Episode 45: Al Harrington, former NBA player and Founder/CEO of Viola Brands, the only black-owned multinational cannabis company.

Boardroom Talks

Boardroom Podcast Network

Business, Entrepreneurship, Sports

4.4 • 620 Ratings

🗓️ 9 June 2021

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Al Harrington was such a basketball late bloomer in high school, his own mother wouldn’t come to his games. What was the point if her son was riding the bench? But hard work and a growth spurt turned Al Harrington from so-so hooper to the nation's top high school player by his senior year. In '98, he was a McDonalds All-American, and the Gatorade and USA Today Player of the Year. Drafted out of high school in the 1st round pick by the Indiana Pacers. Harrington reveals the profane warning that Larry Bird, the Pacers Head Coach, barked at him when he showed up late for his first team meeting. Harrington describes what he learned from veteran teammates like Antonio Davis and Reggie Miller that helped forge professional habits over his 16-year NBA career with multiple teams. Harrington talks to Rich and Gianni about his surprising entry point into the cannabis business, which began with Harrington’s search for ways to help his grandmother, Viola, cope with her glaucoma and diabetes symptoms. Harrington later met with then-NBA commissioner, David Stern, and managed to change Stern’s opinion about the dangers of cannabis. That meeting paved the way for the NBA to set the tone for how pro leagues take a more tolerant stance on marijuana use by players. In this powerful episode, Harrington drops many gems, including his stunning estimate of the number of NBA players who used marijuana when he started in the league in the late ‘90s, a number he believes has held steady to this day.

Transcript

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0:00.0	What's up, everybody, and welcome to another boardroom out of office podcast.
0:10.2	Gianni, crazy, but this is podcast number 45.
0:14.5	Welcome, my friend.
0:15.7	How are you today?
0:16.8	I'm good, my brother, you?
0:18.4	I'm good.
0:19.1	So funny little tidbit, the whole season, I've been telling you 45, 45, 45, we get to 45,
0:26.3	I realize that it was actually 50 that we were supposed to do this year, my friend.
0:30.4	So five more in season one.
0:33.1	And today we have an incredibly special guest, a native East Coaster, New York, New Jersey area,
0:40.8	somebody that's like when I met him, I knew it's New York people.
0:43.8	We know, we just knew.
0:45.0	We knew we knew we knew each other.
0:46.8	You felt the same thing.
0:48.5	He is a NBA, former NBA player, high school superstar, entrepreneur, Titan in the cannabis industry.
0:58.8	We will talk about all of that.
1:00.3	And somebody that here at 35 Ventures were starting to do business with.
1:03.7	So very exciting.
1:04.9	So without further ado, please welcome to the show.
1:08.0	My friend, Mr. Al Harrington.
1:09.6	Al, how are you today, friend?
1:28.4	I'm good, fellas. How y'all doing, man? Y'all good. Yes, sir. Very good. How are you? New York bouncing back. New York is all the way bouncing back, man. You got to get yourself over here. This basketball every night. We got the nets and Liberty now. now the Knicks were cracking, as you know, for a minute, and the weather's good, restaurants are open. Yeah, I got to get out there, man, because L.A. is still kind of shaky or whatever, so I need to come on back home, man. I know I'm hearing that. It's funny because, like, it is very tough to keep up with how other people are kind of evolving in this new world.
	...

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