Extra Time with Mark Cuban and Malcolm Gladwell (HBO)

that's Mark Cuban owner of the Dallas Mavericks and that's Malcolm Gladwell best-selling author turned podcaster revisionist history revisionist history there has not been revisionist history yet about HGH you've been a vocal critic you feel like there's a public stigma with HGH and athletes what are we missing with HGH we're missing that there's no data that proves one way or the other that it enhances what does or doesn't enhance performance none zero it's never been tested Malcolm do you care if somebody uses HGH to recover from an injury I don't I mean you and I've had this conversation before about it's an important distinction between things that you take to recover from an injury and things that you take to augment your performance the problem is that it's really hard in the real world to make that distinction I mean it's a great distinction in theory but I wonder whether there are a lot of jobs drugs that might do both or a little bit of both simultaneously so that makes it puts it in a grey zone that's hard to figure out good all right so you're Pro HGH for if the NBA legalized shades you'd be good no because there's no evidence one way or the other so what I did was fun to study at the University of Michigan where they're taking 236 athletes that have had ACL problems right and for the ACL surgery they're going to give a half HGH before and after to see if it helps with the recovery and half a placebo and we'll see so rather than guessing I don't you know I don't care one way or the other I just want to know the facts Malcolm you you were kind of a little bit for HGH but now you've turned well I you know it's the the problem is that I'm principally a track fan right and when it comes to track and field and EPO and things I become a total hardliner there is no place for anything like that I'm in a sport hardliner for happily the ladies what Oh exactly four footballs window because footballs in a special case where the injury load associated with the game is now so out of control I mean this is essentially a game that cripples everyone who plays it when you have that kind of a problem with the game you have to pursue you have to look at different ideas about how to deal with that right I mean it's it's negligent on the part of the of the NFL to play the game as it is now and not spend real dollars on trying to figure out how to prevent or speed up so you won't let any of your kids play football oh my god I I would have a friend I mean I went I wouldn't let my son play football no chance and you know basketball everyone's like no no they don't use it in basketball no no wouldn't really help it's like I really find it hard to believe that recovery drugs drugs that help you build your strength back after Ben why do we think that we don't have this in the NBA I mean I don't I don't think any of our guys has ever taken it they're guys in a locker room talk all the time and they guess who they think has yeah um but gonna name any names no because I just began oh but is it obvious just by looking at some players that something's going on you would think so but it's hard to say right because there's never been a study it's not like you can say look we took these 200 athletes and here's the hundred that got placebos here's who got the real who got HGH now look at their body shapes look at their physicality and see what's happened and then here's what happens after they came off there's no really reference points for us or benchmarks do we know at this point precisely what Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire were taking during that historic home run run I call those the old school steroids though like never when we were growing up in the 70s and like they all did the communist countries that have this athletes that really I grew up in hammers I grew um Pittsburgh and yes to see a lot of the players like Steve coursing since oh yeah and he'd be out humongous and I mean getting into roid rages and you talked to you know I'd hang out with some of those guys and the stories were scary right but they were basically like steroids you give to a horse I think now the steroids are actually probably better and sleeker much more again but what are safe a lot of that but no I think a lot of what's gone on is that people have switched from some of these cruder older steroids to things like and I say things like it gh is why I asked about Sosa and McGwire so we know that it's very clear they got a substantial performance benefit yeah I'm taking something right over the course of those years and that performance benefit was not small it was on the order of 10 15% yeah now I would say like 30 and it's saved baseball yeah but it was among the things they were taking our bonds later on I would love to know if he had in his cocktail any of those guys had in her cocktail h th that's a good way to start this question right no no because you just have to do a study you start you have to answer a question with data right you look at steroids the stigma steroids when you ask people what's the problem with steroids aside from performance enhancement well we don't want it in the game because it'll encourage kids to do it is that a valid reason to keep it out because the reality is safely administered by doctors steroids are safe you don't see people who have taken steroids under the care of a doctor falling out falling over dead or having problems you see people athletes who took them themselves self-administered bottom on the black market those are the ones that have problems so the question is what does it do what does the data say well we'll do and what is the enhancement from that steroid or whatever it is and then you make a decision but you can't make a decision without data you can only guess well it seems like the data and the testing is now worse than ever and you saw what happened in the Olympics where the real drug testing lab basically has become invalid and now we're looking at these Olympics I don't know what I'm watching anymore like your Summer Olympics coming up it's like what am i why I'd rather watch an Olympics where they just said you know what HGH steroids they're all legit well first of all I would say baseball to save track and field you all you're any what personal you already watch that right yeah I watched it every four years you watched so in 2012 this is the thing that because I'm track fan in 2012 six of the top nine finishers in the women's 1500 meters at in London have subsequent to that race been being either kicked out of the sport or evidence has been found that they were using drugs so when you watch that I mean I watched that race thrilling race six of the nine that we know about were on the juice that was in a room what if nine of nine were well I don't think I'm not Shannon Robert was not on the juice no no no no I must know meeting if it was legit right yeah all could take with the doctor's care that's not fair because what if I don't want it what if I'm competing and I don't want to take this stuff so you'd get LASIK surgery to improve your vision past 20/20 so you can see a baseball better well LASIK surgery is a good that's a good one Tommy Johnny's voluntary Bo Peep what about voluntary Tommy John surgery yeah literally voluntary I mean that those are there's a there's a massive gray area in those sports I will say this about Olympic sports though when you have a sport that is almost wholly defined by the time right by a timed performance the introduction of these kinds of drugs which can cause particularly women I mean people have forgotten that steroids and any control EPO any of these peds have a much greater effect on female performance and male performance so with men it's like that with luminous like that so this is we're talking almost entirely about male use here female use is a whole different ballgame right you're turning essentially people who are you know ordinary people into super e superhuman athletes with the with E with the use of these drugs that's where that gets really weird when you and my wife had a sinus infection they gave her steroids she was just nasty or in the house every day well let me ask you this so Nana borrowed a New York Times article where this professor from SMU went to the Dead Sea and these training people because it's literally below sea level right yeah oh the oxygen levels are much higher so if you train people there is that the same as doping because you're increasing your oxygen levels and you increase your performance well you I mean runners always train at altitude right because you by training where there's less oxygen you can simulate that stimulated and usually when an oxygen tent but there is a there is a I think it's safe to say we'd all agree I think that there is a real distinction between traveling to a 6,000 feet and running and injecting yourself with drugs or giving yourself they won itself well no one is just that one's a natural version right one is dark you know a synthesized version of the same thing though but can't we say that for the purposes of particularly of of sports which is already about sports we're not talking about human beings living in normal lives already when you enter in professional sports you agree to a set of largely arbitrary rules right how that sports supposed to proceed Marx never really agreed to it I don't know I played by a lot of a buddy but I mean so given that it's not unreasonable just for people to accept distinctions let me play the counter to that the rich get to go to 6,000 high altitude places the rich get to go to the Dead sound nonsense the poor don't get to take advantage lows because they can't afford it here's a synthetic version always say the in who dominates running at the international stage Kenyans and you know what do you think that is because they live at 6000 feet I would disagree I would disagree with that from for a number of reasons I would say it's just ladies Dom what's the book by David Epstein um the of the James sports gene the sports Gendo damn it very well yeah but David would say that that is a huge I thought that came easy we're in like this little pocket where the altitude was just high enough to Train really nice but no but what what does evolution do right there Kenyans they've been there since the dawn of time right so your body evolves that's what evolution does and the strongest survive and to be stronger to survive and that altitude and run and do what you do that's why people in Massachusetts put on a little extra weight no we know what makes a great runner you got to be a skinny person who grows it goes up a roughly 6,000 feet who is the greatest American distance runner of the last ten years Ryan Hall a skinny guy who grew up at 6,000 feet only in California not Ethiopia but that's a very different story than sitting in your house and shooting yourself off the drugs

Channel: Any Given Wednesday with Bill Simmons

Views: 215,568

Rating: 4.8554959 out of 5

Keywords: Bill Simmons, HBO, Any Given Wednesday, Talk Show, Mark Cuban, Malcolm Gladwell

Id: d7oBAiuuk6I

Length: 10min 32sec (632 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 30 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/CantHousewifeaHo]

I was really glad to see the show pick up from last week. Bill is a really good moderator and it was nice to hear somebody challenge Cuban on why NBA Franchises aren't really a true business. Gladwell is incredibly well-spoken and this was a fantastic interview.

As an aside, it's nice to see an honest guy like Cuban not use the fans of Seattle to drive up their market cap as a league, I don't see guys like Lacob, Dolan, or Gilbert doing that. Mavs fans, you guys are really fortunate to have him.

[u/[deleted]]

Lmao steroids you give to a horse

[u/[deleted]]

that was scary when the camera went from Cuban to Gladwell. Gladwell looks like a villain from an old, old movie where all the bad people were jews

[u/KnickedUp]

Simmons is so awkward on camera. It makes me uncomfortable to watch.

[u/TeevTeeForMe]

Show has been rocky but i really liked these two together as guests.

[u/D0UFEELLUCKY]

I drink coffee I'm on PEDs

[u/CommanderZelph]

Enjoyed the show, including all of Simmons awkward body movements.

[u/[deleted]]

I remember they suspended a swimmer from my country years ago because he had elevated levels of hgh in his blood. It later turned out he actually had cancer ant that was the reason.