I'm astounded (maybe I shouldn't be) at the ignorance here of what anabolic steroids do and don't do for competitive athletes, how they're taken and how they help or don't help performance. They help you recover more quickly from muscle injuries but not ligament or tendon tears or strains and certainly not from surgery. They don't miraculously stabilize an unstable ankle or foot. They're typically taken in 6-week cycles (dianobol & deca are popular), and are usually stacked (taken together) to maximize results. Essentially, they're cycled to give the body a rest from the rapid growth they deliver and to give the kidneys, liver and naturally produced testosterone levels a chance to normalize.
Frank's season long recovery (it's pretty obvious that's what it was) resulted from surgery and a long, slow and probably very frustrating for him recovery. Steroids wouldn't be a factor to speed his return to health in that case. If however, if he blew out a pec or tweaked his back or pulled a hamstring and it wouldn't heal, a course of deca or dianobol likely would have helped him. If he was on a 6-week cycle, after three weeks the changes in his body would be obvious -- he'd be noticeably leaner with more muscle mass. To my eyes that didn't happen. In particular, his back would be bigger. That, also, didn't happen. Steroids wouldn't enable him to jump higher or shoot better. Perhaps it would have allowed him to get by some people and into the lane with a quicker first step and maybe he'd be quicker on his jumps but even that's debatable. It would have just made him bigger and stronger. Steroids increase the activity of fast twitch muscle fibers, which means he'd be able to recruit more muscle mass when he needed it. For example, no steroid cycle improves a baseball player's hand eye. What it does is gets his bat through the zone faster. For lifters, it makes three reps turn into eight at bigger numbers. In the parlance of lifters it increases volume and intensity like nothing else can.
However, HGH is another matter. It can be taken in short cycles to aid healing and recovery from surgery or instability in a joint. The telling point should have been when all of a sudden in the ACC tournament Frank was able to get in the lane, elevate better with more stability on his jump shot, things he couldn't do during the season. You don't go a whole season not being able to do the things you could before surgery and all of sudden miraculously in the end you can. I don't know for certain what he was taking and we'll likely never know but the idea that he was busted for smoking weed or using anabolics is crazy. The likelihood is he wanted to finish his career as best he could, he'd had enough of playing all season long with an injury that wouldn't heal knowing he could do more with a healthy ankle. The story in the Post Standard about how ready he was to do well in the tournament combined with his last two games is pretty much a tell that he took HGH. Any idea that he was somehow lacking in character or stupid or self-interested or irresponsible is just the rantings of a fan board. He was the team leader on the floor. People who say he was this, that and the other thing are actually saying that the whole team and the staff was deficient of character as well because they put their trust in him. The guy was hurt plain and simple. He likely gambled that the HGH, if that's what it was, would be out of his system in a week and the team and he would both be for the better. He probably missed the window by only a day or two. It wouldn't surprise me if the trainers and some of the staff knew.
The fault to me is Boeheim's, he's supposedly the adult in the room. All season long he kept on saying over and over again that Frank is improving slowly but he's getting there when with only a few exceptions it was obvious he wasn't. At lead guard, Boeheim had three choices: play Battle there (bad idea) or ride Frank (bad idea) or develop Carey (the best option). Under the circumstances, as some people here have said, he should have been a bit more patient and played Carey and somehow, no matter how painful, found a way to live through his mistakes. He could have done the same with Braswell, who produced nearly every time he was on the floor even if only in scrub time. In other words, when Frank showed he was struggling to get healthy, Boeheim should have lengthened his bench not shortened it.
