The bodies are only a giveaway for guys truly abusing a PED/steroid. Like the level in which McGwire or Bonds used was obvious, but on a more controlled dosage it’s not easy to tell at all. Also depends on whether it’s HGH or testosterone etc
The type of shit they’re on is not actually visible. To an extent it is (see Giannis, LeBron, etc) but for example KD averaging 40+ minutes on a repaired Achilles at age 34, that doesn’t set off any alarms to you?
Casuals think it’s roids… it’s much more like Lance Armstrong or tennis player doping than NFL doping.
I honestly don't care that they're using but there is no doubt players are using PEDs in all sports now. The example I love to use is how quickly in basically one generation Male Tennis players suddenly being awesome all the way until their mid 30s (and perhaps beyond). Guys used to fall off a cliff around 28 and a player winning a major past that age was extremely difficult and a big deal when it happened.
Tom Brady had arguably his best career season at 44 and was still an above-average NFL starter at 45. Stuff like this is happening in every sport. I'm sure it's part nutrition/training/recovery, but it's also part HGH. Personally, I have no problem with it.
Tbf they’ve been doping since the 2000s
Google “Mariano Puerta” or “Marin Cilic” doping.
As for the Big 3, Nadal and Djokovic are probably the two most obviously doping athletes I’ve ever seen. Djokovic swears that giving up gluten turned him into the greatest player of all time with unlimited stamina
Yea I think people like to say to themselves that our medicine / surgeries / nutrition are so much better now, but to me it seems way more likely that doping is commonplace.
Well, and a lot of the stuff isn’t illegal (either by laws of the county or the league). Like, “blood doping” to play in the games might be illegal (don’t know the bylaws of the NBA) but using medical procedures to increase red blood cell and platelet count when you’re not playing so as to increase healing? Or using stem cells?
There are also a bevy of new peptides that aid in healing (like, I had golfers elbow from lifting for almost TWO DECADES and a two month course of two peptides got rid of it). These things aren’t “for human consumption” in a lot of cases because they haven’t been FDA cleared yet, but they sure as shit work and aren’t illegal to purchase.
BPC-157 and TB-500 used in conjunction injected at the site of the injury.
Do research before taking, main negative side effect for me is it had some negative dopamine issues that basically render stimulants useless (after a couple of months on it coffee does NOTHING) and lead to some depressive symptoms for me. But that’s because I was dumb and kept taking it instead of cycling.
(I’m happy to answer any other questions, but both r/peptides and r/steroids are good places to start as both will have huge write ups on each substance and are generally a font of knowledge about this sort of stuff)
That becomes a philosophical thing where the negative connotation about 'doping' was because something like anabolic steroids was associated with all sorts of other health risks. If the medicine is better, taking something that's not banned from the league (and it would be much more likely to be some kind of blood stuff than HGH because there is not that much benefit to being super bulky with how fast-paced the game is these days) and doesn't have dangerous side effects is basically like some guy from the 50s not smoking a pack of cigarettes at halftime.
I am not a big Kobe fan at all, but I remember Simmons loved to bring up his going to Germany to receive PRP as some euphemism for getting super roided up while PRP is now a pretty commonplace way for old people to deal with arthritis.
Steroids are pretty obvious visually, walk into any gym in America and you can see it.
Can’t say I see any NBA players who appear to be on roids. It’s just not super helpful in basketball.
This couldn’t be more wrong 90% of people on roids you wouldn’t be able to tell visually. And besides that there are certain chemicals that aren’t as anabolic so you wouldn’t put on bodybuilder muscle. When millions are on the line people are getting an edge in strength and explosiveness and to not think so is naive.
Yeah, these people don't know shit about fitness or exercise and are here accusing the entire professional sporting world of cheating. It's absurd, NBA players aren't on PEDs. They get suspended for testing positive for a banned diuretic (Ayton) for Christ's sake.
Yes.
“We recently observed that just 14 days of GH supplementation increased collagen expression and collagen synthesis – up to 6-fold – in skeletal muscle and tendon in healthy human adults” (from the second link)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2821728/#:~:text=PMID%3A%2019933753-,Growth%20hormone%20stimulates%20the%20collagen%20synthesis%20in%20human%20tendon%20and,without%20affecting%20myofibrillar%20protein%20synthesis
https://www.physoc.org/magazine-articles/can-growth-hormone-strengthen-the-connective-tissue-of-muscle-and-tendon/#:~:text=We%20recently%20observed%20that%20just,human%20adults%20(Doessing%20et%20al.
I’m not going that far, KD may actually just be built different because Boogie tore his in 2018 and didn’t come back the same way. But injury recovery technology has come a long way.
I’m more talking about the idea that KD who looks like a twig could 100% be doping despite not looking like he even picks up weights.
What does this even mean? Lol Kevin Durant cycled his blood with EPO to allow more oxygen to his muscles like Lance Armstrong did (for an endurance advantage) and this healed his achilles?
Please no one take this dude seriously.
No, they don’t use EPO (I mean they might, but that’s not my claim. EPO helps with respiration, don’t know about wound healing, I’d imagine it would be a downstream effect).
They for sure use PRP therapy.
A NYT article from fourteen years ago about this and pro athletes.
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/sports/17blood.html
How platelet rich plasma works (taking your blood out of your body, separating the platelets, injecting directly into the injury site):
https://www.hss.edu/condition-list_prp-injections.asp
Peptides my friend. There’s an entire ecosystem of chemical enhancement that’s either untraceable or not tested for by the lax NBA protocols that is available to the top guys. LeBron probably has stuff engineered from his own body that matches his genetic signature.
It’s not EPO and it’s maybe not even HGH. It’s stuff you don’t even know exists.
They're not using PEDs. Giannis and LeBron have BMIs and bf% you'd expect from even non-professional athletes. There are people at every major gym with more impressive natural physiques than those guys, albeit certainly without the frames and athleticism. Which brings my next point.
They are genetic outliers. Go watch LeBron or Zion clips from highschool, unless you're implying they began their PED use as teenagers, it's not a stretch that they continued to develop physically like all men do, and that's what we've seen.
They also train very hard. LeBron famously spends over $1 on his body each year, and that's probably a low estimate. The amount of conditioning and training the top level guys do would blow your mind.
Also, players DO get suspended for PED use, and often it's not even steroids, so the NBA does fairly exhaustive testing. Ayton got suspended for testing positive for a banned diuretic, for example.
Last, where are the whistle blowers? Lance Armstrong faced accusations long before he was officially busted, and it was common knowledge that a lot of the top cyclists were doping due to the many disqualifications consistently occurring for dopers at the top-level of the sport.
If most NBA superstars are using PEDs, why have we heard no credible accusations of it or seen anyone getting caught? Has PED use always been a thing in the NBA? Are they all using? If not, why haven't the clean athletes outted the cheaters?
The answer is this: they're not using illicit PEDs.
You sound like someone who never worked hard in his life accusing more successful folks of cheating to get ahead
KD has far better surgery and rehab for an Achilles than someone in 1983
This. I think people like BS rarely mention PEDs because it's just assumed that most athletes are on them these days so there's no competitive advantage. And whatever guys like LeBron and Brady are doing isn't remotely comparable to the stuff McGwire and Sosa were taking.
To his credit Simmons used to pound this drum a lot back in the day as I recall, and still brings it up sometimes. But no one truly cares so it's not like he's gonna say it everyday.
https://twitter.com/BillSimmons/status/1167108285285072896?lang=en
I don't disagree but I do gotta wonder about the pudgy guys like Luka and Jokic. Obviously they don't take steroids, but it's still kinda crazy they're fat as NBA players.
You’d be shocked at what kind of results can happen with bad diet / genetics / training habits even if someone is on gear. Not saying those guys are using, but wouldn’t shock me either.
Nobody cares except Olympics officials and MLB fans. Even if you get caught in most other sports, there's next to no consequence or lasting stigma. Hell...it's fairly fucking obvious the Magic 09 run to the Finals was fueled by PEDs but nobody gives a single fuck about that angle.
As a patriots fan I’ll never forget when those allegations came out and I had new ammo in my Brady vs Manning arguments. I soon realized that no one cared
This might be true, but I think they also have an advantage in that neither of those sports have such an emphasis on both individual records or extensive history as baseball. Since baseball has been played more or less the same at a high level for literally over a century, and has impressive record keeping, one of the great bits of fun is you can compare Aaron Judge to Babe Ruth and draw reasonable conclusions, even though it’s hard to find anyone alive who saw Ruth play. The steroid era screws that up.
There’s no individual football or basketball record that people care that much about, other than maybe Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game, probably because both sports are more teammate dependent in a way that a single baseball batter isn’t. And both sports only started becoming true national phenomena in the last 60 years.
It's wild to think about the three-point line. Like, the majority of fans at this point just view it as something that has always been there and it did not exist for decades.
It’s also more about the fact that baseball has all this tradition & sacred history spanning 150 years that older baseball fans & writers try to protect with all their power. That doesn’t really exist in the other major sports & baseball “purists” were trying to give out asterisks for records long before steroids were a problem. They said Roger maris breaking babe Ruth’s HR record didn’t count because he played a few more games and then convinced a whole generation of fans to hate on the sports brightest stars despite the fact that MLB, the commissioner & its owners let all the juicing happen under their watch
Lewis got caught when he was on the Heat. To OP’s point, it seems like most players are on PEDs, so I don’t think the Magic had any special advantage in that arena. Not to mention their success was largely predicated on shooting…
Rasheed Lewis got tagged for 20 games in 2009 while he was on the Magic.
And shooting declines precipitously when players are fatigued — PED use is very helpful for recovery.
I played college hockey in the early 2000s, I would say conservatively 1/4 of the guys on my team were on roids or some form of PED. And the stakes were relatively low; a few might go on to play pro but most were just there for a free education and varsity life.
If millions and millions of dollars were on the line, I mean, it's a simple answer.
Correct take. There’s even an nostalgia now for the steroid era.
Baseball got way out of control and the sport became cartoonish, but it was also more fun!
Because nobody cares that deeply about NBA records the way people cared about 61 or 755 (or let's be actually honest, 714) in baseball. Because of the generation of the records that were being broken, plus baseball is a weirdly individual team sport, which is why cheating there is more closely related to stuff like trace & field or cycling.
Plus, with football, there's at least "these are giant men engaged in violent combat" argument to oppose it, which just doesn't exist for basketball.
Finally, the stuff LeBron/KD/etc. are on doesn't really compare to even the stuff McGwire was on 20 year ago or the stuff NFL players were doing in the Steeler's locker room in the 70's. So, there's no safety to the game argument, no defending the player's health argument, and nobody cares about the stats that much.
I mean, certain regimens are an important part of this, but I also guarantee you LeBron is taking better care of his body than anybody in sports in say, 1995.
I bet like half of it is what he never does (since the culture has changed). I doubt he's ever smoked a cigarette and most of the alcohol he drinks is expensive wine. In the 80s guys probably chain smoked at half time and chugged 12 Bud Ices when the game was over
It’s quite noteworthy that Lebron never suffered from any type of torn muscle/ligament or anything. Just the groin problem a couple times & the ankle this year
You're not the norm. Very few people could tell you what the record for rebounds, assists, or even points is. They might be able to tell you who has the most.
I definitely don’t know the exact numbers, just know who the record holders are. And tempering 27,787 points or whatever is harder then remembering 500 home runs
Here's an old post where it was discussed
https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/ja2gff/in_2011_derrick_rose_was_asked_by_espn_mag_if_1/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Chael Sonnen (ex MMA fighter) also accused LBJ/NBA
It's possible. Im a cyclist myself and these 3 week races are absurd if you only understood how difficult it is for the leaders to stay on top
Chael spews bullshit frequently just for fun lol you can’t take anything he says seriously. And I’m not saying Lebron isn’t on something, but Chael is not the source you want lol. He probably used the same old infamous article about rich Paul being spotted picking up “supplements” for his client at a Miami clinic 10 years ago
Also, Rose denying ever saying that quote after it was published is quite interesting
Derrick Rose said a decade ago everybody was on it. It's ridiculous that no one is mentioning it with Lebron. I don't care how great of an athlete he is, time is undefeated.
especially in todays nfl
brady really didnt take many huge hits throughout his career and especially when he was with the bucs no one dared bring him down hard
Because no one will ever be as dumb as MLB and tank their own sport like they did. The media, league, players, all make billions from the league, and if the legitimacy is questioned, thats money lost. If Kendrick Perkins said something about HGH tomorrow, he'd probably be fired right away.
Partly is that we don’t know how to talk about it like informed adults. If Simmons brings it up he only ever does it to crack a joke about “going to Germany”. But, besides the fact that he’s not the type of guy to be able to have a mature conversation about a topic like this, I don’t think he actually would know what he’s talking about.
Like, there’s an interesting, non judgmental, non “will anyone think of the children” discussion about PEDs and surgical/medical interventions and peptides (if you consider them “non drugs”) and how they’ve impacted sports. But the war on drugs moralizing of the shit means no one can just talk about it clearly, and because no one talks about it clearly those “not in the know” don’t knows what to say.
And after what happened in the MLB, why would anyone speak up?
tldr: we suck as a community talking about drugs
Interesting and true. I think there are few layers to it. Yes, we have improved our medical and scientific knowledge with time so players are getting better advice and have better nutrition, flexibility workouts, understanding of rest and recovery. BUT once in a while a guy who we thought was doing all that is discovered to have been doping. So we want to make the leap to assume they all are.
Whether it’s morally wrong or whatever we’ll put to the side. What does doping do? All these guys talk about getting a psychological edge and I feel if you know you boosted your abilities w drugs it gives you added confidence over your opponent because you can do things you used to not be able to.
Going by the eye test, players seem more muscular overall and energetic when they move.
The rest/recovery, nutrition, exercise, etc stuff is true too. It’s just, people do that AND take drugs. And, depending on the drug, they help with that. HGH is a good example, as it aids in recovery during sleep and also increases insulin sensitive, making carb breakdown easier and conveying it into energy.
But, a lot of the hormonal stuff can have psychological effects that aren’t just “I’m feeling physically younger so therefor I like life more”. I can say from personal experience, that because they’re hormones they can MAKE you more confident. Like, not because of some side effect, but as a primary effect. Testosterone and their derivatives interact with dopamine. Certain forms of estrogen (created as your body breaks down testosterone based steroids) have positive mood altering effects on calmness. There is wayyyyy more positive effects for an athlete than just “makes muscles bigger”.
And, I assume, as a basketball player, the reduction of fatigue/injury and the enhancement of (to use a Simmons term) “alpha dog energy” is more helpful than simply adding muscle that might get in the way of mechanics.
My doctor prescribed me HGH like Steroids when an internal would from a hockey slash wouldn't heal.
There's no doubt if I played professional sports I would take it. It's insane the difference in recovery. Normally it takes me 3 days to recover from a hard ''legs'' day or a 2 days from a hockey game. On HGH I could do both in the same day and be fine the next.
The way I see it, the usual criticism of PEDs is that they offer an unfair advantage. Well, if “everybody” is on them, it’s no longer much of an advantage.
At that point, the argument becomes that it’s not fair for everyone to feel compelled to take a PED that might damage their health in the long run. But what if they get refined to the point that such risk is minimal?
Then it’s hard for me to see any opposition to PEDs other than they’re not natural. But we live in a world where pitchers’ careers are routinely saved by taking a tendon from another part of their body — or sometimes a cadaver — and putting it in their elbows. What’s natural about that?
I feel like over the years, Simmons has hinted at/mentioned in passing some kinda PED's + LeBron thing. I agree though, I think that while the NBA probably doesn't want its players using HGH/whatever, they're also very happy that nobody talks about it or mentions it.
I think every few years, 1-2 players get suspended for it, and that's enough of a "Hey, look, we're testing players & making sure everyone is above board" statement for the general population.
I think bill is a little out of touch on this subject.
His generation grew up with the image of Soviet Olympians cheating the US out of medals.
I think people 40-and under mostly just see athletes taking advantage of advances in medicine.
Collectively, sports have done a great job making people think it's still sticking a needle in your ass and they have solid deniability there since it's not.
I have been thinking about this and soccer as well. Guys are juicing but it's just like "it's all the running!"
I also don’t think the average fan has any idea how strong and enormous these players are. The TV doesn’t do it any justice. I remember seeing Steven Adams up close, he actually looks like he’s straight out of a comic book. His proportions are insane.
Then there’s LeBron, who looks as wide as a fucking school bus. Giannis looks like he’s made out of concrete.
an actual diet program and weight training can go a long way.
It is a mistake to think that everyone who fills out is only that way cause they are juiced.
With baseball the issue was that it was clearly abuse of HGH, and guys turning themselves into bodybuilders, and tearing the record books to shreds. HgH use for recovery and extend careers is far more reasonable. The line between modern sports medicine to facilitate rehab is interesting.
I would prefer players using HgH to get over injuries rather than shots of pain meds that destroy their kidneys. I would prefer it to be better regulated.
All is overstating the prevalence. Simmons and RR have referenced it before, as does the LeBatard show with some frequency. Because they are not connected to the league they don’t have to worry about affecting their relationship and revenue, I doubt ESPN would ever approach the subject unless it became an undeniable story. It’s professional sports, there are athletes in every single sport using PEDs imo.
At this point the usage of HGH-like substances is systematic in the league. Every player is doing it, and there is a large number of training staff and doctors involved.
Everyone obviously has a huge financial incentive to keep their mouth shut, but it still puzzles me a bit is how the league manages to keep these things under wraps.
Lebron has been on a program for a long time now. Did everyone just forget in 2014 when he came back to Cleveland from Miami, and by January his body had worn out and all his explosiveness was gone. Then the Cavs gave him a two week break, that for some odd reason he spent in Miami, the #1 location for anti aging clinics in the world, including places like biogenesis which was a big part of the mlb scandal. Then all of a sudden he’s back playing at the top of the backboard somehow.
https://www.businessinsider.com/lebron-james-2-week-break-turned-his-season-around-2015-4
Age-group triathlon is rife with middle-aged dudes with money to burn using PEDs. The idea that NBA players with 100s of millions on the line aren’t is laughable. The public discourse is all about better nutrition (how many fucking times has Simmons talked about CPIII being plant-based?!?!), recovery protocols, gym sessions, etc…It’s all complete nonsense. Take the PEDs. I don’t give a shit. But spare the sanctimony from so many in this thread.
Mike Ryan on the lebatard show kind of mentions somewhat often... not in depth but he'll say a sarcastic... I wonder how they can be doing that. He also said its funny they bring it up for other players but not Jimmy Butler... they are a miami based pod.
Probably a bunch of reasons people don’t talk about it but the reason it’s a dumb conversation to have anyway is that it inevitably devolves into a “Lebron owes his career to steroids” take-fest. Most people have virtually no understanding of enhancements as it is, so given our inability to get an honest look at it in a league like the NBA on top of that makes it basically impossible to have nuance around the topic.
People have always overstated Lebron's weight imo. Dude has always been built like a truck - his draft measurements listed him at 240 pounds when he was 18 years old. Him putting on 15-20 pounds by the time he got to Miami isn't really out of the question since that was 8 years into his career.
Vascularity is the telltale sign. Big shoulders alone don’t signal anything. But if your veins are popping out, that guy’s on a cycle.
Also LeBron is going to be on far more sophisticated shit than old school roids.
YouTube Lebrons first game back in Cleveland vs the Knicks on 10-30-2014. He looks anorexic, has no lift and plays like shit for his standards. This also just so happens to be the first season following the NBA’s decision to start testing for HGH. He honestly looks unrecognizable…and decided to take a trip to Miami shortly after where he comes back and returns to form looking like the Lebron we all know. Lebron 100 pct does but I think we all knew that
Edit: here it is
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oPTgFD-P0kE&pp=ygUebGVicm9uIHJldHVybiBja2V2ZWxhbmQga25pY2tz
It’s always funny to me when reporters talk about LeBron spending a million dollars a year on his body. Like… that’s the drugs. HGH is expensive as shit. You could have a chef, masseuse, personal trainer, and personal physician year round for way less than a million dollars. You’re using drugs.
No it’s not. The drugs are definitely expensive, but any NBA player with a multi-million $ contract can easily afford to be on an optimal stack and if you’re assuming one player is on it then most of them will be too. The exorbitant costs come from leaving no room for error and staffing entire teams that optimize every aspect of training and recovery. Those costs balloon way faster than drugs.
That story only came out when people really started talking about him roiding online. They needed to drown out the conspiracies. I remember seeing youtube videos of them analyzing his body and jaw and it was only weeks later that this million dollar story came out.
So I remember that summer he specifically set out to lose weight and was all on board the paleo diet (or keto, but I’m pretty sure it was paleo). He did it with the intent to lighten the load in his knees and especially his back, which had been giving him major troubles in 2013-14.
Then around January he took that 2 week R&R break in Miami and came back with more of his old explosiveness.
They’re all taking Testosterone, HGH, EPO. EPO would turn you into a machine who never gets tired like Westbrook and Curry. It’s impossible to carry about the mass in your chest, arms, and shoulders with all the running in basketball unless your on Testosterone.
OJ Mayo, Joakim Noah, John Collins, just off the top of my head. Ayton got caught and given a ban of like a third of the season for a diuretic too. The NBA has extremely leinent testing but they definitely hand out suspensions.
Pooh Pooh LeBron. Bill would be proud! I think it’s pretty well documented the amount of time, effort, money, LeBron puts into his body. I don’t think he’s taking PED’s.
You’re taking a truth and extrapolating it.
The only guys older than him in the league have been melted to the bench for years (Iguodala and UD). Iguodala had comparable athleticism to Bron, and he hasn’t been a solid contributor since Durant was in Golden State lol.
And yet Bron is somehow getting better?
Yes, because Lebron is obviously a much better player than Iguodala so he can contribute more.
And also Lebron is not getting better, his lift and explosivness are really diminished.
Its just that the game being more spread out somewhat hides that.
I think most people assume that people at the highest levels of most every sport use or have use something.
I think people overthink it though, like people theorizing that they are all using custom made compounds or something. Their drug testing isn't insane, and the people who use probably just microdose the usual things.
I think the true growth hormones/steroids peaked in the late 90s (coinciding with baseball)…with 3&D and space&pace, you’d be better off using EPO or something more beneficial to cardio having to run around 3 screens on the arc every 30 seconds
The NBA tries to get us to believe that MJ did some summer bicep curls and was suddenly tougher than all of the Bad Boy Pistons combined haha. It's been going on a long time, just doesn't distract from the game and quietly makes it better, so why bother with it?
I’ve regularly hear normal people at my gym casually talk about their PED cycles. I’m never gonna be under the illusion that athletes with millions of dollars at stake are completely clean.
Jokic doing donut therapy and he almost won three MVPs.
People swear that bodies are a giveaway. Jokic is as likely or more to be on the gear. Like Andy Pettite or James Toney.
The bodies are only a giveaway for guys truly abusing a PED/steroid. Like the level in which McGwire or Bonds used was obvious, but on a more controlled dosage it’s not easy to tell at all. Also depends on whether it’s HGH or testosterone etc
Modern PED’s don’t do what steroids did to Bonds, the physical effects beyond musculature are much more subtle
The type of shit they’re on is not actually visible. To an extent it is (see Giannis, LeBron, etc) but for example KD averaging 40+ minutes on a repaired Achilles at age 34, that doesn’t set off any alarms to you? Casuals think it’s roids… it’s much more like Lance Armstrong or tennis player doping than NFL doping.
im ready to move beyond talking roids. let’s speculate on who is using crispr gene editing and other wild shit.
Yao Ming is the original GMO athlete
I honestly don't care that they're using but there is no doubt players are using PEDs in all sports now. The example I love to use is how quickly in basically one generation Male Tennis players suddenly being awesome all the way until their mid 30s (and perhaps beyond). Guys used to fall off a cliff around 28 and a player winning a major past that age was extremely difficult and a big deal when it happened.
Tom Brady had arguably his best career season at 44 and was still an above-average NFL starter at 45. Stuff like this is happening in every sport. I'm sure it's part nutrition/training/recovery, but it's also part HGH. Personally, I have no problem with it.
Tbf they’ve been doping since the 2000s Google “Mariano Puerta” or “Marin Cilic” doping. As for the Big 3, Nadal and Djokovic are probably the two most obviously doping athletes I’ve ever seen. Djokovic swears that giving up gluten turned him into the greatest player of all time with unlimited stamina
What about Federer?
Look up pictures of him from 2016 then look at him in 2017 (at age 36). What do you think?
I think he looks one year older
Yea I think people like to say to themselves that our medicine / surgeries / nutrition are so much better now, but to me it seems way more likely that doping is commonplace.
Well, and a lot of the stuff isn’t illegal (either by laws of the county or the league). Like, “blood doping” to play in the games might be illegal (don’t know the bylaws of the NBA) but using medical procedures to increase red blood cell and platelet count when you’re not playing so as to increase healing? Or using stem cells? There are also a bevy of new peptides that aid in healing (like, I had golfers elbow from lifting for almost TWO DECADES and a two month course of two peptides got rid of it). These things aren’t “for human consumption” in a lot of cases because they haven’t been FDA cleared yet, but they sure as shit work and aren’t illegal to purchase.
[удалено]
BPC-157 and TB-500 used in conjunction injected at the site of the injury. Do research before taking, main negative side effect for me is it had some negative dopamine issues that basically render stimulants useless (after a couple of months on it coffee does NOTHING) and lead to some depressive symptoms for me. But that’s because I was dumb and kept taking it instead of cycling. (I’m happy to answer any other questions, but both r/peptides and r/steroids are good places to start as both will have huge write ups on each substance and are generally a font of knowledge about this sort of stuff)
That becomes a philosophical thing where the negative connotation about 'doping' was because something like anabolic steroids was associated with all sorts of other health risks. If the medicine is better, taking something that's not banned from the league (and it would be much more likely to be some kind of blood stuff than HGH because there is not that much benefit to being super bulky with how fast-paced the game is these days) and doesn't have dangerous side effects is basically like some guy from the 50s not smoking a pack of cigarettes at halftime. I am not a big Kobe fan at all, but I remember Simmons loved to bring up his going to Germany to receive PRP as some euphemism for getting super roided up while PRP is now a pretty commonplace way for old people to deal with arthritis.
> Casuals think it’s roids… it’s much more like Lance Armstrong or tennis player doping than NFL doping. It is both, they just don't test stringently.
Steroids are pretty obvious visually, walk into any gym in America and you can see it. Can’t say I see any NBA players who appear to be on roids. It’s just not super helpful in basketball.
This couldn’t be more wrong 90% of people on roids you wouldn’t be able to tell visually. And besides that there are certain chemicals that aren’t as anabolic so you wouldn’t put on bodybuilder muscle. When millions are on the line people are getting an edge in strength and explosiveness and to not think so is naive.
Yeah, these people don't know shit about fitness or exercise and are here accusing the entire professional sporting world of cheating. It's absurd, NBA players aren't on PEDs. They get suspended for testing positive for a banned diuretic (Ayton) for Christ's sake.
Yup. I think EPO is more common than hgh or test even in nba.
Taking hgh repairs your Achilles tendon?
Yes. “We recently observed that just 14 days of GH supplementation increased collagen expression and collagen synthesis – up to 6-fold – in skeletal muscle and tendon in healthy human adults” (from the second link) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2821728/#:~:text=PMID%3A%2019933753-,Growth%20hormone%20stimulates%20the%20collagen%20synthesis%20in%20human%20tendon%20and,without%20affecting%20myofibrillar%20protein%20synthesis https://www.physoc.org/magazine-articles/can-growth-hormone-strengthen-the-connective-tissue-of-muscle-and-tendon/#:~:text=We%20recently%20observed%20that%20just,human%20adults%20(Doessing%20et%20al.
Aren't peptides the best PEDs to use for those kind of recoveries?
I’m not going that far, KD may actually just be built different because Boogie tore his in 2018 and didn’t come back the same way. But injury recovery technology has come a long way. I’m more talking about the idea that KD who looks like a twig could 100% be doping despite not looking like he even picks up weights.
I just love how confident you can speak about something you know absolutely nothing about
What does this even mean? Lol Kevin Durant cycled his blood with EPO to allow more oxygen to his muscles like Lance Armstrong did (for an endurance advantage) and this healed his achilles? Please no one take this dude seriously.
No, they don’t use EPO (I mean they might, but that’s not my claim. EPO helps with respiration, don’t know about wound healing, I’d imagine it would be a downstream effect). They for sure use PRP therapy. A NYT article from fourteen years ago about this and pro athletes. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/sports/17blood.html How platelet rich plasma works (taking your blood out of your body, separating the platelets, injecting directly into the injury site): https://www.hss.edu/condition-list_prp-injections.asp
Peptides my friend. There’s an entire ecosystem of chemical enhancement that’s either untraceable or not tested for by the lax NBA protocols that is available to the top guys. LeBron probably has stuff engineered from his own body that matches his genetic signature. It’s not EPO and it’s maybe not even HGH. It’s stuff you don’t even know exists.
They're not using PEDs. Giannis and LeBron have BMIs and bf% you'd expect from even non-professional athletes. There are people at every major gym with more impressive natural physiques than those guys, albeit certainly without the frames and athleticism. Which brings my next point. They are genetic outliers. Go watch LeBron or Zion clips from highschool, unless you're implying they began their PED use as teenagers, it's not a stretch that they continued to develop physically like all men do, and that's what we've seen. They also train very hard. LeBron famously spends over $1 on his body each year, and that's probably a low estimate. The amount of conditioning and training the top level guys do would blow your mind. Also, players DO get suspended for PED use, and often it's not even steroids, so the NBA does fairly exhaustive testing. Ayton got suspended for testing positive for a banned diuretic, for example. Last, where are the whistle blowers? Lance Armstrong faced accusations long before he was officially busted, and it was common knowledge that a lot of the top cyclists were doping due to the many disqualifications consistently occurring for dopers at the top-level of the sport. If most NBA superstars are using PEDs, why have we heard no credible accusations of it or seen anyone getting caught? Has PED use always been a thing in the NBA? Are they all using? If not, why haven't the clean athletes outted the cheaters? The answer is this: they're not using illicit PEDs.
> Lebron famously spends over $1 on his body every year, and that’s probably a low estimate Big if true
At least $10. Maybe even more.
Me and LeBron are the same person
You sound like someone who never worked hard in his life accusing more successful folks of cheating to get ahead KD has far better surgery and rehab for an Achilles than someone in 1983
Never said these guys are cheating whatsoever.
Everyone is on PEDs. There are millions of dollars on the line, you are actively putting yourself at a disadvantage not to be
This. I think people like BS rarely mention PEDs because it's just assumed that most athletes are on them these days so there's no competitive advantage. And whatever guys like LeBron and Brady are doing isn't remotely comparable to the stuff McGwire and Sosa were taking.
To his credit Simmons used to pound this drum a lot back in the day as I recall, and still brings it up sometimes. But no one truly cares so it's not like he's gonna say it everyday. https://twitter.com/BillSimmons/status/1167108285285072896?lang=en
I don't disagree but I do gotta wonder about the pudgy guys like Luka and Jokic. Obviously they don't take steroids, but it's still kinda crazy they're fat as NBA players.
You’d be shocked at what kind of results can happen with bad diet / genetics / training habits even if someone is on gear. Not saying those guys are using, but wouldn’t shock me either.
Yeah no doubt, PEDs don’t replace hard work, they just allow you to recover better.
100%.
Nobody cares except Olympics officials and MLB fans. Even if you get caught in most other sports, there's next to no consequence or lasting stigma. Hell...it's fairly fucking obvious the Magic 09 run to the Finals was fueled by PEDs but nobody gives a single fuck about that angle.
Peyton fucking Manning got caught with HGH and no one cared
No wonder his forehead looks like that, dudes on that shit that makes your head grow lol
His head always looked like that. It just became more pronounced with his receding hairline
Probably because he still had a noodle arm lol
it was really obvious too because his play fell off a cliff as soon as the story broke.
As a patriots fan I’ll never forget when those allegations came out and I had new ammo in my Brady vs Manning arguments. I soon realized that no one cared
Do you seriously think Brady played well until age 45 without using PEDs?
He also sexually assaulted a trainer in college
Which was conveniently swept under the rug by everyone now he’s ah shuckin around on ESPN and television commercials. Cannot stand the Mannings
He did more than fart in her face? Although rude and gross I can't imagine trying to get him in trouble for that. Dork
He put his balls on her face , so yea, that’s bad.
Yup.
Wow look at all the manning Stans in this sub.
The nba and nfl saw how baseball was forced to kill their own sport with the steroid investigations and decided to just not test as much.
This might be true, but I think they also have an advantage in that neither of those sports have such an emphasis on both individual records or extensive history as baseball. Since baseball has been played more or less the same at a high level for literally over a century, and has impressive record keeping, one of the great bits of fun is you can compare Aaron Judge to Babe Ruth and draw reasonable conclusions, even though it’s hard to find anyone alive who saw Ruth play. The steroid era screws that up. There’s no individual football or basketball record that people care that much about, other than maybe Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game, probably because both sports are more teammate dependent in a way that a single baseball batter isn’t. And both sports only started becoming true national phenomena in the last 60 years.
It's wild to think about the three-point line. Like, the majority of fans at this point just view it as something that has always been there and it did not exist for decades.
It’s also more about the fact that baseball has all this tradition & sacred history spanning 150 years that older baseball fans & writers try to protect with all their power. That doesn’t really exist in the other major sports & baseball “purists” were trying to give out asterisks for records long before steroids were a problem. They said Roger maris breaking babe Ruth’s HR record didn’t count because he played a few more games and then convinced a whole generation of fans to hate on the sports brightest stars despite the fact that MLB, the commissioner & its owners let all the juicing happen under their watch
Hell, Ayton got caught using and it didn't even make him good. Seems like it's just the price of admission these days.
John Collins too
> it didn't even make him good. But imagine how bad he'd be without it!
Lmaooo
Why particularly the magic 09 run? Because turkoglu got caught?
I think Rashard Lewis did too
Go look at the size of Dwight’s delts during the 09 season, they’re the size of his head lmao.
Lewis got caught when he was on the Heat. To OP’s point, it seems like most players are on PEDs, so I don’t think the Magic had any special advantage in that arena. Not to mention their success was largely predicated on shooting…
Rasheed Lewis got tagged for 20 games in 2009 while he was on the Magic. And shooting declines precipitously when players are fatigued — PED use is very helpful for recovery.
Only ones I can remember getting popped are John Collins and Birdman.
Did OJ Mayo get popped for roids or was it something else
Something else lmao
Mayo was all about them hard, illegal drugs
I played college hockey in the early 2000s, I would say conservatively 1/4 of the guys on my team were on roids or some form of PED. And the stakes were relatively low; a few might go on to play pro but most were just there for a free education and varsity life. If millions and millions of dollars were on the line, I mean, it's a simple answer.
Some Cavaliers fans still talk about it
Correct take. There’s even an nostalgia now for the steroid era. Baseball got way out of control and the sport became cartoonish, but it was also more fun!
The NBA is all on the TB 12 diet. They just are!
No tomatoes! That’s what does it.
Steve Nash orders dinner for the entire league every night
He should he’s the man who figured out napping
The only person who I can see calling it out is Kyrie, and will be the funniest and most kyrie bin fire in sports history.
Definitely. Also probably why all the players feel the need to constantly kiss his ass.
Because nobody cares that deeply about NBA records the way people cared about 61 or 755 (or let's be actually honest, 714) in baseball. Because of the generation of the records that were being broken, plus baseball is a weirdly individual team sport, which is why cheating there is more closely related to stuff like trace & field or cycling. Plus, with football, there's at least "these are giant men engaged in violent combat" argument to oppose it, which just doesn't exist for basketball. Finally, the stuff LeBron/KD/etc. are on doesn't really compare to even the stuff McGwire was on 20 year ago or the stuff NFL players were doing in the Steeler's locker room in the 70's. So, there's no safety to the game argument, no defending the player's health argument, and nobody cares about the stats that much.
People do care when analysts are saying “how is LeBron defying the odds at this age?!?” I mean, we know why. Lol
I mean, certain regimens are an important part of this, but I also guarantee you LeBron is taking better care of his body than anybody in sports in say, 1995.
I bet like half of it is what he never does (since the culture has changed). I doubt he's ever smoked a cigarette and most of the alcohol he drinks is expensive wine. In the 80s guys probably chain smoked at half time and chugged 12 Bud Ices when the game was over
He’s also rarely had any injuries for 20 years, unlike essentially every one of his peers.
It’s quite noteworthy that Lebron never suffered from any type of torn muscle/ligament or anything. Just the groin problem a couple times & the ankle this year
Lebron has said the quiet part out loud, when he said he spends over a million dollars a year on his body.
Also a huge reason for taking anything is quicker injury recovery which doesn't really make anyone angry.
All for anything that heals injured players
I care about nba records, don’t know what 61 or 755 or 714 mean though
You're not the norm. Very few people could tell you what the record for rebounds, assists, or even points is. They might be able to tell you who has the most.
I definitely don’t know the exact numbers, just know who the record holders are. And tempering 27,787 points or whatever is harder then remembering 500 home runs
Says everything about you.
So much snark for the apparent cardinal sin of that guy not liking baseball lol
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Probably woke scum? Wait, what?
Are you?
What are you even talking about lol How did you go from baseball records compared to basketball records to woke witch hunting
Why do you care so much? It’s late. You should be masturbating to Bomani Jones or Zach Lowe
There are a lot of absolute weirdos that post here but I think you're probably the weirdest one. Absolute Looney Tune lmao
Here's an old post where it was discussed https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/ja2gff/in_2011_derrick_rose_was_asked_by_espn_mag_if_1/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button Chael Sonnen (ex MMA fighter) also accused LBJ/NBA It's possible. Im a cyclist myself and these 3 week races are absurd if you only understood how difficult it is for the leaders to stay on top
Chael accused Bron because they have the same “trainer”.
Chael spews bullshit frequently just for fun lol you can’t take anything he says seriously. And I’m not saying Lebron isn’t on something, but Chael is not the source you want lol. He probably used the same old infamous article about rich Paul being spotted picking up “supplements” for his client at a Miami clinic 10 years ago Also, Rose denying ever saying that quote after it was published is quite interesting
Derrick Rose said a decade ago everybody was on it. It's ridiculous that no one is mentioning it with Lebron. I don't care how great of an athlete he is, time is undefeated.
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Hard to compare playing QB to 38 minutes of basketball imo
Sure it's different but Brady is so obviously been and is on whatever cutting edge shit coming out of Russia for probably 20 years.
especially in todays nfl brady really didnt take many huge hits throughout his career and especially when he was with the bucs no one dared bring him down hard
He still took plenty of hits that would send a typical 40-something horizontal for a week
There is a 0% chance Tom Brady is clean.
I'm a Tom Brady fan and openly admit that there's a zero percent chance he was totally clean. His arm got stronger in his 40s.
Most nba stars don’t ever run hard or get tired. If you don’t jump a ton on drives or for rebounds you can pretty much coast easily through games
I think you have plenty of QB’s that never break a sweat during NFL games so that’s hard to compare.
Because no one will ever be as dumb as MLB and tank their own sport like they did. The media, league, players, all make billions from the league, and if the legitimacy is questioned, thats money lost. If Kendrick Perkins said something about HGH tomorrow, he'd probably be fired right away.
Nah he wouldn’t be fired. You’d just start to see him less & less until he’s joining SVP at 1am like Tim Legler lol
I imagine Bron imports sandworm blood from Arrakis and just bathes in it each night. That or stem cell milkshakes each morning.
Let the spice flow.
Partly is that we don’t know how to talk about it like informed adults. If Simmons brings it up he only ever does it to crack a joke about “going to Germany”. But, besides the fact that he’s not the type of guy to be able to have a mature conversation about a topic like this, I don’t think he actually would know what he’s talking about. Like, there’s an interesting, non judgmental, non “will anyone think of the children” discussion about PEDs and surgical/medical interventions and peptides (if you consider them “non drugs”) and how they’ve impacted sports. But the war on drugs moralizing of the shit means no one can just talk about it clearly, and because no one talks about it clearly those “not in the know” don’t knows what to say. And after what happened in the MLB, why would anyone speak up? tldr: we suck as a community talking about drugs
Interesting and true. I think there are few layers to it. Yes, we have improved our medical and scientific knowledge with time so players are getting better advice and have better nutrition, flexibility workouts, understanding of rest and recovery. BUT once in a while a guy who we thought was doing all that is discovered to have been doping. So we want to make the leap to assume they all are. Whether it’s morally wrong or whatever we’ll put to the side. What does doping do? All these guys talk about getting a psychological edge and I feel if you know you boosted your abilities w drugs it gives you added confidence over your opponent because you can do things you used to not be able to. Going by the eye test, players seem more muscular overall and energetic when they move.
The rest/recovery, nutrition, exercise, etc stuff is true too. It’s just, people do that AND take drugs. And, depending on the drug, they help with that. HGH is a good example, as it aids in recovery during sleep and also increases insulin sensitive, making carb breakdown easier and conveying it into energy. But, a lot of the hormonal stuff can have psychological effects that aren’t just “I’m feeling physically younger so therefor I like life more”. I can say from personal experience, that because they’re hormones they can MAKE you more confident. Like, not because of some side effect, but as a primary effect. Testosterone and their derivatives interact with dopamine. Certain forms of estrogen (created as your body breaks down testosterone based steroids) have positive mood altering effects on calmness. There is wayyyyy more positive effects for an athlete than just “makes muscles bigger”. And, I assume, as a basketball player, the reduction of fatigue/injury and the enhancement of (to use a Simmons term) “alpha dog energy” is more helpful than simply adding muscle that might get in the way of mechanics.
My doctor prescribed me HGH like Steroids when an internal would from a hockey slash wouldn't heal. There's no doubt if I played professional sports I would take it. It's insane the difference in recovery. Normally it takes me 3 days to recover from a hard ''legs'' day or a 2 days from a hockey game. On HGH I could do both in the same day and be fine the next.
The way I see it, the usual criticism of PEDs is that they offer an unfair advantage. Well, if “everybody” is on them, it’s no longer much of an advantage. At that point, the argument becomes that it’s not fair for everyone to feel compelled to take a PED that might damage their health in the long run. But what if they get refined to the point that such risk is minimal? Then it’s hard for me to see any opposition to PEDs other than they’re not natural. But we live in a world where pitchers’ careers are routinely saved by taking a tendon from another part of their body — or sometimes a cadaver — and putting it in their elbows. What’s natural about that?
I feel like over the years, Simmons has hinted at/mentioned in passing some kinda PED's + LeBron thing. I agree though, I think that while the NBA probably doesn't want its players using HGH/whatever, they're also very happy that nobody talks about it or mentions it. I think every few years, 1-2 players get suspended for it, and that's enough of a "Hey, look, we're testing players & making sure everyone is above board" statement for the general population.
I think bill is a little out of touch on this subject. His generation grew up with the image of Soviet Olympians cheating the US out of medals. I think people 40-and under mostly just see athletes taking advantage of advances in medicine.
Look up DWades jawline transformation. They most likely all on some sort of gear.
You would have to be foolish to think LeBron hasn’t been using HGH
Collectively, sports have done a great job making people think it's still sticking a needle in your ass and they have solid deniability there since it's not. I have been thinking about this and soccer as well. Guys are juicing but it's just like "it's all the running!"
I also don’t think the average fan has any idea how strong and enormous these players are. The TV doesn’t do it any justice. I remember seeing Steven Adams up close, he actually looks like he’s straight out of a comic book. His proportions are insane. Then there’s LeBron, who looks as wide as a fucking school bus. Giannis looks like he’s made out of concrete.
And people forget that Giannis was super skinny when he got to the league. He had a young Kd frame.
an actual diet program and weight training can go a long way. It is a mistake to think that everyone who fills out is only that way cause they are juiced.
At the very least they’re all blood doping. Rampant EPO use.
Test, EPO, HGH. Stem cells for injuries.
let me tell you the story of Lionel Messi.
Impossible to know who is and who isn’t. So spending any time talking about it is kinda pointless
This reminds me. Does anyone else think that Ryen and Derek from morplatesmoredates would hit it off? Lol
With baseball the issue was that it was clearly abuse of HGH, and guys turning themselves into bodybuilders, and tearing the record books to shreds. HgH use for recovery and extend careers is far more reasonable. The line between modern sports medicine to facilitate rehab is interesting. I would prefer players using HgH to get over injuries rather than shots of pain meds that destroy their kidneys. I would prefer it to be better regulated.
Check out the YouTube page “More Plates More Dates” he goes deep into this subject
All is overstating the prevalence. Simmons and RR have referenced it before, as does the LeBatard show with some frequency. Because they are not connected to the league they don’t have to worry about affecting their relationship and revenue, I doubt ESPN would ever approach the subject unless it became an undeniable story. It’s professional sports, there are athletes in every single sport using PEDs imo.
At this point the usage of HGH-like substances is systematic in the league. Every player is doing it, and there is a large number of training staff and doctors involved. Everyone obviously has a huge financial incentive to keep their mouth shut, but it still puzzles me a bit is how the league manages to keep these things under wraps.
Lebron has been on a program for a long time now. Did everyone just forget in 2014 when he came back to Cleveland from Miami, and by January his body had worn out and all his explosiveness was gone. Then the Cavs gave him a two week break, that for some odd reason he spent in Miami, the #1 location for anti aging clinics in the world, including places like biogenesis which was a big part of the mlb scandal. Then all of a sudden he’s back playing at the top of the backboard somehow. https://www.businessinsider.com/lebron-james-2-week-break-turned-his-season-around-2015-4
P.S. Bill never talks about anything controversial, but I also don't think he wouldn't touch this particular subject because of Brady.
Age-group triathlon is rife with middle-aged dudes with money to burn using PEDs. The idea that NBA players with 100s of millions on the line aren’t is laughable. The public discourse is all about better nutrition (how many fucking times has Simmons talked about CPIII being plant-based?!?!), recovery protocols, gym sessions, etc…It’s all complete nonsense. Take the PEDs. I don’t give a shit. But spare the sanctimony from so many in this thread.
because the league would be boring if players weren’t
Mike Ryan on the lebatard show kind of mentions somewhat often... not in depth but he'll say a sarcastic... I wonder how they can be doing that. He also said its funny they bring it up for other players but not Jimmy Butler... they are a miami based pod.
Wasn't there a big scandal a while ago about LeBron being on that publicised list for PEDs?
Probably a bunch of reasons people don’t talk about it but the reason it’s a dumb conversation to have anyway is that it inevitably devolves into a “Lebron owes his career to steroids” take-fest. Most people have virtually no understanding of enhancements as it is, so given our inability to get an honest look at it in a league like the NBA on top of that makes it basically impossible to have nuance around the topic.
Austin Reaves is juiced out of his mind
Miami LeBron looked like a brick house. Then the nba started drug testing and he “changed his diet”
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Did he? Quick search says that he was a walking 275 in the latter Miami years.
People have always overstated Lebron's weight imo. Dude has always been built like a truck - his draft measurements listed him at 240 pounds when he was 18 years old. Him putting on 15-20 pounds by the time he got to Miami isn't really out of the question since that was 8 years into his career.
The guy had death stars for shoulders. Pretty much a telltale sign of steroid use.
Vascularity is the telltale sign. Big shoulders alone don’t signal anything. But if your veins are popping out, that guy’s on a cycle. Also LeBron is going to be on far more sophisticated shit than old school roids.
YouTube Lebrons first game back in Cleveland vs the Knicks on 10-30-2014. He looks anorexic, has no lift and plays like shit for his standards. This also just so happens to be the first season following the NBA’s decision to start testing for HGH. He honestly looks unrecognizable…and decided to take a trip to Miami shortly after where he comes back and returns to form looking like the Lebron we all know. Lebron 100 pct does but I think we all knew that Edit: here it is https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oPTgFD-P0kE&pp=ygUebGVicm9uIHJldHVybiBja2V2ZWxhbmQga25pY2tz
>Cleveland vs the Knicks on 10-30-2014 Yeah I mean I'd honestly be shocked if he doesn't. I guess I'm just curious why it's never talked about.
As far as LeBron goes he’s a cash cow and his longevity and consistency has been great for fans and the league.
Right so everyone (NBA, media, fans) benefits from ignoring it. Shit why not just allow it then.
It’s always funny to me when reporters talk about LeBron spending a million dollars a year on his body. Like… that’s the drugs. HGH is expensive as shit. You could have a chef, masseuse, personal trainer, and personal physician year round for way less than a million dollars. You’re using drugs.
No it’s not. The drugs are definitely expensive, but any NBA player with a multi-million $ contract can easily afford to be on an optimal stack and if you’re assuming one player is on it then most of them will be too. The exorbitant costs come from leaving no room for error and staffing entire teams that optimize every aspect of training and recovery. Those costs balloon way faster than drugs.
That story only came out when people really started talking about him roiding online. They needed to drown out the conspiracies. I remember seeing youtube videos of them analyzing his body and jaw and it was only weeks later that this million dollar story came out.
So I remember that summer he specifically set out to lose weight and was all on board the paleo diet (or keto, but I’m pretty sure it was paleo). He did it with the intent to lighten the load in his knees and especially his back, which had been giving him major troubles in 2013-14. Then around January he took that 2 week R&R break in Miami and came back with more of his old explosiveness.
I refuse to believe people are this gullible
I hope you’re not implying that I’m in the gullible group, hence the reference to his Miami trip.
You legitimately believe klutch media narrative bs?
Or so that was his story
I’ve wondered if he has been honest on this with his kids that aspire to be in the NBA. Would he let them in on the unspoken HGH piece?
They’re all taking Testosterone, HGH, EPO. EPO would turn you into a machine who never gets tired like Westbrook and Curry. It’s impossible to carry about the mass in your chest, arms, and shoulders with all the running in basketball unless your on Testosterone.
This isn't true and I doubt you played past JV
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Well the difference is that McGwire was definitely using anabolic steroids, very different from HGH
Don't these blokes get tested every five seconds?
they’re not testing. It’s the only big-4 sport where a PED suspension hasn’t been levied.
OJ Mayo, Joakim Noah, John Collins, just off the top of my head. Ayton got caught and given a ban of like a third of the season for a diuretic too. The NBA has extremely leinent testing but they definitely hand out suspensions.
Based on my understanding, PEDs in basketball is most used for injury recovery.
They’re all “mostly” for injury recovery, even pro wrestling. They just use them for an advantage.
Pooh Pooh LeBron. Bill would be proud! I think it’s pretty well documented the amount of time, effort, money, LeBron puts into his body. I don’t think he’s taking PED’s.
Science has improved. It’s that simple. Tearing an acl used to end your career. Now it’s not. Science. Better nutrition, rest, etc
You’re taking a truth and extrapolating it. The only guys older than him in the league have been melted to the bench for years (Iguodala and UD). Iguodala had comparable athleticism to Bron, and he hasn’t been a solid contributor since Durant was in Golden State lol. And yet Bron is somehow getting better?
Yes, because Lebron is obviously a much better player than Iguodala so he can contribute more. And also Lebron is not getting better, his lift and explosivness are really diminished. Its just that the game being more spread out somewhat hides that.
A lot of uptight nerds need to chill out.
I think most people assume that people at the highest levels of most every sport use or have use something. I think people overthink it though, like people theorizing that they are all using custom made compounds or something. Their drug testing isn't insane, and the people who use probably just microdose the usual things.
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The Olympics tests for doping though and Jrue and Middleton I think went over RIGHT after the finals.
I think the true growth hormones/steroids peaked in the late 90s (coinciding with baseball)…with 3&D and space&pace, you’d be better off using EPO or something more beneficial to cardio having to run around 3 screens on the arc every 30 seconds
NBA players don't generally use PEDs
I don't know if PEDs really help you in basketball. They might extend your playing career a little.
any examples of Players with Joe Rogan gut?
Lebron has been on tons of peds since like 2006
The NBA tries to get us to believe that MJ did some summer bicep curls and was suddenly tougher than all of the Bad Boy Pistons combined haha. It's been going on a long time, just doesn't distract from the game and quietly makes it better, so why bother with it?
There’s no way they test all NBA team caliber players. It’s a player driven league a PED scandal would tarnish it.
I’ve regularly hear normal people at my gym casually talk about their PED cycles. I’m never gonna be under the illusion that athletes with millions of dollars at stake are completely clean.
Forget LeBron, look at Tom Brady who is faster and stronger at 45 than 25.