Mark Cuban Wants NBA to Consider Allowing Use of HGH

By Cody Williams @TheSizzle20 on February 14, 2014

The injuries to star players in the 2013-14 NBA season have been disappointing and happening at a relatively alarming rate. Derrick Rose, Kobe Bryant and Russell Westbrook are just a few stars that have been out for much of the season, with guys like Anthony Davis and Eric Bledsoe also missing significant portions of time this year.

However, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban—ever the forward-thinker—has a proposed solution. According to a report from Sam Amick of USA Today, Cuban believes that the NBA should look into allowing the use of HGH, particularly study the effects of HGH on players recovering from injuries and how it can aid their journey to get back on the floor.

Cuban made it clear that he didn’t know enough on the topic of HGH—which is currently on the NBA’s list of banned substances—to fully advocate it, but he believes that the league shouldn’t just accept the negative stigma that has been placed on the substance and should instead fund research to see if there are any potential benefits to the use of HGH.

Amick went on to describe the major “hurdle” to the league potentially allowing the use of HGH is the simple fact that the FDA even has strict regulations on the use of the drug and the use of it to help speed along the recovery from injuries isn’t necessarily one of those allowed uses by the administration.

Cuban does raise an interesting point, though. There is a distinct lack of knowledge regarding the potential benefits of HGH. Perhaps there are none. Perhaps there’s no way to regulate the use of HGH in the NBA to only be used for recovery. However, those questions don’t matter until there’s more known about what effects the drug can have in that regard, which is exactly Cuban’s point. HGH won’t be allowed any time soon in the NBA, but the idea of looking further into it isn’t a bad one by any means.