Boogie’s misery has good company
From Doug Smith’s Sports Blog at thestar.com: The news that DeMarcus Cousins blew out an ACL in some pickup game/ workout session last week truly, truly sucks. Doesn’t matter how you feel about him as an NBA player and none of us know him as a person, so don’t even think about commenting on that. But the fact that a very, very good player has to fight through another debilitating long-term injury is sad, and if you don’t feel bad for him, we can’t even be acquaintances.
It’s the third big-time injury in a couple of years for Cousins – add it to an Achilles and a torn quad – and he’s got to be close to making the list of top athletes who’ve had their careers basically ruined by injuries.
(And if you don’t think Cousins was still really, really good, Golden State doesn’t win Game 2 of the NBA Finals — or maybe Game 5 — without him. He’s that good.)
Much will be made of where, if anywhere, Cousins should land on the list of great athletes whose careers have been torn asunder by injuries, players who have shown great flashes only to be robbed of any longevity because they could not stay healthy. My top five:
Bo Jackson: Seriously. Go down some YouTube rabbit hole of Jackson highlights and prepare to be amazed at what he could do. My affinity for outstanding baseball defence is well-chronicled and the way Jackson threw, the way he tracked down balls was astounding.
Now, it’s totally subjective, of course, and the order probably doesn’t matter, but if I’m rounding out my top five, I’m likely going with: Bobby Orr, Yao Ming, Bernard King, Sandy Koufax.
Sure, some of them lasted a while, but not long enough. I did not include Len Bias on the list and never will because drug use is not an injury, and I’m sure there are others that many of you would include. But here’s one and since we try to teach here as much as anything, you need to go learn a bit more about this guy: Maurice Stokes.
I never saw him play, unlike each of the other five, but when a guy like Wayne Embry tells me how amazing he was, that makes one sit up and take notice. When the Cousins news broke and I thought out putting this list together, I reached out to Wayne to make sure I’d correctly remembered his thoughts on his old Cincinnati Royals teammate. This is what I got during the conversation:
“He was great. I often tell my Celtic teammates (where Wayne won an NBA title) that had he not gotten sick we (Cincinnati) would have been the dynasty.” That’s pretty good.
Stokes played just three NBA seasons, averaged 16.4 points and 17.3 rebounds. His tragic end came when he fell during a game, suffered a concussion, came back and kept playing before he suffered a seizure and was left permanently paralyzed — a victim of post-traumatic encephalopathy, a brain injury that damaged his motor-control centre. He died far too young and if you want to learn a story of friendship, love and support, study up on Stokes and Jack Twyman, his teammate and friend who became his legal guardian and cared for him until Stokes died in 1970.
I know it’s a stretch to start out with DeMarcus Cousins and end up with Maurice Stokes and Jack Twyman, and get some Wayne Embry into a story, but any time I can point anyone in the direction of Stokes-Twyman, I do. It’s why when the league announces the winner of the “teammate of the year” award named after them, I make sure to somehow write about it. Spend some time today checking the story out.