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Just a few days ago, De'aaron Fox posted a shirtless image of himself lifting weights and getting his body ready for the new season. And while people joked in the comments telling him to expect one of those PED tests, to randomly show up at his door, as crazy as it sounds, that exact thing really happened. As you can see on his very next post, this is a screenshot from an anti-doping officer from the NBA, telling him that he needs to contact them ASAP and be tested.
Coincidence? Absolutely not. Despite the fact that a player needs to be selected truly at random, let me show you a few more instances where the league tested a player solely because of an instagram post, a nice in-game dunk, or even crazier, a photoshopped image by a random dude online.
What up everybody, my name is Stefan and this is Heat Check. Let’s get into it.
IG influencers say it’s all in the angles. So Michael-Carter Williams I guess perfected the technique and in this photo he looks swole in an instagram post and on top of that he captioned it “Bully ball”
Teammate Mo Mamba joked that the guard will get the entire team tested.
Williams tho, responded quickly: “No lie bro. I just got a call sayin they comin to the crib tomorrow”
Less than 24 hours after posting the photo on social media, the guard proved that the NBA testing agent really did come to his door.
But as he said, it was just the pic. He didn’t really gain 50 pounds.
Alex Carusso’s case was even funnier.
In 2019, before the start of the season, the Lakers shared photos on Twitter that included one of Alex Caruso working out. Not surprisingly in the internet era, someone photoshopped Caruso, making him look much more jacked than he actually was at that time.
Not long after the photos circulated on the internet, Caruso received a "random offseason” test in the mail, as he said on Instagram.
This is hilarious to me, that the league actually looks at social media to determine which player’s improvement is suspicious and requires testing.
Moving on. Shortly after the Caruso incident, during the 2019-2020 season, his teammate at the time, Danny Green learned that a single dunk could put him on the suspect list.
In a game against the Atlanta Hawks, Green came crashing for the rebound and finished with a spectacular dunk. This fired up his Lakers teammates but apparently the league office as well.
The very next day, he received a random test.
Danny is certainly not known for dunking, and this was his first one of the season, so the fact that this could be a coincidence goes out the window in my opinion.
As you can see he had fun with this, and took it lightly. # surprisesurprise.
And going by all of these hilarious examples, to me it wouldn’t be a surprise surprise if this obviously photoshopped image of Kevin Durant gets him a visit from a league testing officer sometime soon.
Another interesting one is Bradley Beal. Two seasons ago, he had back to back 50 point games. This of course made the alarms go off and he immediately got tested.
How can you go off of the fact that he scored a lot of points in 2 consecutive games? First of all he was pretty much playing by himself that entire season since the Wizards didn’t have anyone else to help him score the ball, so a 50 by him is predictable even, and not a surprise.
Anyway, Bol Bol had quite an eventful debut for the Denver Nuggets. He scored 16 points, 10 rebounds, and 6 blocks. It literally seemed like he was all over the floor. And as you know NBA twitter is probably the most active community online, so he was trending even during the game.
Apparently too much even, because immediately after the game Bol Bol needed to prove to the league that he is all clean.
Which of course he did, as well as all other guys I previously mentioned. They all tested negative.
However there have been some players who did test positive recently. Most notably John Collins and Deandre Ayton. Of course they said they were unaware that a certain supplement or drink they took had a banned substance in it, but you know...when you get into that territory, it’s tough to take those things and have no idea what you’re doing.
It seems like the NBA is clamping down on this issue more aggressively lately.
There’s a big difference in how things used to be.
In 2011, an ESPN The Magazine report quoted then-MVP Derrick Rose as saying performance enhancing substances are a "huge" problem in the NBA. Rose was one of several professional athletes asked the following question by ESPN the Magazine for its May 16 issue: "If 1 equals 'What are PEDs? and 10 equals 'Everybody's Juicing... How big of an issue is illegal enhancement in your sport?" In response, Rose said, "Seven. It's huge, and I think we need a level playing field, where nobody has that advantage over the next person.
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