Cuban and HGH
Apr 4, 2014, 6:02 PM | Updated: 6:02 pm
In As You Like It, the opening monologue by William Shakespeare said:
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts.
Say what you will about Mark Cuban, and I disagree with him a lot, but I respect his genius. He knows where the stage is, where the exits are and where the entrances are, and he has played many roles in life. And now we discover that he is funding a two-year study on HGH and whether or not it helps athletes recover quicker from injury.
Forget Shakespeare, this is unmitigated erudition by Cuban; let us count the ways.
First, it’s a great way to package the use of HGH, giving it to amateur athletes under the guise of trying to find out exactly what the healing powers of HGH may entail. That seems like a reasonable thing to do, knowing that studying the impact HGH has on athletic performance is a button too hot to push. So you let people know your goal is to discover the truth about HGH as it applies to recovering from injury…and then, under those auspices, you just happen to record every other measurable and metric as it applies to performance while conducting the study!
Secondly, I believe Cuban when he says he wants to get to the truth about HGH and remove myth from fact. There are many physicians that believe HGH has restorative, prolonging powers and I’ve even heard some say the use of it will become common place in the future.
“I just want to know what reality is,” Cuban said. “And if we can improve recovery time, obviously that’s a plus for all of us, but there was never any basis in fact for not allowing it for use [while recovering from injuries]. It was all marketing. So let’s find out. Let’s find out what’s real and not real.”
Finally, HGH is the story of our time when it comes to athletic performance. Cuban isn’t saying it’s good and not saying it’s bad but he has put himself right into the middle of the biggest sports story of the century.
And that is the kind of stage and role the maverick owner enjoys.