LeBron James’s unprecedented longevity and sustained elite performance in the NBA have consistently defied conventional wisdom. For over two decades, he has remained at the pinnacle of professional basketball, shattering records and rewriting the definition of athletic prime. This remarkable consistency has, inevitably, fueled whispers and outright accusations of performance-enhancing drug (PED) use. However, when we truly examine the scope of his career, the argument for PEDs becomes not just unlikely, but almost comically inadequate to explain his achievements. If LeBron truly relies on illegal substances to perform at this level, then he deserves a Nobel Prize in sports science for mastering the undetectable and consistently effective application of such advancements over two decades in the most scrutinized position in sports.

Let’s dissect the numbers. LeBron James debuted in the NBA in 2003. He has now played over 21 seasons, maintaining a level of statistical output and dominance that astounds even the most seasoned basketball analysts.

Scoring Prowess: LeBron holds the NBA’s all-time scoring record, surpassing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He has averaged at least 25 points, 5 rebounds, and 5 assists in 16 different seasons. No other player has done this more than five times. He is also the only player in NBA history to average 20 points per game in every year of his career. At age 37, he was still averaging an MVP-level 8+ BPM (Box Plus/Minus), a metric that estimates a player’s contribution in points above league average per 100 possessions. Even at 40, he maintains an All-NBA level BPM.

Durability and Games Played: He has played an astonishing number of games, including 80 or more in 11 of his 20 seasons, and five times playing all 82. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, another paragon of longevity, played 95% of his team’s regular-season games over 20 years. LeBron’s physical consistency in a contact sport like basketball, where injuries constantly sideline even the most gifted athletes, is unparalleled.

Continuous Evolution: Beyond the raw numbers, LeBron has consistently adapted his game. He refined his shooting, developed an elite post-game, and maintained an incredible court vision and passing ability throughout his career. This constant evolution suggests an unwavering dedication to his craft, rather than a reliance on a quick fix.

Consistency. When LeBron goes through 3-4 games of missing three pointers we all know about it. And still, these are rare and far between. Modern basketball is a game that demands multiple skills. Taking PEDs to boost speed or strength would negatively affect other parts of his game. Russel Westbrook is a great example of an explosive player who seems like he is unstable due to a bad PED regime. LeBron is not. His numbers are so stable throughout his career it is crazy.

The whispers of PEDs often point to the idea that no human body can sustain such a high level of performance for so long naturally. Yet, if we assume LeBron is using PEDs, we must then acknowledge the profound implications. He is not only a basketball savant but also a physical marvel not just for playing basketball but also for managing to handle PEDs over two decades so well!

Firstly, the NBA, like other major sports leagues, has a drug testing policy. While the specifics of testing protocols and the constant cat-and-mouse game between athletes and anti-doping agencies are complex, the league does test for a range of performance-enhancing substances. We have seen athletes across various sports caught and penalized for PED use. For LeBron to consistently evade detection for over two decades, through countless tests, would imply an almost supernatural understanding of drug kinetics and masking agents.

Secondly, PEDs, particularly anabolic steroids, come with significant health risks. These can include cardiovascular issues, liver damage, and various psychological side effects. While they can increase muscle mass and strength, they do not inherently improve skill, agility, or basketball IQ. Furthermore, the notion that PEDs simply allow an athlete to “bounce back faster” or “exercise harder and more often” still does not fully explain the sustained peak performance, especially in a sport as dynamic and skill-dependent as basketball. LeBron’s unparalleled court vision, passing accuracy, and strategic brilliance are not attributes that PEDs directly enhance. Athletes on PEDs come and go like shooting stars. They don’t perform like this for decades.

Therefore, if LeBron James has indeed been using performance-enhancing drugs throughout his career, and has managed to be both incredibly effective and completely undetectable for this long, he represents a scientific marvel. His “drug regimen” would have to be so meticulously designed, administered, and masked that it would redefine our understanding of sports pharmacology. And remember that this is the most highly scrutinized sportsperson ever. Such a feat would warrant not just a “GOAT” designation in basketball, but a legitimate scientific inquiry and, quite possibly, a Nobel Prize in an emergent field of “Sports Science and Undetectable Performance Enhancement.”

The more rational explanation for LeBron’s sustained greatness lies in a confluence of factors: extraordinary genetics, an obsessive dedication to physical conditioning and recovery, a relentless work ethic, and a profound basketball intellect. He invests heavily in his body, employing a team of experts and utilizing cutting-edge recovery techniques. This holistic approach, combined with his inherent talent, provides a far more plausible explanation for his unprecedented longevity than the fantastical scenario of a perfectly hidden, perfectly effective, and perfectly safe PED program.

Ultimately, the burden of proof rests with those making the accusations. Without concrete evidence, the sheer scale and consistency of LeBron James’s achievements suggest a level of natural athletic supremacy and unwavering dedication that transcends the ordinary. To attribute it solely to illegal substances without a shred of proof not only diminishes his incredible accomplishments but also implicitly credits him with a scientific breakthrough that would revolutionize human performance. And that, in itself, is an absurd yet intriguing thought experiment. The greatest athlete of all time, a kid that grew from nothing into one of the richest athletes of all time, is also a media manipulator (don’t forget that one!) and a medical expert like no other in the NBA even though they are all millionaires with infinite resources!

We are living in a cinema-free pandemic period with limited choices. Important major international releases are frozen, production of new ones restricted seriously. Netflix can sit at a table with the producers of the new 007 and ask for it at a ridiculously low price because it is going stale and they don’t have many options. So let me start another way around. How did I hear about the Queen’s Gambit?

It was on Netflix’s reccomendations. We all know that it is a bad reccomendation engine but what other options do we have? Check it out on IMDB? That is getting worse every day as Amazon hasn’t spent time improving it in ages. First reviews? Always gloating for any old crap. So we take the bait, the Netflix promo on Netflix makes it look better than others, you see the first episode and then, well, the rest, because you are on the binge machine that is Netflix. Worse still, friends and family are also stuck in the same rut so we are not even cross checking. The Emperor has no clothes but, meh, let’s wait till the parade is over before saying it. And when you have invested eight hours on the parade of the mini series you are highly unlikely to admit it was wasted on mediocrity.

I will go further than that. The Queen’s Gambit is downright insulting and dangerous. Take for example the topic of substance abuse. The way it is presented we are left with the impression that it is a) easy to control b) useful for chess playing and c) with no long term consequences. Or maybe let’s see how the series portrays a woman entering a male-dominated realm: a) everything is polite b) nothing particularly nasty happens to her and c) grandmasters lose to her and immediately offer to help train her for her next challenge. This level of lying is insulting to millions of women of that era and even today. Women’s rights organizations should be an uproar.

In fact all the topics touched by this series are done in such a superficial way that it is problematic. Take the scene where she visits a hippy house to enjoy marijuana for example. It is the cleanest and least messy den ever shown on television to represent a hippy household. My daughter didn’t even understand the point of the scene as our heroine hoovered and tidied the place after a one night stand , also confusingly presented. This isn’t political correctness, it isn’t the opposite. It is just terrible movie-making that fails to really touch the audience in any meaningful way.

The Queen’s Gambit is an insult to so many great chess movies, so many true chess stories, to the heroes that battled hate in the Cold War. It isn’t just bad TV, it has a negative impact. People won’t start playing chess because of it, they will start pretending to play chess for a while maybe.

So my movie review would be like this: “If you are really bored with the pandemic in lockdown and have no access to anything else other than Netflix, if you want to mindlessly waste 8 hours of your life without learning anything of consequence, don’t miss it!”

The serious social and technological problem remains: how will we fix recommendation engines? If we introduce a social aspect to them, can we as a society, ensure we hold ourselves up to any level of intelligent critique? Or do we just want to have fun? Well the Queen’s Gambit is not even fun.

It starts with a fake Google account.  This is vital.  Search results are personalized.  You will never get it all perfect, but if you at least persuade it that you live wherever you are researching and then make sure you do Google searches logged in from this fake Google profile, the world you are seeing will be a little more like your target.  Sign up for whatever products and services you are looking for from this signed in Chrome browser.    You have to try and live the part.

With Facebook things are even more dangerous.  That person in marketing you think is “up to speed with all this new stuff”, well, just isn’t.   If I have a really successful Instagram account, or a very active personal Facebook profile I only see what that particular profile’s take on the world is.   Some days I might whiz through multiple profiles to check up on them, just housekeeping.  Hard to describe just how different it feels to be in each newsfeed.  Some are simply based in different locations, with friends from a particular island or city.  Age differences are even more stunning.  The same political event which fills your friends’ timelines when you are 50, doesn’t even appear when you are 16.

It isn’t fashionable anymore, but I always make sure my fake people have a website, blog or other public trove of information on whatever topic I am researching.   This gives me unique insights into what people are looking for.   It is the “honeypot” approach.  In content marketing it is easier to just start testing ideas like this.  And when the first organic google searches land my way, it is like Christmas day!  Somebody wrote what they wanted to know in Google and came to me, fake me, this particular person.  Why?  How?  What cyberspace hole did I fill with what I just did?

If anything, building a fake profile is a humbling experience.  Because you realize just how complex a web social beings like humans create.  We earn trust.  Slowly.   A “follow” by a 13 year old is a very, very, very different action to a “follow” by a 60 year old.  He then posts what he just had for breakfast without thinking about it, while the senior citizen is carefully crafting a comment as if he is writing to the Economist.

Marketing people are often fooled by their own brand.  In the case of social media they are also sidetracked by their personal profiles and habits.  These are extremely dynamic, immature new mediums, still jostling for position, changing architecture and interfaces.   There is no agreed way to assess them, no specific assigned meaning to what we all do with them.  So get off your high horse and mingle with the natives.

The glaring conclusion is that “Hellas” (the proper name for the region) is hardly used.   Also “Greeks” are seldom requested as people.   There is a seasonality.   Searches drop off in July and August, possibly as many expatriot Greeks return to the homeland and stop searching for it online.  (A smaller, similar drop occurs in December.)   The most interesting thing to note about this (randomized) data from Google is that the two words do not actually always follow each other closely in their trends.   It starts making sense if we see

what words are associated with each:

Greece is about travel, Athens and holidays.   Whereas “Greek” is about yoghurt, salad and all things Greek like:

“Greek” is used as a common tag for online activities for Greeks all over the world.  This becomes more evident when we see the common searches around “Greek” and focus only on the region of Greece:

In fact there are great regional variations to the search.   In the US for example “Greek” is closely associated to Greek ancient history and Greek products.  (And thanks to New Yorkers especially – obviously more concerned with the quality of their food!)

Notice the difference in seasonality as the blue line (searches for “Greece”) is relatively stable.   In the UK, the picture is almost the exact opposite!