Recent NCAA Tournament champions, Darrell Arthur and Mario Chalmers, were caught with marijuana and asked to leave the mandatory "rookie transition" seminar in a New York-area resort. They have been banned from the entire rookie transition program, will be fined $20,000 and are subject to any punishment that their individual teams decide to implement.
Initially, this is really disappointing from two players who have a very bright future in the NBA, but according to Darrell Arthur, he wasn't involved in any situations involving marijuana. This is a pretty standard claim to make once you've been accused of possession, but the lack of evidence against the two has me questioning if this punishment is too severe.
Security claims that Arthur and Chalmers initially refused them entry into their room, at which point the police became involved. They found women and "evidence of marijuana use" a little bit after 3 a.m. on Wednesday. Officially, they were kicked out for having prohibited visitors, as no actual drugs were found.
It's one thing to kick the players out for having visitors that they knew they couldn't have, but adding a $20,000 fine seems a little excessive given that there's no proof of drug use. I'll admit to being a little biased for Arthur and Chalmers, given that they seem like good guys. If Ron Artest or Chris Anderson were caught in this situation, I would probably assume their were some dead guys in the closet as well.
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