Playing the Field: Steve Nash’s highway beer assist

What says Welcome to L.A. like a freeway and cheap beer?

We here at Playing the Field are pretty sure this is just a marketing
ploy by Keystone Light, but nonetheless this video of new Lakers point
guard grabbing a beer from another car while riding in a taxi is cool.
Seriously, why would Nash be riding down the freeway in a taxi? We know
he’s not a flashy guy, but he can get a limo.

The “L.A. fans have been cool” tag at the end gives it away as a viral
marketing campaign we’d say. So good job Keystone, you’ve created the
second-best viral campaign of the year behind Pepsi’s “Uncle Drew” campaign with Kyrie Irving.

But he didn’t fail!

My favorite overlooked story of the week was that of Broncos linebacker D.J. Williams and his on-going saga over being suspended for drug use. We already knew he’d been suspended six games, that he’s appealing it and that he failed his critical third test after a bottle fell from his waist while peeing in the cup.

But oh no, the hilarity doesn’t stop there as we found out when Williams
filed his appeal papers last week. Since Williams had already failed
one test for “substances of abuse” (i.e. recreational drugs, not
performance-enhancing drugs), he was subject to random testing. When he
took a test last month, half of the sample was sent for testing for PEDs
and the other for recreational drugs. (He’s appealing based on the idea
that he didn’t know it was going to be tested for recreational drugs,
but that’s obviously just a technicality at this point and it’s already
been tossed out once.)

The good news from that test last month — NO DRUGS! The bad news — IT WASN’T HUMAN URINE! Oops.

Here’s what the tester wrote: “The specimen does not contain any
endogenous steroids. The profile is not consistent with a normal,
healthy male urine specimen.”

If you do a Google search,
you’ll find dozens of sites selling “synthetic urine.” The more you
know, right? It appears as though this was what Williams used in his
second test and could be that mysterious bottle from the third test.

If this sounds familiar, you may remember immortal Vikings running back Onterrio Smith once being caught
with a Whizzinator back in May 2005. Essentially it was the same stuff
Williams was using, only in powdered form. Oh, the mid-2000s, truly the
Dark Ages of drug test manipulation.

I can’t be the only one who instantly recalls the “Seinfeld” episode when Elaine fails a drug test for opium after eating a poppy seed bagel after this Williams story. It would’ve been even funnier if the testers had found Williams’s urine was consistent with an elderly woman who had arthritis. Remember kids, “The dark continent is no place for an addict.”

Follow Metro New York Sports Editor Mark Osborne on Twitter @MetroNYSports. He totally goes old school with week-old pee in a Snapple bottle when taking drug tests.