The Sport Count

From the Dallas Morning News:

You can’t fool kids. They know what he said about smoking marijuana, whether they listened to it on the radio, read it or heard from their friends. “People’s first reaction is that I just got high all day every day,” Howard said Monday afternoon. “I got on a radio station back home and talked about it. I’ve got nothing to hide. I ain’t scared. There’s been no backlash.” That’s not really the point.

Actually, that is the point.

The point is that Dallas fans, and fans of the NBA, don’t care if Josh Howard spends his off-court time punching cones while he waits for the cookies to cook.

Howard didn’t organise dog fights, or drive drunk. He didn’t unload his weapon out the front of a strip club. He didn’t lend a getaway car to a convicted murderer. No, he smokes blunts, and he was honest about it — and the public rewarded his honest with justified apathy. ‘Wow, an NBA player smokes weed? That’s definitely news!’

David Harrison of the Pacers - a lesser player but far more prolific bonghead - copped similar media outrage when he violated the league’s anti-drug policy earlier this year. He was suspended for five games (really cutting into his ability to collect DNP-CDs), and came out firing on the issue:

I made a mistake and if that mistake costs me my career, then that’s where we need to look. Look at what I did and look at what I lost. You know what I’m saying. Does marijuana, is it that bad? That’s the question I really want people to ask themselves sometimes.

Following rules blindly, doesn’t mean you’re right just by following those rules. There needs to be a just rule. I mean, a long time ago George Washington sat around, didn’t want to pay taxes to the crown. There’s other things going on, but the rudimentary part of our American revolution was we didn’t want to pay taxes. And we broke that rule and we have America today. You know, if we would’ve lost that war, George Washington would be Benedict Arnold.

You know, it’s whoever wins, you get the praise. Nicotine won, the tobacco industry won. That’s the thing, they wouldn’t want marijuana to be legal. It causes less cancer and actually, I’ve read studies where in cities with very bad air polution like in Indiana, it helps protect you from lung cancer.

I’m not sure his science is right, but I like his sentiment.

Posted By: Anton