What the Hell is Wrong with the NBA?

For those of you who watch ESPN frequently (and both of you New Orleans Hornets fans out there), you probably know that a player named Chris Andersen (pictured on the Denver Nuggets) was dismissed from the NBA for violating the league's drug policy. My first reaction to this was to think how nice it is that the NBA has a tough steroid policy, unlike baseball. Unfortunately, no one is ever punished severely for steroids in any professional sport. Not ten years ago, not now, not next year, and not if they bought commercial time during the Super Bowl and took five different performance enhancing drugs live on national television with the Supreme Court and the Senate present as witnesses.

That's right, Andersen has never failed a test for performance enhancing drugs, and he certainly hasn't failed the required four times to warrant dismissal from the league. Instead, Andersen was dismissed from the NBA for a minimum of two years for a first offense involving an unspecified "drug of abuse", a category which includes cocaine, LSD, amphetamines, and heroin.

Now I know that some of you out there (if anyone actually reads this, anyway) might be saying, "But guy who writes this blog, drugs are bad. So the people who do them must be bad too. Why should I feel sorry for a bad person like Chris Andersen?"

That's a good question, reader. Actually, Chris Andersen donated $25,000 to charities last season to buy Hornets season tickets for underprivileged kids, but to emphasize my main point (and to avoid an argument about the idiocy of workplace drug testing in general), let's pretend that your argument makes sense. The reason that you should feel sorry for Chris Andersen is that, unlike other notorious drug users in sports (Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi, Mark McGwire, Florence Griffith-Joyner, half of the 2004 Super Bowl Champion Carolina Panthers, etc.), Andersen has been severely punished for using recreational drugs, rather than being richly rewarded for using performance enhancing drugs.

"But guy who writes this blog," you might say, "isn't Chris Andersen setting a bad example for those same underprivileged kids? And if so, shouldn't we burn his house to the ground and hang him from the nearest tree to set a better example for those kids?"

Another very astute question, reader, but the problem with your argument (or at least the main problem), is that while Chris Andersen may not be the best role model, the NBA's drug policy makes exactly the wrong kind of statement. The penalty for a first offense involving performance enhancers is a 10 day suspension, and not until the fourth offense can a player be dismissed from the league. Handing out a slap on the wrist for steroids (which not only set a bad example, but compromise the integrity of the sport), and punishing people severely for drugs that have nothing to do with sports, sends a terrible message: drugs are evil if you take them for fun, but it's OK to take them for a competitive edge, because winning isn't just the best thing, it's the only thing.

So remember kids, winning is a substitute for integrity, and people will overlook almost anything, including cheating, if you are good enough at something. But there's one thing that no respectable person can stand for: degenerate, drug abusing hippies like Chris Andersen.