Not mar1juana, but steroids. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/18/m...ted=3&ei=5062&en=497683bce6547004&ex=10750068 00&partner=GOOGLE Nobody out there reminds me of Barry Bonds yet. Shaq has a lot of muscle mass but he'snot very toned. Otis Thorpe comes to mind as a very toned individual but that was a while back. . . . Professional basketball is not generally suspected of being drenched in steroids and other performance enhancers. But anyone who has seen even a few minutes of old games on the ESPN Classic network from, say, 20 years ago, is immediately struck by the evolution of players' physiques. Regardless of how it happened, today's N.B.A. players are heavier and markedly more muscled, and the game is tailored to their strengths. It is played according to a steroid aesthetic. What was once a sport of grace and geometry -- athletes moving to open spaces on the floor, thinking in terms of passing angles -- is now one primarily of power and aggression: players gravitate to the same space and try to go over or through one another. . . .
I don't know, I don't dooubt that some guys have tried it, but it just doesn't seem nearly as valuable to be musclebound in basketball as it does in football, and probably baseball. I don't think that guys back in the 60's and 70's and even 80's really even bothered lifting weights that much. I think that conditiong/running was far more important to them than just adding muscle mass (and hence hindering your range of motion, etc.) I don't think Kareem Abdul Jabbar was knocking hiimself out in the weight room, and I dont' think anybody wanted to. It really wasn't necessary anyway as the low post wrestling matches that are allowed these days were called fouls a lot back then, or so I gather. To take an example, look at Kermit Washington, to whom Rudy T is forever linked, was one of the first guys of his, or any, generation to have a bodybuilder type physique like Karl Malone or Ben Wallace, but then he was one of the few guys to have an extensive weight training program. I guess he could have been juicing, but it seems unlikely as most who knew him said that there was no way he did, and he would also have had a difficult tiime with getting access to them since he went to tiny American University in the late 60's and early 70's when he first got big, not exactly Venice Beach and prior to when steroids got big. So effectively, I think the fact that players have started to do weight training at all is probably more responsible than roids.
Yeah, it seems basketball still requires endurance and power whereas baseball and football are strength only sports for the most part. I'm talking about the parts that can be enhanced with drugs. Was kind of shocked to hear basketball mentioned in the article.
