why wont this 80 million dollar NBA star admit he tokes up? anthony carmelo

Ricky's reefer madness

Gwen Knapp sfgate.com

SF Aug 3, 2004--The comedy of Ricky Williams' retirement eludes Dolphins fans, but his explanations for leaving the NFL are undeniably funny. He liked smoking reefer while following Lenny Kravitz on tour and wanted to keep doing it without the hassles of answering to specimen collectors from the league office.

The candor, rarer than a streaker at Wimbledon, was worth a laugh all by itself.

As he walked away from pro football, Williams dropped the name of a cleansing agent he drank by the half-gallon before NFL drug tests. Given that Williams was facing suspension for his third positive marijuana test, this novel product endorsement fell a little short of Michael Jordan's "It's the shoes.'' Williams did rally, explaining that he had stopped taking precautions.

"I didn't quit football because I failed a drug test,'' Williams told the Miami Herald. "I failed a drug test because I was ready to quit football.''

You have to admit that beats the stuffing out of "I didn't inhale.''

The clarification came as a substantial relief to the cleansing agent's manufacturers, who peddle their stuff to everyday workers facing an employer's drug test. If their check isn't already in the mail, it should be.

The NFL strongly denied that the product worked, countering a growing suspicion that the drug-testing system just might be a farce.

Of course, it is a joke, a long one. Williams' tale is only one of many punch lines.

The real comedy, though, doesn't lie in Williams' chemical end-around the tests. It's that marijuana is prohibited in the sports world at all. In Olympic competition, it shares space on the banned list with steroids.

If Williams had stayed in the NFL, he would have been penalized more severely than the four Raiders who last year tested positive for THG, the alleged designer steroid connected to the BALCO lab. They were fined three- seventeenths of their salaries. Williams would have been suspended for four games without pay.

No anti-doping crusade can succeed when its enforcers become preoccupied, even for a second, with hunting down the Doobie Brothers. Screening for pot is worse than a waste of time. It confuses the already murky issue of performance- enhancing drugs. Too many people believe that drug testing in sports exists only to support a facade of social respectability, to maintain an apple-pie, white picket-fence marketability.

In the case of pot, that's largely true. Its performance-enhancing value, if there is any, is offset by proven disadvantages. As a baffled fellow athlete so eloquently put it when a Canadian snowboarder faced disqualification for a positive marijuana test at the 1998 Olympics: "I thought it would make you want to sit on your butt and eat doughnuts.''

Years ago, an NFL assistant coach told me that management didn't particularly care if players took steroids because usage made the game faster and more exciting. Marijuana and cocaine were problems because they made players hard to control.

The league does have tougher penalties for performance enhancers than pot. Williams failed three tests before he faced a suspension. Steroid users are barred for four games after one bad test. (The THG gang benefited from using an unknown substance, which made a penalty tough to assess.)

But the question remains: Why test for pot in any sport? Most employers can screen only before they hire someone. What sets the football player or the javelin thrower apart?

Former steroid users have said that they smoked dope to counteract the effects of the steroids. It made them calmer and alleviated the pain of the excessive weightlifting that steroids facilitated. Williams, diagnosed with social anxiety disorder, told the Herald that pot helped him more than the prescription antidepressant he once took.

Yet no athlete has ever said that he saw smoking dope as a threshold to success. Performance-enhancing drugs, on the other hand, have been described as a prerequisite by former users. The choice to take them rarely seems like a choice at all. It's certainly no backstage party with Lenny Kravitz.

Williams said he retired for a number of reasons, and anyone who criticizes him for wanting out should be willing to take a hit from an All-Pro linebacker. The outrageous violence of the game is a turnoff for anyone who savors the idea of walking upright at 45.

More aggressive screening for steroids might make the game safer. Nature couldn't possibly have produced so many freakishly large men who run like locomotives. Trying to eliminate pot use won't change a thing. It's irrelevant damage control, and a joke that isn't all that funny.

Haha. Where'd you get that from? Probably some local Canadian newspaper since he's playing pigskin in Canada now b/c of all the trouble his love for reefer caused, like running him out of the NFL.

He basically had it made in the NFL before his pre-buddha days, then once he came out and supported it, he not only lost his job, his reputation went out the window with it. Reps mean a lot to athletes, and his took quite the beating.

Now look at him. He's playing for the Toronto Argonauts up in our friendly neighbors to the North. More likely than not, he's finished in the NFL. And why? Because he chose to come out. But besides that, I find him to be almost a foolish kind of bold and daring person, like openly supporting weed and then meditating and "finding himself" overseas.

More power to him if he finds what he "really wants to do," but I'm sure late at night, when no one's looking, after that last bong is cashed, he sits alone in his single-room apt. and sobs. Just bawls his eyes out. Because he coulda been livin' it up in at least a 2 bedroom duplex, in America, no less.

Haha. wow. Torched.

The thing I never liked about him was this:

If he wanted to quit football after only a few seasons into the league, why in the hell would he start to begin with? From what most of the public knows, he seemed to be introduced to weed, then just sorta "burnt out", as lame as it sounds. He became disinterested with football and more so on traveling East Asia and sipping tea with the Queen.

So really, weed might actually have caused a fucking Heisman-trophy winner to discover his..actual purpose in life? He was going VERY strong in college, and it just started to pour over into his professional career when...puffff. I dunno, but it's sure a hell of a waste of talent if he decides to teach yoga to homeless kids in Peru instead. But hey, that's just me speaking as a sportsfan. As an avid toker, I am happy for him.

are you a prohibitionist?

I don't suppose youve ever written any letters to your local paper advocating legalization...

you dont get the $80 mil for a 5-year contract up front. you get it over the 5 years. and usually contracts are backloaded so you get most of the money at the end. if he tests positive for banned substances, he can have his contract terminated and/or be suspended.

oh. I thought he got it all upfront with a cherry on top!

DUH!

Lol. I'm sure 'Melo was hoping for that, cherry included.

And how about all these other big deals being done around the league? Paul Pierce inks $54 million for 3 more non-productive years (for the Celtics at least) and Lebron goes BIG in Cleveland. I just think it's amazing that those guys make so much money. Gotta love America!

why?

Haha. Because it's entertaining to watch and almost downright dumbfounding that people make that much money for playing a sport professionally. Maybe I've got a light-hearted side or something, I don't know, but it's got to be the kid in me talking whenever it's about sports. I'm a fan. I drool at the money they make, naturally, and it only adds to the excitement, imo. They play their game at the highest level, and I will admit that I have fallen into the spectacle and glamour surrounding the game. :stoned:

I also meant that so many younger guys are getting the big contracts of late. Only an observation.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Its a Plant

Haha. Because it's entertaining to watch and almost downright dumbfounding that people make that much money for playing a sport professionally. Maybe I've got a light-hearted side or something, I don't know, but it's got to be the kid in me talking whenever it's about sports. I'm a fan. I drool at the money they make, naturally, and it only adds to the excitement, imo. They play their game at the highest level, and I will admit that I have fallen into the spectacle and glamour surrounding the game. :stoned:

I also meant that so many younger guys are getting the big contracts of late. Only an observation.

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Okay, reading this today, not high as a kite, I realize what I should have just said was that I was being sarcastic when I said "Gotta love America!" I probably should have throw one of these guys after it, though. :rolleyes: