Warriors land in concussion spotlight
The NFL has taken its harsh turn in the concussion spotlight. As have soccer, hockey and baseball. So it’s not a shock that a concussion controversy is swirling around basketball’s best team.
Basketball — even for a team critics describe as “jumpshooting” finesse specialists — is still a contact sport. Full of rough play and tough players. And head injuries can occur.
After the Warriors’ two brightest stars, Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, suffered jarring injuries in consecutive games, the team finds itself not only in the NBA Finals but squarely at the junction of brain injury speculation and second- guessing.
The Warriors had the day off Thursday, to rest their sore bodies and acknowledge their achievement. There was no official word on Thompson’s condition or his prognosis for Game 1 of the NBA Finals on June 4.
General Manager Bob Myers, in an interview on 95.7 FM Thursday, said team doctors visited Thompson at home and that he was resting.
You can be sure the Warriors will be very careful about what they do with their young tandem, the Smashed Brothers, and any other player who gets banged too hard. The world is watching.
“To be perfectly honest, I had no idea that there was second- guessing going on,” head coach Steve Kerr said, in reference to Curry’s injury, a few hours before a fresh round of criticism began. “The only thing that we did as an organization was put it in the hands of our doctors.”
Curry hit the court hard during Game 4 in Houston on Sunday night. After almost an hour away from the action, during which the team said he passed all his concussion protocol, he went back into the game. He was sore, and black and blue the next day, but he said his head felt fine.
Knee to the head
On Wednesday, as the Warriors were fighting to clinch a spot in the finals, Thompson took a knee to the temple. He had stitches in his ear, went through “a concussion evaluation” in the locker room, according to the team, and returned to the bench. But his ear continued to bleed and he went back in the locker room. He didn’t re- enter the game.
The team announced that Thompson began to show concussion- like symptoms after the game. Thompson told ESPN in a live interview that he felt dizzy. His father, Mychal, told a radio station that Thompson was too woozy to drive home, so he chauffeured him. Once home, Thompson threw up a few times, and then felt better.
“When I left his house, he was resting comfortably,” Mychal Thompson told ESPN’s “Mike & Mike” show. “After a couple of days he seems to think he’ll be fine.”
But that’s a scary development. Here in the Bay Area we’ve seen a 49ers Hall of Fame quarterback’s career end due to a concussion — Steve Young never came back after being knocked out in a Monday Night Football game. We’ve seen another 49ers quarterback, Alex Smith, lose his job after suffering a concussion. Catcher Mike Matheny’s career ended while in a Giants uniform, due to concussions. Giants first baseman Brandon Belt missed more than a month last season because of persistent concussion symptoms.
Bodies are sacrificed
We don’t know how many concussions Thompson has had, but it’s probably more than zero. Any parent who has signed their child up for basketball knows it is a contact sport. When defense is played correctly, when bodies are sacrificed to take a charge or draw the foul — things Thompson does — a hard fall is bound to happen.
The NBA has skated along without much concussion concern. The league concussion protocol states: A player suspected of having a concussion, or who exhibits the signs or symptoms of concussion, will be removed from participation and undergo evaluation by the medical staff in a quiet, distraction- free environment conducive to conducting a neurological evaluation.
But, according to the statistical website FiveThirtyEight. com, only nine NBA players had concussions in the 2013- 14 season, and the league had the lowest rate of concussions of any of the four major professional sports.
Maybe that’s why television analyst Charles Barkley went on an ill- advised rant on TNT after Curry’s injury, saying, “Don’t try to compare basketball concussions to football concussions. That’s ridiculous. … They’ve got a serious issue with concussions in the NFL.”
However, a brain injury is a brain injury, no matter what sport is being played.
Act on doctors’ orders
There is no reason to think the Warriors would do anything nefarious. That they would be willing to put their stars, or any player, at risk.
“There’s no way we would have put ( Curry) back in the game if there was a risk,” Kerr said. “It’s based on what the doctors tell us.”
But diagnosing concussions can be difficult. Players eager to get back in the game lie about how they’re feeling. Team employees have an inherent conflict of interest — they want their teams to win. Sometimes things are misdiagnosed or rushed or downplayed.
“It’s hard,” Myers told 95.7 FM. “It’s real- time decisions. But you want to err on the side of caution. We’ve got a good break here now. We can take it slow.”
Should Thompson have been lying down in a dark room rather than returning to the bench? Should he have been taken to a hospital?
The public and media don’t know, they only second- guess. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Concussion awareness has been raised, the level of skepticism is healthy and the pressure is on teams to do the right thing.