Worst fears, best outcome
Patrick McCaw’s frightening injury seen through his father’s eyes
INDIANAPOLIS — Jeff McCaw drove his 2017 Dodge Caravan through the streets of northern St. Louis, zigzagging past traffic, desperately hoping for the best Saturday night.
Moments earlier, he had watched on TV as his son, Warriors guard Patrick McCaw, was wheeled off the court on a stretcher with a possible spine injury after taking a scary fall in a game at Sacramento. Speeding up the highway to meet his wife at their St. Louis home, Jeff thought of his older brother, who was paralyzed from the neck down for nearly two decades before his death last year.
“When something like this happens, a lot of people aren’t even aware of all the possibilities for what can go on,” Jeff McCaw said in a recent phone interview. “Because of what happened with my brother, I was well aware of all the possibilities. I just had to have a strong belief that, this time, everything would be OK.”
A longtime prep basketball coach in the St. Louis area, Jeff had just dropped off two of his Trinity Catholic High School players at a tournament in Louisville that Saturday afternoon when he decided to stop by a friend’s house in St. Louis to watch the Warriors-Kings game. Jeff and his buddy ate fried fish while discussing Patrick’s return from a fractured left wrist that sidelined him more than a month.
In his sixth game back, Patrick — a reserve guard — showed progress, moving well off screens and taking open shots he would’ve ignored
earlier in the season. With Golden State up 86-69 in the waning seconds of the third quarter, McCaw caught a pass from Jordan Bell, made a layup and was inadvertently undercut by Sacramento’s Vince Carter.
McCaw landed hard on his back, screaming as he writhed on the floor. Nearly 2,000 miles away, as he saw a team trainer rush to his son’s side, Jeff feared the worst.
In 1998, he was a 28-yearold father of five — the second youngest of whom was a 3year-old Patrick — when he got the call that his big brother, Robert, had fallen from a second-story porch. Jeff rushed to a nearby hospital, where he found Robert hooked up to a ventilator with a neck brace on. It was there, surrounded by more than 35 relatives, that Jeff learned Robert would never walk again.
As Patrick lay on that court Saturday in Sacramento, Jeff couldn’t let himself believe that such a cruel fate had befallen his family again. He prayed to his late sister, Patricia, who died four years before the nephew named after her was born.
“I consider her his guardian angel,” Jeff said. “She always has a tendency to look out for him.”
Before Patrick — arms folded over his chest, neck in a brace — could be wheeled off the floor, Jeff was speeding home. A drive that typically takes 19 minutes was cut in half. His phone flooded with texts and voice mails, Jeff already knew he and Teresa needed to be on the next plane to the Bay Area.
They sat up all night, too worried to sleep, before taking
“When something like this happens, a lot of people aren’t even aware of all the possibilities for what can go on. Because of what happened with my brother, I was well aware of all the possibilities.” Jeff McCaw, Patrick’s father, referring to his older brother who was paralyzed in a fall
a 6 a.m. flight Sunday to Oakland that connected through Denver. By the time Jeff and Teresa made the 84-mile drive to UC Davis Medical Center, they knew that Patrick had regained feeling in his legs and was beginning to walk. Around 4 p.m. that day, five hours after his parents’ arrival, Patrick was released from the hospital, diagnosed with a lumbar-spine contusion.
“We’re so relieved that it wasn’t more serious,” said Jeff, who plans to stay with Patrick through the weekend. “Throughout all this, I trusted that everything would be OK. Our family’s faith is strong. I just always believe God is only going to give you what you can handle.”
With a re-evaluation with a specialist scheduled for Thursday, McCaw is resting at his apartment in Jack London Square. His movement is limited to trips to the bathroom. When Patrick needs his prescriptions refilled or food picked up, Jeff and Teresa drive to a nearby store.
No one close to McCaw is ready to put a timetable on his return to the court. After avoiding what many feared could be a career-ending injury, McCaw is thankful just to be walking.
“God definitely is watching over me,” McCaw tweeted Monday afternoon. “I’m blessed beyond measure!” Connor Letourneau is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: cletourneau@ sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Con_Chron