Our Dirty Imagination: PEDs in the NBA

[duncan228]

Our Dirty Imagination: PEDs in the NBA
SportingNews

Having had a day of air travel to mull over Ray Allen’s comments on Rashard Lewis, and knowing what I know about Allen as a person, I’ve decided he was kidding. No, the Boston guard didn’t really think that his old pal Lewis should’ve been kept out of the conference semis, even if his first positive test for a banned substance came back during that series.

But what Allen did do, however facetiously, is point out a truly bizarre loophole in the NBA’s testing policy, one that makes you wonder just how serious the league is about catching wrongdoers in the act. To be fair, a 10-day suspension is no joke, and there are likely a slew of biochemical rationale for the split-sample system. Still, Ray Ray’s question remains: If a guy comes up positive at the height of the playoffs, why let the process amble along, with the final answer coming down well after the Finals are done?

I know that science takes time, and there’s a presumption of innocence in this country—well, at least in our judicial system. And yet a brief timeline of the Lewis test suggests that the eventual outcome is more about a symbolic slap on the wrist than any real attempt to dig up dirt. That could be evidence that the NBA is engaged in an MLB-level cover-up, since the less you see, the more there must be under wraps, right? Or, is Allen’s genial, then snide, reaction to a Lewis test that could’ve altered the course of history even more proof that the NBA just isn’t that worried?

Every time I raise this point, I’m reminded that steroids aren’t just about muscles, that HGH allows for endurance, and that LeBron James has no right to exist in the natural world. Oh, and that as we speak, there is some mole-like mad doctor toiling away in a lab to make the drugs that will make Nike contracts sing. Actually, go ahead and throw the dagger: Raw strength does count for something in the NBA. But here’s a list of things that no amount of working out, or juicing, or some combination of the two, can’t help: Shooting touch, court vision, defensive instincts, timing when going up for a block, communication between teammates, and sense of rebounding geometry. Even athleticism, that most nebulous and possibly useless of basketball skills, can’t be conclusively tied to any PED use.

So what does that leave? Getting bigger, and using some super-secret drug X that, like the NBA’s totally secret PED problem, may or may not exist. I suppose it’s fishy that players like Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett work out like maniacs during the offseason, even as they age. Or that Dwight Howard and LeBron James just keep getting bigger. But for these elite players, body is always at the mercy of their overall game. Kobe meticulously gains and sheds weight or muscles depending on his plan for the year. Garnett does it to channel and sustain intensity. Genetically, Howard is Shaq with a work ethic; if you want to single out James as the most likely user, why not go back through history and yank out any number of other absolute freaks of nature. There’s a reason that expression exists, you know.

In football, being bigger and faster is in itself a virtue for many positions. Same with hitting the long ball in baseball, or to get more sophisticated about it, allowing the body to recover from the wear and tear of a long season. Like the increased endurance required by cycling, it’s this aspect of performance-enhancing that would seem to appeal most to basketball players. But why, then, do so many NBA players miss so much time for what might seem like "minor" injuries? Would strength and/or endurance alone make for anything beyond Reggie Evans?

It’s like we’ve so lost the capacity to believe in elite athletes that, when there are a zillion other skills involved, we still figure that doping could be an essential feature of some players’ success. Or that, as a matter of course, injecting this unpredictable factor into a far more complex picture of greatness would still appeal to, or make sense for, NBA stars. It’s telling that many players—the list currently includes Steve Nash, LeBron James and Antawn Jamison—have turned to yoga to maintain themselves in an all-natural way. This integrates the body-sustaining qualities of PEDs with all sorts of body/mind work and increased awareness on the court. Why don’t we accuse Nash of juicing? Because the idea of him fine-tuning himself through yoga is far more in line with the game he plays, and his personality, than an indiscriminant HGH needle to heal his back.

I don’t dispute that someday, a drug might be developed that improves basketball skills, or affects the body in a way more in line with basketball’s view of it. Nor am I completely ruling out the possibility of some players using some drugs under certain cir stances—like, say, if an unskilled banger was trying to beat out another one in training camp. But between the nature of the game, the at ude of the players, and what it is they’re paid to do, PEDs today—and as much as any paranoid semi-doc has been able to tell me—just don’t jibe with the kind of seamless, detail-oriented approach to mind and body that prevails in basketball training today.

If Gilbert Arenas was for a time sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber to increase his lung capacity, with others following suit, do you really see him turning around one day, slapping himself in the forehead, and saying "oh, there’s a drug for that?" I may never know exactly what happens behind closed doors, but as the Rashard Lewis suspension shows, if the league’s system is set up to take its time during the biggest games of the year, and even opponents are ready to laugh off a positive test … doesn’t that tell you something about how the leagues and players view this phantom menace?

Or, to put it another way: If there were a drug plague in the NBA, where’s the statistical uptick or blatant physical indicators that, across the league, something’s changed? Basketball may not be squeaky-clean, but given our points of reference for PED use in other sports—in terms of both motivation and effect on the game—any panic or paranoia just doesn’t add up.

[Allanon]

Error about the Rashard Lewis suspension...that was 10 games, not 10 days.

Rashard lost over 10% of his salary this season aka $2.2 Million out of $18 million. That was pretty severe punishment for taking an over-the counter suplement.

Great article though.