How would the use of PEDs change your perspective of NBA players?

do work son said:
LOL. you mean to tell me, if two guys tore ________ ligament. one guy uses and the other doesn't. the guy who uses comes back substantially faster than the guy who doesn't. that isn't affecting on court performance, considering the other guy isn't even playing?
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Can Toney Douglas take any drugs that will make him better than Tony Parker?

If Parker takes 2 weeks to come back from an ankle sprain and Douglas takes 2 games....who's gonna be the better performer during games? Contribute more at the end of the season? Have a better legacy? Score, assist, steal more? have a better chance of winning a chip?

How can you measure on court performance if a person isn't playing?

When they are both playing, then we can talk about who's a better performer.

Injuries happen in sports, I don't care what a player has to do to get back on the court.

But if your cheating during the competition, then I have an issue.
 
goldenchild9 said:
Can Toney Douglas take any drugs that will make him better than Tony Parker?

If Parker takes 2 weeks to come back from an ankle sprain and Douglas takes 2 games....who's gonna be the better performer during games? Contribute more at the end of the season? Have a better legacy? Score, assist, steal more? have a better chance of winning a chip?

How can you measure on court performance if a person isn't playing?

When they are both playing, then we can talk about who's a better performer.

Injuries happen in sports, I don't care what a player has to do to get back on the court.

But if your cheating during the competition, then I have an issue.
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You're just setting up a ridiculous straw man.  No one is claiming that.
 
you seriously have no idea what you're talking about. you have any idea how many minor leaguers took steroids and still never made it? steroids didn't make players better than other players. but it did help them grow stronger and faster than they were before. you still have to have elite hand eye coordination to be a hitter. let's not forget about the pitchers who juiced too. juicing doesn't make your control any better. not to mention, there still is no real way to quantify the effects of steroids.
 
100027 said:
We're not talking just about people who "are trash".  What about going from good to very good, or very good to great, or out of the league to a bench spot?  The margins are what make the difference....  And modern PEDs can close that gap.
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Example?

Cause the Great NBA players have a certain skill set and body type that PEDs ain't giving you. See Durant, Carmelo, CP3 etc.

Blood doping would give an unfair advantage but you still have to have an elite skill set to to utilize that aerobic advantage.

Basketball isn't about singular skills like cycling or standing stationary and hitting a baseball. It's dynamic and fluid like soccer.

If a great player was blood doping I would look at him different but I believe that it hasn't been found on a large level in the NBA because it's not happening on a large scale or worth doing on a large scale.

CP3 and Melo still carry baby fat, Durant and Reggie Miller have twigs for arms, Isaiah Thomas is 5'7", Shaq was born a beast and still couldn't dominate the game until he got tutored by a great basketball mind.....

Hell Big O averaged a triple double before these drugs and procedures were even invented....still, no one has been able to replicate that feat.

The skills born of practice and the intangibles revealed by spontaneity is what makes basketball players great not testosterone and HGH.
 
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do work son said:
you seriously have no idea what you're talking about. you have any idea how many minor leaguers took steroids and still never made it? steroids didn't make players better than other players. but it did help them grow stronger and faster than they were before. you still have to have elite hand eye coordination to be a hitter. let's not forget about the pitchers who juiced too. juicing doesn't make your control any better. not to mention, there still is no real way to quantify the effects of steroids.
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A baseball field is a certain amount of feet, if you have the same reflexes but more mass and strength than the next hitter...your hit is going over the wall, the other hitters isn't.

Basic physics. Cheap easily obtainable drugs have a huge impact on one of the most important and popular aspects of baseball, hence their widespread abuse.

Power skyrocketed in the early '90s to a peak in '94, and it didn't progress below that peak until recently. And while there hasn't been a straight downhill decline since MLB put its testing and penalties system in place in 2005, there hasn't been as much power these last few years. The trend is a little more clear if we break it down into averages for different time periods:

1988-1993: .130
1994-1999: .159
2000-2004: .165
2005-2012: .156
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Easily quantifiable. What are you talking about?
 
Deal with it baseball fans.

I don't need a science lesson of hypotheticals. I've played sports all my life and I know why there is a culture of doping in some sports and not in others.

HGH ain't giving you a heart and ability like Iverson or Gary Payton. That "unobtainum" of unteachable swagger, intelligence and heart, mined on playgrounds and backyards across the world is the defining characteristic of great ball players. Thats what basketball players strive for.

When you get outplayed by a better player and you're sitting in the locker room beating your self up...you don't think "damn, let me go shoot up this juice to improve my game cause I know that they're doing it"...you grab a ball and go practice your jumper. There is no cheap and easy fix to get better in professional basketball.

There is in baseball...

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Let Cano start taking the same cocktails as these dudes, guarantee he starts crushing balls out the park.

Thats just how it is. Nature and mechanics of the two games

Again, I'm sure that there are banned substances being used in the NBA but they can't turn Raja Bell into Kobe Bryant or Anderson Varejao into Lamarcus Aldridge.

Bottom line.
 
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You're gonna be heartbroken in 5-10 years when you realize half your favorite NFL/NBA players were taking 'roids.
 
100027 said:
You're gonna be heartbroken in 5-10 years when you realize half your favorite NFL/NBA players were taking 'roids.
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Right.

Oscar Robertson, Earl Monroe, Hakeem, Stockton, Magic, Bird and Zeke were doping too right?

Cause their skill set and approach to basketball, still marks the pinnacle of the game.
 
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goldenchild9 said:
Right.

Oscar Robertson, Earl Monroe, Hakeem, Stockton, Magic, Bird and Zeke were doping too right?

Cause their skill set and approach to basketball, still marks the pinnacle of the game.
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....That has nothing to do with the subject at hand though.
 
100027 said:
goldenchild9 said:
Right.


Oscar Robertson, Earl Monroe, Hakeem, Stockton, Magic, Bird and Zeke were doping too right?


Cause their skill set and approach to basketball, still marks the pinnacle of the game.
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....That has nothing to do with the subject at hand though.
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Has everything to do with the topic of PED use amongst NBA stars.

PEDs can only make you a marginally better basketball player. PEDs haven't been found on a wide scale in the NBA because they aren't being used on a wide scale and they aren't being used on a wide scale because the effect on your game is marginal. As shown by the skill set of players that played before those drugs were even invented.
 
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You don't know what you're talking about.

also just about everything you said about steroids in relation to baseball is wrong, I've written a million words about it,.



When it comes to the steroid argument, all of you are just regurgitating common knowledge, I've looked into this, extensively, and it's extremely difficult to arrive at any other conclusion besides.

1. The effects of steroids are vastly overstated by the general public.
2. The practically effect of steroid use on your ability to hit a baseball is mostly mysterious and incredibly difficult to discern.

There are various arguments that always repeated when it comes to steroid use and most of them are just flat out wrong, I'll go through most of them in the simplest and most concise way possible.


a) If steroids aren't effective how come we saw a massive spike in offense in the late 90's early to mid 2000's???


Baseball power numbers have been trending upwards at a steady pace since Babe Ruth entered the game, for this claim to be true baseball power numbers would have to increase at rate discontinuous with past seasons.

and while power numbers have increased, another thing people seem to have completely ignored is MLB started juicing the ball in about '94 . if you look at the numbers
there is a massive spike in power that occurs basically in the span of one year and unless every decided to do PED's at the exact same time the suddenness of this jump can't be explained by steroid use.

[T]he researchers found that pills [ball cores] from the 1995 and 2000 balls bounced an average of 33 percent higher than their 1989, 1970 and 1963 counterparts. One of their conclusions is that Rawlings Sporting Goods Co., the maker of Major League baseballs, doesn't follow its own specifications for some of the windings used in the balls.
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The juiced ball theory is pretty well research by a number of people,

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Mark McGwire's 70th home run ball from his record-breaking 1998 season contains a synthetic rubber ring or spring ("the ring") -- a material not outlined in official Major League Baseball ("the League") specifications. . . . "Examining the CT images of Mark McGwire's 70th home run ball one can clearly see the synthetic ring around the core -- or 'pill' -- of the baseball," states David Zavagno, president of Universal Medical Systems. "While Mark McGwire may or may not have used illegal steroids, the evidence shows his ball -- under the governing body of the League -- was juiced."
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So how do we apply the juiced ball theory to the power increases in the "steroid era"

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If you adjust for the ball juicing power in baseball hasn;t actually increased but decreased in relation to other eras.

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If you look at just the "steroid era", you don't even have to adjust for the ball juicing, just remove the one year where power jumped because of the introduction of the rawlings ball, power in the modern era has mostly remained flat.

If players are using steroids and they are so effective, shouldn't we see a gradual increase as more and more players use it?


b) Look at how Big Barry bond was, look at Brady Anderson, Luis Gonzalez??! That HAD to HELP.


I'm not going to pretend that Barry, Brady and maybe Luis didn't do steroids, ultimately this argument doesn't hold up when you actually think about the kinetic chain of a baseball swing, and the piratical application of more muscle mass.

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This chart http://webusers.npl.uiuc.edu/~a-nathan/pob/batspeed.pdf basically figures out that by increasing you muscle mass by 10%, it could theoretically result in an increase in power of 10 ft.

Here is the problem: This chart assumes that all muscle mass gained are practically applicable to a baseball swing, ANY scouts will tell you, that power is generated mostly from the lower half and if you look at pretty much ANY study on the effects of steroid use, you will find that they are particularly most useful for increasing Upper body mass.


The principal advantages ascribed to anabolic steroids are those associated with androgenicity, or masculine traits. Upper-body strength and muscularity are two such key traits. . . . anabolic steroids increase muscle mass and upper-body strength. Anabolic Steroids in Sport and Exercise, Charles E. Yesalis, ed.

Testosterone increases upper-body mass differentially, so performance in [upper-body] tasks like weight-lifting should improve more than lower-body tasks or tasks in which aerobic aerobic capacity rather than strength are assessed. As expected, the task in which increases have been reported most reliably are in the bench press. Recent Progress in Hormone Research 57:411-434 (2002), Cynthia M. Kuhn

[S]teroids increase muscle mass and upper-body strength . . . . The effects of supraphysiologic doses of testosterone on muscle size and strength in normal men. N Engl J Med 1996; 335: 1-7, Bhasin S, Storer TW, Berman N, et al.

[M]uscle deposition promoted by testosterone tends to be greater in the upper body; this provides the greatest effects (and therefore the greatest likelihood of abuse) for sports like swimming, which rely on upper-body strength. Buzzed: The Straight Facts about the Most Used and Abused Drugs, Cynthia Kuhn, Scott Swartzwelder, Wilkie Wilson (Duke University Medical Center)

Testosterone also produces characteristic body changes, Dr. Pope said, with the most marked muscle growth in the upper body and the biceps. Psychology: Concepts and Connections, Spencer A. Rathus


Kochakian discovered early in his experiments that not all skeletal muscle responds to anabolic steroids equally. When he administered anabolic steroids to androgen-deficient guinea pigs, he found the predominant effect to be on upper-body muscles in the region of the shoulder girdle. . . . what Kochakian observed is consistent with the stereotypical body shape of normally virilized men . . . . In a study with a small number of men receiving testosterone or nandrolone injections for six weeks, we also found the main increases in body circumference in the shoulders and chest (Friedl, Dettori, Hannan, Patience, & Plymate, 1991).
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So lets say a 200 pound ball player uses steroids, gains 20 pounds of raw muscle How much of that will actually how up on the field? How much of that will be lower body mass, vs. upper body mass? 5 pounds maybe? Who knows? point is 20 pounds of pure muscle is A LOT, and its not likely that somebody is going to go from singles hitter to doubles and hr's with that. 2.5% growth in mass, will only get you theoretically about 2 to 4 ft, that is not incredibly effective or significant.


CLIFF NOTES:


1. Power didn't really rise in the steroid era, if you account for the juiced ball and the gradual increase in power throughout baseballs history.
2. All gained muscle mass doesn't translate to on the field power

Conclusion

The effects of steroids on hitting a baseball are HAZY and ill defined, to assume that giving any player steroids automatically accounts for an increase in offensive performance goes against basically all the information we have about power numbers in the 90's and 00's, and medical information on the effects of increased mass on your ability to hit a baseball.
 
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So easy to dissect that whole ball juicing foolishness but I'm busy watching basketball at the moment.
 
Just because dudes aren't hulked out doesn't mean they aren't on something. Im sorry, but you can't tell me these guys can go hard every game and come back for the next game all rested up
 
i just assume that PEDs occur in every sport. is it as rampant as it is in cycling and mlb, probably not. but im not fooling myself thinking it's all clean. entertainment for me, so i dont really care.
 
My guess would be the NBA has less PED users then any other professional sport. But I Personally could care less who uses in what sport, an HGH or PED is going to help you hit a baseball, it might help you hit it further but you gotta have what it takes to get there from jump.. I'd count Lebron out, that dudes been a physical specimen since jr. high. But none the less, if you juice you juice if you don't then it's all good. Coke. Crack, Heroin etc. I have an issue with, performance inhancing drugs, not so much!!!
 
^^^ Technically I'd assume Zero. Buffing up just makes the appearance seem like their monsters. 6 or 7 in the top 20 all time juiced. Bonds only holds the record by 6 or 7.
 
goldenchild9 said:
Basketball isn't about singular skills like cycling or standing stationary and hitting a baseball. It's dynamic and fluid like soccer.
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:lol:

Soccer is rife with drugs - and has been for years.

If you think that skill sports can't be improved by players feeling more fresh in the final 5 minutes then you're just naive. It makes an unbelievable difference - it's only small amounts but that little bit of extra room or extra time to get a shot off really helps.
 
kdawg said:
goldenchild9 said:
Basketball isn't about singular skills like cycling or standing stationary and hitting a baseball. It's dynamic and fluid like soccer.
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:lol:

Soccer is rife with drugs - and has been for years.

If you think that skill sports can't be improved by players feeling more fresh in the final 5 minutes then you're just naive. It makes an unbelievable difference - it's only small amounts but that little bit of extra room or extra time to get a shot off really helps.
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Blood doping would give an unfair advantage but you still have to have an elite skill set to to utilize that aerobic advantage.

If a great player was blood doping I would look at him different but I believe that it hasn't been found on a large level in the NBA because it's not happening on a large scale or worth doing on a large scale.
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Hasn't there been discussions about cutting down the number of games in an NBA season and eliminating back to backs due to a decrease in the quality of play, caused by exhaustion?

Just within the last couple of days, two of the leagues best scorers and biggest stars, Carmelo Anthony and Stephen Curry have had terrible performances due to exhausted legs brought on by back to back play and long road trips. This is the norm in the NBA. Even "King James" is visibly spent at the end of these marathon performances.

If NBA players are doping for an aerobic advantage on a significant level, that procedure is terribly inefficient.
 
The bigger problem in basketball is the lax in officiating, rather than any potential/undiscovered PED usage.

Hesitation, crossover, and just outright traveling have gotten so out of hand for the sake of entertainment that it's ridiculous.

Some of these guys are faster than we've ever seen before and then you're gonna give them the advantage of being able to hold the ball in the air between dribbles? No one's gonna be able to stay in front of that.

Because like someone said up above me, there is no quick fix for basketball.
 
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goldenchild9 said:
So easy to dissect that whole ball juicing foolishness but I'm busy watching basketball at the moment.
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i'm still waiting on this dissection.

in any case, you're not looking to have a discussion. you're looking for a "yeah you're right"
 
do work son said:
 
paulprince3730 said:
 
do work son said:
 not to mention, there still is no real way to quantify the effects of steroids.
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youre talking out of your *** now
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How many more homeruns will a player hit if he juices?
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although thats not a concrete way to measure the effects of PEDs

 to humor your question, more

if a guy is already good at bat, but usually hits deep doubles, if he juices, he will start hitting harder which logically translates into more homers
 
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