The NBA players' union is getting serious about protecting the health of its former members.
Perhaps spurred by the recent, ostensibly premature, heart-related deaths of beloved former NBAers like Moses Malone, Darryl Dawkins, and Anthony Mason, the NBPA has implemented a new program to screen for health problems in retired players - a program that centers on comprehensive heart testing, ESPN's J.A. Adande reports.
The first round of screenings were conducted Saturday at the Toyota Center in Houston, where Adande estimates that some 25 retired players showed up to meet with physicians on hand to conduct a battery of heart tests.
Even in the first round of testing, the doctors analyzing the results came across some unsettling trends.
"Even in this small sample of patients that we've done, we've been able to get some abnormalities," cardiologist Dr. Manuel Reyes said. "A couple of incidents with decreased heart function, weakened left ventricle, which is the main chamber of the heart."
One of the objectives of the program is to determine whether pro basketball players are more susceptible to heart disease, or whether they face the same measure of increased risk that other abnormally large humans do.
"We're looking for trends," Joe Rogowski, the union's director of sports medicine and research, told Adande. "There's never been a real study that looks at this population and looks for norms and trends. They're bigger. They carry more weight, which leads to other factors, such as diabetes and high blood pressure."
Union boss Michele Roberts has been a vocal proponent of improving the support system in place for retirees, be it to address issues of physical or mental health.
The NBPA reportedly decided in July to set aside an allotment of money - from both last season's revenue shortfall and the league's impending TV rights windfall - to put toward a health care plan for retired players.
Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban also volunteered in October to cover heart exam expenses for players over the age of 50 who'd played two or more seasons with the Mavs.