Basketball backers may be doomed to repeat baseball history

Since Rashard Lewis was caught using steroids a few days ago, the fallout has been spectacular. Every last one of us owes a debt of gratitude to Lewis, because he has made us witnesses to two pieces of history.

First, there's the matter of the steroids. Lewis becomes the first NBA star, though I use that word loosely, to get busted on steroids -- and we were privileged to be here to see it. I feel like the first guy who saw Halley's Comet. I assume his name was Halley. I don't much care if it wasn't.

Rashard Lewis will lose 10 games and $1.6 million due to his suspension. (Getty Images)

Second, and more importantly, has been the historic reaction to Lewis becoming that first NBA star on steroids:

The yawn.

It has been fun, if a little unnerving, to watch the NBA media corps treat Lewis' bust as an honest accident and even an aberration. Lewis said he took a supplement that mistakenly had something bad in it. And everyone believes him! Because for the most part, NBA players don't use steroids. Everyone says so!

Jesus. This looks like 1998 when monsters named McGwire and Sosa were hitting home runs and baseball writers were straining neck muscles to look the other way. Is Lupica writing a book on the NBA, and how clean and inspirational it is? If he is, the symmetry would be complete.

It's like we've traveled back in time. We're at the dawn of baseball's steroid era all over again.

And we still haven't learned a damn thing.

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What I need to do, first, is apologize to baseball writers. For years I've made fun of them for missing out on the biggest story in the game's history, a story as obvious as the bloated bodies of Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds. They missed it, and by they, I mean "we." I was a baseball writer from 1995-97, ground zero of the steroid era. I remember sitting in the Florida Marlins' press box, cracking cynical steroid jokes with other baseball writers about Gary Sheffield's cartoon muscles or the enormity of Kevin Brown's back, which looked like a garage door. For a two-car garage.

That's all we did, though. We joked about it. Ha ha ha.

Clowns. All of us.

But now NBA writers are doing the same thing, and they have no freaking excuse. They saw what baseball writers did in the 1990s. They watched as we chalked it up to hard work that baseball players were bigger and stronger, like evolution on fast forward. They watched as we grew outraged at the notion that steroids -- which were creeping into second-class sports like track and swimming -- were taking over our game. We were dummies, but at least we had an excuse.

There were no dummies before us to show us the way.

Not so for NBA writers. They had dummies like me to show them the way. Basically, the way was simple: If you're an NBA writer, don't do what the baseball writers did when steroids started creeping into our game.

And NBA writers have screwed it up anyway.

It's everywhere. It's at ESPN.com, it's at Sports Illustrated, it's in Rashard Lewis' hometown paper in Orlando and it's even here at CBSSports.com. All of them wrote something along the lines of this: Hard as it is to believe, we DO believe Lewis about the tainted supplement.

And most of them wrote something along the lines of this: There's not a major steroid problem in the NBA.

And people think the media is cynical? We're not cynical. We're Pollyanna. We're cheerleaders, covering our eyes with our pom-poms as we ignore the steroid usage under our nose. Again.

Poll Are steroids a widespread problem in the NBA? 37% Yes   63% No   Total Votes: 3248

Granted, Rashard Lewis is a skinny guy. He doesn't look like someone who would take steroids. But that doesn't mean the NBA's problem is minimal.

That means it's enormous.

If Rashard Lewis is on steroids, who isn't?

In baseball, skinny pitchers like Felix Heredia and Bronson Arroyo have been caught, or have confessed to, using illegal substances. Banjo-hitting nobodies named Marvin Benard, Randy Velarde and F.P. Santangelo were outed by the Mitchell Report.

When baseball players like those are taking steroids, you know (most of) the guys hitting 50 home runs are on the juice. So when a basketball player like willowy Rashard Lewis is taking steroids, the problem probably runs a lot deeper in the NBA.

Now, here's the thing. Here's why NBA writers, and the NBA officials I spoke with for this story, truly believe steroids aren't the problem in the NBA that they were in baseball a decade ago: Unlike baseball a decade ago, the NBA tests for steroids -- and has tested since 1999. And it's a fair point. If steroid use is rampant in the NBA, where are the positive results? Lewis became just the sixth NBA player to test positive since 1999, and players have been subject to four random drug tests each season since 2005.

"We feel we have a strong program, and we feel like with each collective bargaining agreement we've made it even stronger," NBA spokesman Tim Frank told me. "We feel pretty good with the results we've gotten from it."

I get that. But here's the other thing: The NBA tests players only during the season, from Oct. 1 to June 30. That leaves three entire months for players to gobble down, shoot up, sniff, snort or slurp steroids. As long as they stop in time -- and most steroids cycle out of the body in a few weeks -- they're clean. And so their league is clean.

NBA people say their league is clean. They say it's a culture thing, that baseball's steroid culture grew out of control while owners and the union were dickering over testing. They say the NBA has been testing for steroids since 1999, allowing the league to stay ahead of the culture.

It's a compelling argument: The NBA never had the chance to develop a steroid culture.

But this is a fact: The NBA does have a marijuana culture. Everyone knows it. Josh Howard of the Dallas Mavericks has flat out said "most of the players in the league use marijuana," and I haven't heard a single compelling argument to the contrary. So in this culture of marijuana use, with marijuana being an addictive drug, how often does an NBA player get suspended five games for being caught a third time?

Almost never.

Which tells me drug testing in the NBA is about as tenacious as defense in the NBA.

So here's what I know. Baseball players use steroids. Football players use steroids. Track athletes use steroids. Swimmers. Cyclists. Even Ping-pong players, for crying out loud.

But the NBA, where players have become noticeably thicker in the past decade, is basically clean? This sport that places a premium on explosion and strength, and rewards those attributes with $100 million contracts, has had just six steroid users since 1999?

Bullcrap. Multiply that number by 10. At least.

Basketball writers apparently disagree, but listen, I was there in 1997. The writers are always the last to know.