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PED usage in the NBA and other pro sports
Ed Hollison:
I wanted to make a standing thread for people to chime in with stories/anecdotes/opinions on PED usage in basketball and other sports.
I've become interested in this topic of late because there are some head-scratching things happening in sports that I suspect indicate that PED usage is on the rise. In basketball alone, to name just a few peculiarities:
Athletic feats: A player (Russell Westbrook) just averaged a triple double for a season for the first time in 55 years. He had a triple double in just over half of the regular season games he played in.
Endurance/health: Lebron James, who is 32 and has already played 50,000 NBA minutes, led the league in minutes per game during the regular season, and looked fresh as lettuce and frequently the most athletic player on the floor during the playoffs.
Jumps in individual careers: A handful of players took giant leaps in productivity this past year. A good example is Isaiah Thomas, who averaged nearly 30 ppg (his previous high was 22). To illustrate IT's remarkable jump: he took far and away the most threes in his career and yet also saw a jump in his FG%.
League-wide explosion in offense: The NBA just finished with its highest ever offensive rating. This is not a long-term trend; offensive efficiency has always fluctuated over time, but since the 2014-15 season has exploded. This coincides with some amazing individual performances, like for instance Steph Curry's 2015-16 season in which he posted a 0.630 eFG%.
Of course it's not just basketball. Here are handful of other peculiarities of recent years:
- Peyton Manning easily set the single-season touchdown passing record in 2013, shortly after having two vertebrae in his neck fused together and many people assuming he was finished.
- Venus and Serena Williams are dominating women's tennis into their late 30s, a sport where the prime age used to be considered around 15-25.
- Olympic swimmer Dara Torres set a US record in the 50m freestyle in 2007 at age 40. She swam faster at 40 than she did in her early 20s.
- Baseball saw a steady decline in home run rate after the Mcgwire/Sosa scandal and the start of steroid testing in 2003, but in the past two years has seen an explosion in home runs, with a rate now higher than the pre-testing era.
There are tons more of these.
Two points to finish:
1) There are plenty of other explanations for these anomalies. Maybe the baseballs are now juiced. Maybe NBA offenses have just gotten smarter. Maybe nutrition and training are better now. All of these are possible, but I think the simplest and most likely explanation linking all of these things is this: there's huge amounts of money at stake, both for the athletes as well as the leagues/advertisers/teams/networks. And that means there is every incentive for the leagues to look like there's legit testing, and no incentive to actually bust the superstars.
2) I realize that some people don't care. But a lot of us do. First, there's a chance that many of these beloved figures will die at young ages. That alone is enough to call for some serious thought on this, especially if younger athletes at all levels risk endangering their health to keep up.
But never mind all that, the reason you should care is this: Jaylen Brown.
Jaylen Brown is working his tail off, and at age 20 he's already a physical freak. Now, let's say (for the sake of argument) that Jaylen Brown could eventually become an NBA legend if he combines his natural ability, hard work, and will to win by also taking the same drugs that other to NBA players are taking. But he doesn't. He has other interests, and he's smart enough to recognize that potentially shortening his life isn't worth it. So he keeps clean while the majority of other NBA stars use, and he has a fine career, makes a couple all-star games. The Celtics never quite become that dominant team during his tenure, unable to make it over the hump because they lack that "transcendent" superstar.
This scenario should bother you, no matter which team you root for, because it implies that major outcomes -- who wins, who loses, and who's ultimately considered the greatest of all-time in their respective sports -- are being determined in part by who's willing to push the envelope with chemicals, and their own health. For me, at least, that thought ruins a big part of being a fan.
Happy to hear from others, including those who think I'm nuts and/or blowing this out of proportion.
Roy H.:
I have stopped caring. I think that a huge percentage of professional athletes use. Look at the two biggest heroes in Boston sports this century. Tom Brady? Possible user. David Ortiz? Probable user.
It was fun when we could just point at cheats like Barry Bonds and Arod. Now, so many names have come out that literally anybody could be under suspicion. I find it laughable that well under 1% of NBA players have failed PED tests. We had guys juicing on our mid-level varsity football team in Maine. I would speculate that every college and professional program in the United States has dirty players in it.
kozlodoev:
--- Quote from: Roy H. on July 13, 2017, 11:21:17 AM ---I have stopped caring. I think that a huge percentage of professional athletes use. Look at the two biggest heroes in Boston sports this century. Tom Brady? Possible user. David Ortiz? Probable user.
--- End quote ---
Where's that coming from? It's news to me.
Granath:
You have no evidence backing up your point. The burden of evidence falls on you.
It's far more likely that factors like the below list are to cause for the state of the NBA:
1. The decline in big men and the move to more flexible roles
2. Rules preventing hand checking
3. Better diet, conditioning, personal trainers, advances in medical science, analysis, etc.
There will always be PEDs but either (1) they're not being discovered by testing or (2) they're not as prevalent as you think. You can't equate baseball to basketball. In baseball, you had PED pitchers throwing the ball harder to PED batters who were bigger and stronger; add in a reduced strike zone, balls that were consistently tested at the top of the acceptable range and a league where talent was stretched thin by expansion and you have the perfect storm that created the records with management and executives encouraging it because it put butts in the seats after canceling the World Series in a fit of madness. That wouldn't necessarily hold true in basketball. For every PED-enabled offensive star there's a PED-fueled guy guarding him. It wouldn't equate to an explosion of offense.
However, what would result in an explosion of offense are rule and reffing changes. No hand checking. Limited contact permissible. The emphasis of the 3 point shot. Fewer big men in the sport dominating the middle. Add in better analysis tools (Sabermetrics) and it's gotten more efficient as well. It all adds up to a more open, offensive game.
Let's take IT. There would be no way he'd even be in the league from the 80s through the early 2000s. He'd be destroyed. They'd hand check him to death and his reckless drives into the middle would result in him being in a body cast. A guy like Bill Laimbeer would have put IT into the 4th row of the stands. Stephen Curry may not be much more to this league than his father Del Curry - a 3 point shooting specialist limited to coming off the bench. But now, those guys are free to operate almost unhindered. This lack of physicality stretches throughout the league and even helps guys like Lebron. They simply don't have to endure the same punishment every single game, 82+ games per year.
Let's wrap this up with another offensive explosion in a different sport. The NFL in the 70s was a defensive, running league. That's the way the game was played. Then they banned the head slap. They allowed the offensive linemen to extend their hands. They eliminated the bump and run. They greatly protected the QBs (where you can hit them and how hard). And now you have an NFL track meet where even average QBs routinely throw for more than 4,000 yards. That was done 21 times in the NFL in its entire history until 1993. It was done 21 times in just 2013 and 2014 alone. That's not due to PEDs.
Now take the NBA. No hand checking. No grabbing. Flagrant fouls. Defensive 3 seconds. The list goes on and on and these all favor the offense. So your hand wringing is really misplaced here. You don't need to look for a conspiracy. You just need to open the rule book.
rondohondo:
Lebrons block head, and tumors on his jaw may make one wonder....
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