson shared a story during an appearance on Michael Rapaport’s podcast in 2017 about Nelson being ok with his players smoking.
“We’re in Utah and the 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, he was cool with talking about weed. We got our last test in Utah, right? So me and 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 ass down there giving us high-fives like, ‘yeah, we can smoke now!’ 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.”
The former coach also revealed he plays high-stakes poker games against the likes of Willie Nelson, Owen Wilson and Woody Harrelson and shared the story of meeting a daughter he had out-of-wedlock after 29 years, after she wrote him a letter while coaching the Dallas Mavericks.
Nellie still holds the record for most winningest coach in the NBA. During his playing career, he suited up for the Chicago Zephyrs, Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics.
