Following Shawn Kemp’s draft selection due to his underage status, the Sonics banned beer.
It is a well-known story that NBA players are known to consume beer in their locker rooms. In telling his story, Xavier McDaniel is the most recent.
The NBA permitted two cases of alcohol in a team’s locker room, according to X-Man, who recently made an appearance on Brandon “Scoop B” Robinson’s podcast. When he played for the Sonics, according to McDaniel, this was the case. However, he said that the Celtics outlawed alcohol when he joined.
Back then, the NBA kept two cases of alcohol in the locker room, something that many people were unaware of. After Bernie Beckerstaff intervened, we had some guys who sat there and drank beer or smoked cigarettes at halftime. I’m like, ‘What the fu**?’ after joining the league. Xavier recalled.
The Celtics also took out the beer from the locker room
That was when McDaniel was still a rookie, in 1985. But after the Sonics selected Shawn Kemp in the 1989 draft, Seattle was forced to forbid beer from being consumed in the locker room since Kemp was not yet legal. X-Man claimed that the Celtics removed their beer from the locker room following the Charles Smith incident when he eventually came to play for Boston.
Then, one day, the recently retired Larry Bird paid the Celtics a visit. The Boston Celtics legend, Larry Legend, stood in front of all of them, including the team owners, and said in a forceful manner that there was no more beer in the locker room.
“They would never have took the fuc*** beer after the game,” Bird claimed. “I play as hard as I play, I need my fu*** beer after the game.”
Larry enjoyed beer just as much as basketball. The legend of the Boston Celtics is well-known; among his many admirers is the famous picture of him sipping beer while Michael Jordan played ping pong during their Dream Team days. Another legend is the statement made by Charles Barkley, a teammate of Larry’s on the 1992 Olympic squad, that he would never again share a drink with the Celtics legend.
In the Dream Team documentary on NBATV, Barkley stated, “One thing you don’t want to do is drink beer with Larry Bird. Larry Bird drinks Budweiser.” The world’s strongest beer is Budweiser. I had headaches for about two days.
Beer, however, never diminished Bird’s talent. In fact, Bill Simmons revealed on his podcast last year that Larry stopped drinking beer as soon as the NBA playoffs started. It’s true that Red Auerbach would never have taken the beer out of the Celtics locker room while Larry Legend was still there—three NBA titles and three MVPs. That was, however, a simple thing to accomplish once he retired.
