Caller on Sportsradio 610: Juwon Howard's career over

The last thing anyone wants/needs is to have a player drop dead in our team's uniform (or anyone's uniform for that matter).

Several years ago, a young man, a co-worker, dropped dead from heart failure right there at work in front of customers and fellow employees.

That is not something people are able to get over any time soon.

If Juwon has any doubts, or if the Rockets have any doubts at all about his health, he needs to retire right now.

It's not worth it to push it and risk not only his own life, but everything else that comes along with such a tragedy.

I hope that, if he comes back to play, that we don't all get a big shock one night..

 

while I agree that this caller may or may not be full of poo-poo but this discussion is long overdue - we all talked about Howard's knee when it happened.. but there has been very little conversation about this heart condition (it was almost an after thought - with all the playoff push happenings)

I have wondered why Howard who has plenty of money, would run out on an NBA with a heart virus - the guy has more money than he needs...plus, I am really curious why the Rockets would be looking at Walkers and Swifts (not backups) if Howard was capable opf playing 30 minutes a night. If he were going to play PF for a while the rockets should be looking more for cheap backups

 

I know a guy who has Myocarditis, the same thing Juwon has and his doctors told him that it is something you never get rid of, you have to live with it. So if that is true, then why are people acting like Juwon is "over" is condition or whatever, if it is something you never get rid of, then he is done. I'll try to do some internet research on the condition and see if this is true.

 

I assume the business about his career being over is BS. But, if it were true, wouldn't we get a medical exception to spend on free agents? How helpful would that be?

 

IIRC, the medical exception is functionally the same as the Trade Exception. So we could absorb a player whose salary is less than or equal to Juwan's via a trade. Could be a useful trade asset along with all of our expiring contracts.

Edit: Okay, after checking out the Coon Faq, a medical exception only applies to 50% of the player salaries' value. And it can be used as a TE or used to sign a player. But the problem is that it doesn't kick in if someone retires for medical reasons. It is only if someone dies or if they will be lost for the season. Having someone retire is different because the contract will come of the books if there are legit medical reasons. Which, in my mind is better than getting an exception to sign/trade for a replacement.

 

I wouldn't count on any medical exception helping us out that much. First of all, the NBA doesn't grant them that lightly. And if they do, I believe it's only worth half of what the player is making, so that's what? 3, 3.5 mill or something? Capologists correct me if I'm wrong, I'm going by memory here.

As far as Juwan being done ... well I think it would have been a bigger story when he had the heart problems if he was truly done for good.