Stephen Jackson says he occasionally played high

Stephen Jackson had some self-made problems during his 14-year NBA career, but he was also widely considered an exemplary teammate. Now three years removed from playing, he says he occasionally smoked marijuana before games.

"I just gotta be real ... a couple games where I smoked before games and had great games," Jackson told actor Michael Rapaport's I Am Rapaport Stereo Podcast. "It's been some games where I smoked before the game and was on the bench after three minutes sitting on the sideline, (saying) 'please calm down. This high has to calm down.' I done shot three shots that went over the backboard, like, I'm going to be honest, like, 'Ahh, I gotta calm down.'"

Jackson - who played for eight teams from 2000-14, and was a key part of the 2007 Golden State Warriors squad that shocked the No. 1 Dallas Mavericks as an eighth seed - added that then-Dubs coach Don Nelson knew about the marijuana use.

"We're in Utah, and the drug test people are around ... to get our last drug test so we can smoke, right?" he said. "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."

Jackson averaged 15.1 points over 858 games, winning an NBA title with the San Antonio Spurs in 2003. He's often remembered, however, for his involvement in 2004's "Malice at the Palace," and an arrest for firing a gun outside an Indianapolis bar in 2006.