NBA Star Kevin Durant Revealed His Role In NBA Dropping Marijuana Ban

The NBA and the NBPA recently agreed to remove marijuana as one of the banned substances in the league as part of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement. Phoenix Suns star Kevin Durant just revealed that he may have played a big part in this big change.

As a longtime advocate for marijuana, the NBA star asked for it to be removed from the NBA's banned substance list in the past. And now, he's finally gotten his wish.

During CNBC and The Boardroom's inaugural Game Plan sports business conference on Tuesday in Los Angeles, Durant, who has been public about his decision to invest in some cannabis companies, explained the part he played in getting the marijuana ban lifted in the NBA. When asked if NBA Commissioner Adam Silver called Durant up to discuss the ban, Durant said he called him.

"I actually called him and advocated for him to take marijuana off the banned substance list. I just felt like it was becoming a thing around the country, around the world, the stigma behind it wasn't as negative as it was before. It doesn't affect you in any negative way," he explained. "He agreed. And you see where we are."

When called a "pioneer," or a "public pioneer," Durant replied he wouldn't say that and he just "enjoys the plant."

Durant said that Silver smelled the weed on him when he walked in and that made it so he "really didn't have to say much."

"He kinda understood where this was going," he said. "It's the NBA, man, everybody does it. It's like wine at this point."

During the sports business conference, Durant also revealed that has ownership dreams for the possible new franchise in Seattle.

When asked if he has a specific team in mind, he agreed that bringing the team back to Seattle "would be cool."

"Whatever opportunity comes up, hopefully I can be a part of something special, but Seattle would be the ideal spot, they deserve to have a team there, and I would love to be part of NBA in that fashion, but we'll see," he explained.

Durant was then asked if he thinks there could and should be more teams in the NBA, to which he explained that there can be since the NBA is so huge.

"I feel like it could be four, five new teams. Everybody loves basketball," he continued.

"And what these franchises do to a city, I was a part of an expansion like franchise at OKC and to see where that city was in 2008, 2009 and see where it is now is like, four, five skyscraper buildings that I would never thought would be there, resort-like hotels, trollies through the city, stuff that I would have never seen and I feel like a lot of that is because of injection of a sports franchise into that city. I feel like a lot of cities around the United States are probably calling Adam Silver to bring a team to their city. It'll be important going forward. It will be cool to see which cities get a team."

According to CBS Sports, earlier this month at NBA Summer League, Silver confirmed that the league will begin to explore the idea of expansion teams once the current media rights deal is up in 2025.

"We will turn to expansion once those new media deals are done. It's not a sure thing but, as I've said before, I think it's natural that organizations grow over time," Silver said.

Expansion has been a topic of conversation for a while, so this is not a new discussion. While he has noted that the league has not begun the process just yet, he offered a timeline for expansion and named Las Vegas and Seattle as two potential options.