Jeff Teague Threw Out A Wild Accusation That LeBron Was Taking Steroids While On The Miami Heat...Later Clarifies He Was Joking
Kevin C. Cox. Getty Images.It's by far the slowest part of the NBA calendar with free agency 99.9% done, Summer League basketball has ended, and we're still a month away from the 2025 EuroBasket getting underway. We now enter the part of the summer where the void has to be filled somehow, and sometimes that can lead to people saying some rather outlandish things on their podcasts while we wait for actual news to break/games to start back up again.
A perfect example of this is Jeff Teague and his Club 520 podcast, which is objectively hilarious. Jeff Teague might be the best storyteller I've ever heard, especially because of how self-deprecating he is. It's very refreshing to hear, and his stories never disappoint. I'm sure you've seen clips floating around you're timeline, they're all awesome.
Having said that, we may never see Jeff Teague again. Why? Because of this little accusation from their latest episode
Surely Rich Paul and Klutch will totally let this slide! Nothing to see here!
And listen, while I love a good NBA conspiracy, there are just a few problems with what Jeff Teague is suggesting that I feel are pretty important.
For starters, the NBA didn't begin testing for HGH until the start of the 2015-16 season. Why is that important? Because LeBron wasn't on the Heat in 2015-16. LeBron did indeed have a moment in his career where he looked super skinny, but that was entering the 2014-15 season. You may remember that as his first year back with the Cavs after the Heat lost in the Finals to the Spurs. The internet had a field day when he put out this IG post way back then
If you look at his tenure with the Heat, it's hard to find a stretch of the season where he missed 3 weeks, considering he played 79, 62 (lockout year, 66 game season), 76, and 77 games. I'm not a huge math guy (shoutout ASU), but if a player were going to miss 3 weeks worth of games, chances are he's not finishing with those totals. Not only that, but in no MIA season was there a stretch where LeBron missed more than 2 consecutive games. In fact, that only happened a handful of times in his entire Heat tenure. So once you start to actually look into things, what may make for a great story from Teague doesn't really add up.
Now to be fair, maybe he's just getting the details wrong, and he meant when LeBron came back with the Cavs for the first time. If we look at that season (2014-15), there is a decent sized gap where LeBron sat for 9 games due to a left knee and lower back injury
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Given the injury, how long he sat, and the timing around HGH testing, it does feel like this is the season Jeff Teague was really talking about, and maybe he just got the years mixed up and thought it was during LeBron's Heat seasons. At least that's what would make the most sense given the actual game logs/HGH testing timeline. None of that means he was actually doing it, but my guess is this is what Teague was alluding to.
Considering this has been a "rumor" for 20+ years now and there's never really been any sort of evidence to support it other than LeBron being a basketball cyborg and never showing any signs of regression even as he now plays into his 40s, as much as I may want to believe it, I'm not sure I can put stock into what Teague is selling. If it were true, someone credible would have leaked/reported something by now. But when it comes to LeBron on the Heat while he was at the peak of his powers? There may not have been a more terrifying player in the history of the sport
I mean shit, it's been 13 years since his famous 2012 Game 6 performance (that many say was the turning point in his career) and that shit still keeps me up at night. I've never seen anything like that version of LeBron in all my years watching NBA basketball and probably never will.
And wouldn't you know it, it appears that Klutch has perhaps put in a phone call or two because it didn't take long before the retraction hit