UK star smoked pot night before game

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TC
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Joined: February 20th, 2003, 5:00 pm
Location: "the Ville" ky

UK star smoked pot night before game

Postby TC » June 28th, 2007, 12:39 pm

I will post the Link and cut and paste, because some sites were "asked" to remove the story but the uk prez

This goes to show pot does kill brain cells. no one with half a BRAIN
would 24 years later come out and say "we lost because I smoked pot" IT is totally sad that he thinks this gives him street cred with the kids

http://www.kentucky.com/179/story/103656.html

UK star smoked pot night before game
Thinks it cost team chance to win
By Jerry Tipton
JTIPTON@HERALD-LEADER.COM

DAVID COPPER/LEXINGTON HERALD-LEADER
Dirk Minniefield led cheers at a UK game at Rupp Arena in 1982. Wednesday, he said he was a habitual user of marijuana and cocaine during his career at UK. 1982 file photo by David Copper | Staff

A Wildcat erasing mistakes: Minniefield gives warning

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. --By the early 1980s, University of Kentucky basketball was so spooked by Louisville's rise to prominence that UK officials would not publicly acknowledge the Cardinals as a rival. To actually play U of L was unthinkable.

So when the 1983 NCAA Tournament matched Kentucky and Louisville in a region final (in Knoxville, of all places), this first meeting in 24 years made even the game's Final Four implications a mere footnote.

UK point guard Dirk Minniefield spent the night before what became known as the "Dream Game" smoking marijuana. He and some teammates -- he declined to say who -- went to a park at the former World's Fair site near their hotel to get high.

"After we smoked, I didn't give a (hoot)," Minniefield said yesterday during an appearance at an NBA-sponsored camp for star high school players. "I went to my room and smoked some more."

Fate placed Minniefield at the crossroads moment in the game. With UK clinging desperately to a lead in the final moments, he had a chance to score the clinching basket. But U of L center Charles Jones deflected the oddly tentative shot.

Louisville went on to force overtime, then win 80-68.

"It was sad," said Minniefield, who came to Charlottesville to warn today's high school stars about the dangers of drugs and alcohol. "Because that was the moment. You only have certain moments in your life. You have to seize your moment. I missed my moment.

"I don't know if the marijuana had an impact. I'm not a doctor. Being a player, I'm going to say that (it did)."

During his talk to the high school stars, Minniefield implied that the marijuana had a damaging effect. "Any other time, I would dunk that ball," he said of his driving shot against Jones. "I know I was depressed about it for probably the first two years after college. It played a part in my drug use, the depression. Being from Lexington, I had to listen (to complaining fans) more than anybody else would."

When told of Minniefield's confession to the campers, then-UK coach Joe B. Hall expressed surprise.

But Minniefield said it shouldn't have been a surprise. When he played for UK, he was a habitual user of marijuana and cocaine

"For me, it was a normal run-of-the-mill thing to do," Minniefield said. "I'd been smoking pot since I was 14. It was just another thing in the life of Dirk."

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