I remember Kobe suddenly bulked up after one offseason. Someone posted a pic here and said it's scary.
Working in the training world and with high school athletes I can assure people that high school kids are being given prescriptions for human growth hormone. I know of a couple kids whose parents got them on it while juniors and seniors and their body types reminded me a lot of Lebron when he came out of highschool. Most athletes, people in Hollywood, and well to do professionals take the stuff. It is undetectable on drug tests and you wouldn't know it by looking at them that they're on it because it doesn't get you built big like steriods but it does allow you to put on lean body mass over time. HGH combined with weight training gives you Dwight Howard.
The players know it helps, thats why they do it. You dont play in the NBA, you have no opinion whether it helps you or not.
What do white collar professionals and ppl in Hollywood use it for? I thought they spent all their money on sexual endurance drugs.
And that person probably knows nothing about working out. Keep in mind that playing basketball is conducive to breaking down muscle. If all the players do is play ball, they're already going to be smaller than they would be naturally, if they didn't play ball. So Kobe goes into the offseason, doesn't play as much ball, probably limited to halfcourt shooting/moves and focuses on lifting, while eating more. He'll easily put on some significant mass over 4-5 months, like 20 pounds. If you go back to that season, you'll notice he actually thinned out by the end of it, like most players do. They'll waste away muscle over the course of the season, so if they put on 20 pounds in the summer, after the season they may only have kept 10-12 pounds of it. That's not steroids folks.
Since you just made the exact same point I'm making - does this make your posts unserious too? PS - I see you've made a new friend in Rockets Dynasty/OHMMS - good, he could use a non - Ovine companion. I worry about that boy.
For someone who played organized basketball for 20 years I can tell you that Steroids are not something that would give any player a huge advantage over other players(especially skill players) in the league by simply muscle mass. In the NBA, more than any other sport, how and where you gain muscle is almost more important that gaining it in general. If a player like Kevin Martin took steroids to put on muscle mass, I could see that negatively affective his game. Actually weight lifting in the traditional sense actually can harm your mobility, balance, physics of your body that could make you a less "athletic" basketball player. I do however believe that steroids can be used to speed up the recovery of injuries to your joints and muscles during the season to get you back on the court faster. However, I wouldn't be surprised if players heavily used supplements with Ephedrin in them to help them get up for games, and keep there adrenaline levels high. Plus Steroid cycles typically run through a 12 week cycle. This would affect your performance coming down from your cycle during the NBA season much more than it would be during a season in Baseball. Derrick Rose is right that there are most likely plenty of players taking lots of different supplements that could be harmful long term, but I wouldnt immediately point the finger at steroids.
Not sure why the focus is on whether or not we think PEDs would or would not be beneficial to NBA players and not on Rose's comments in particular. He says "it's huge (the PED problem)" and there isn't a "level playing field" - to me that means he's talking about other perimeter players "enhancing" in some way. I don't think he'd care about stiff big men trying to bulk up to grab more rebounds. It seems Rose is generally thought of as one of the young stars who go about things the right way in the league so this should be sort of a big deal.
I think people are interpreting the question/qnswer incorrectly. It sounds like theyre asking how big, as in how widespread PEDs are, and he's answering very big, 7 out of 10...but i think he took it as, how big, as in how serious, PED use is and Rose was refering to the level of importance of dealing with it is a 7. That doesn't mean he thinks or knows they're used a lot, but that it's serious, whether it's 2 cases or 200. He really hasnt been around enough to really know how widespread it is. That's why i think his comments didn't blow up. He's been in the league for 3 years and just on one team. He's had a limited amount of teammates. I also wouldnt say he's pointing to perimeter players only. He's a team player, so he would be looking out for his team and teammates. Other bigs taking PEDs would have an advantage over his teammates and team.
Taking steroids/PEDS isn't simply about bulking up or putting on mass, it's also about speeding up recovery time between games, etc. Look at Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte. These guys weren't using PEDs to get huge. That would be counter-productive to pitching. They were trying to speed up recovery time between starts and overcome nagging injuries throughout the season. To only look at the issue by comparing before and after pictures of kids who grow up/physically mature is to only look at a small part of the picture. the guys taking PEDs likely range from All-Stars to role players to fringe guys that have flames out of the league. This is exactly what's been seen throughout baseball during the steroid era. I wouldn't be surprised if D-leaguers were also caught using PEDs just as we've seen with minor league baseball players (Lou Santangelo was busted paving the way for JR Towles appearance).
A few things: Anabolic steroids CAN increase red blood cell production and thus increase endurance (google winstrol). Not all anabolic steroids cause a noticeable increase in muscle mass even when used correctly with the proper diet and weight training program. Steroids can help increase quickness, speed and explosiveness. Don't be a fool and compare the guy shooting 2 grams of test a week to an athlete taking winstrol or anavar.
Guys, we're talking about Derrick Rose here. He probably didn't even spell his own name on his SAT. I'm not sure he knows 7 is a number.
I think you are right on this guy, he definitely did use PED...But I doubt Wade used the right one because the only part that's noticeably enhanced is probably his JAW LOl