Adam Silver addresses George Karl's suggestion of PED use in the NBA

NBA commissioner Adam Silver says that while he has no evidence that performance enhancing drugs are a problem in the league, any suggestion that it might be will be taken seriously.

Silver was asked about a wide range of topics at his press conference in London Thursday, which came before the Denver Nuggets thrashed the Indiana Pacers 140-112 at the O2 Arena, and the PED question came up in regards to the release of Furious George, a book released this week by former NBA coach George Karl.

In the book, Karl says:

"We’ve got a more thorough drug-testing program than the NFL or MLB, which we always brag about. But we’ve still got a drug issue, though a different one than thirty years ago. And this one bothers me more than the dumbasses who got in trouble with recreational drugs.

"I’m talking about performance-enhancing drugs—like steroids, human growth hormone, and so on. It’s obvious some of our players are doping. How are some guys getting older—yet thinner and fitter? How are they recovering from injuries so fast? Why the hell are they going to Germany in the off-season? I doubt it’s for the sauerkraut.

"More likely it’s for the newest, hard-to-detect blood boosters and PEDs they have in Europe. Unfortunately, drug testing always seems to be a couple steps behind drug hiding. Lance Armstrong never failed a drug test. I think we want the best athletes to succeed, not the biggest, richest cheaters employing the best scientists. But I don’t know what to do about it."

Silver, in response at the press conference, said:

"I have not read George Karl’s book, which has just come out, but I’ve read accounts of George Karl’s book, and I’ve read accounts of what he said about performance-enhancing drugs. I’ll just say our testing is state of the art. I have no reason to believe whatsoever that we have an issue, either as the result of testing or as the result of other information that comes to the league office.

"I’d say that in most sports where there are issues, even when players do not test positive, usually there is some chatter that there is something going on. Other than what George Karl wrote in his book, there is no chatter whatsoever in the league. Obviously, many reporters are in this room who cover the NBA; presumably if they thought there was an issue, they would be writing about it.

"Having said that, we take allegations of performance-enhancing drugs or drug abuse of any kind incredibly seriously. I’m sure we will go through George Karl’s book, others, not me, in the league office, word by word, suggestion by suggestion, and ferret out whether there’s anything to it.

"For us, it doesn’t matter what the source is. If somebody is — especially if it’s a Hall of Fame-caliber coach registering those sort of allegations against the league, we will take them seriously. But standing here today, I have absolutely no reason to believe there’s any truth to those allegations."

Karl was on the NBA A to Z podcast this week and talked about the book by USA TODAY's Sam Amick and Jeff Zillgitt. At the 25:30 mark he discusses why he wrote about PEDs.