The Dallas Mavericks won the 2011 NBA Championship despite having quite an old roster. To combat that, however, they weathered some rather extreme elements in an effort to keep their bodies young.
How extreme, you ask? We're talking over two minutes of sitting in a giant cauldron while being blasted by nitrogen-chilled air to drop the air temperature as low as -320 degrees while undergoing a rejuvenation process called cryotherapy.
Cryotherapy was invented in Japan in the 1970s and slowly spread throughout Europe ever since, though was only brought over to America in 2009 by a man named Eric Rauscher in Plano, Texas. Rauscher pitched it to Mavs' owner Mark Cuban, for just $75 per person, and the older Dallas players apparently attribute quite a bit of their success this season to the new-age process.
Jason Kidd, Dirk Nowitzki, Jason Terry, Shawn Marion, Tyson Chandler and Brian Cardinal all made the trip to Plano twice per week this past season for cryotherapy -- billed as a better, more advanced form of the age-old ice bath -- as a team while trying to stay healthy.
It seems there aren't many drawbacks, especially when compared to the aforementioned ice baths, except for it seems rather painful at first.
"The first time Shawn did it, I thought he was going to jump out after 30 seconds," Terry told ESPN the Magazine's Ric Bucher. "He was yelling, 'My nipples are about to fall off!'"
If it leads to a championship, however? It's probably worth it, Shawn.