As Stefan Bondy notes, Major League Baseball removed cannabis from its banned substance list in December. The NHL doesn’t punish players who test positive. But the NBA keeps suspending players for use of a substance that is now legal for recreational or medicinal use in 39 states and the District of Columbia. In eleven states, it’s completely legal.

In the last few years, Dion Waiters, Thabo Sefolosha, Nerlens Noel, Larry Sanders and J.R. Smith have all been suspended, Waiters most recently for 10 days after ingesting a weed-laced gummy while on the Heat team plane in November. Random tests can happen to anyone. Bradley Beal said he was tested before Wednesday’s game vs. the Nets.

Kevin Durant (an investor in two marijuana companies) thinks the NBA’s position is not just outdated. It’s ridiculous.

“It’s one of those plants that’s an acquired taste. If you love it, you love it. If you don’t, you’re not even going to be pick it up. It shouldn’t even be a discussion these days,” Durant said on a recent episode “All The Smoke” on Showtime. “It’s just like, marijuana is marijuana. It’s not harmful to anybody. It can only help and enhance and do good things. I feel like it shouldn’t even be a huge topic around it anymore.”

Bondy, recounting the interview, writes that Durant compared weed’s effects to legalized and non-stigmatized stimulants.

“Everybody on my team drinks coffee every day. Taking caffeine every day. Or guys go out to have wine after games or have a little drink here and there. Marijuana should be in that tone,” Durant said. “Why are we even talking about? It shouldn’t even be a conversation now. So hopefully we can get past that and the stigma around it and know that it does nothing but make people have a good time, make people hungry, bring people together — that plant brings us all together.”

KD also endorsed the political campaign to free prisoners who are in prison only for marijuana possession.

“We start getting people out of jail for marijuana. That’s the next step,” Durant said. “And just keep going. But it’s a plant that’s put here for a reason, and that’s to bring us together. Hopefully it happens (removing marijuana from the banned substance list), especially in the NBA.”

The NBA could unilaterally remove marijuana from its list of 200 banned substances or wait till the next CBA negotiations, perhaps as a bargaining chip to get something else from the players union. No word on how the two Nets players on the National Basketball Players Association —Garrett Temple and Kyrie Irving— feel about the subject.