Grant Hill Says Pistons, Magic Mismanaged Ankle Injury

Not if you read the article

 

'i think its sad to hear people saying he needs to take responsibility. Players are injured all the time, from jammed fingers, etc and they are expected to play through and tough it out. I have no problem with that, if they are told they are structurally fine, then its just a matter of mentally overcoming pain.
If any of us went to a doc or radiologist and these guys after almost a decade plus of training, and a few of them said you are fine and don't stop you you just take the word for it usually. not everyone will, but they have enough credibility and trust where you think you can trust their decision and opinion. Add in being in the NBA where they specifically work for your team and are dedicated to that cause, you take their word for it. Bc you are always in pain througohut the season from minor injuries, so you just have to mentally make it up, if these experts say you are good to go, or go for it, then you just focus on the pain and overcoming it. I think they managed it horribly

 

Look on the bright side. Missing/barely playing those 4/5 seasons definitely prolonged his career.

He started all 80 games he played in this year and he looked young, fresh and most importantly he was efficient and looked like he was having fun.

He put up 13.2 PPG/4.2 RPG/ 2.5 Assists/ 0.8 steals in 30 minutes per game while shooting 48% and he's going to turn 39 before the start of next season.

I hope he can stay healthy and play at this high level for another 3-4 years to make up for lost time. His IQ and decision making alone make him fun to watch.

 

Think he has a chance of making the HOF as an honorary selection if he wins a championship...Would be an inspiring story of sorts!!! That would be remarkable

 

I think he will make it regardless if he wins a championship or not based upon his name, career averages and body of work.

 

Grant Hill, even in the twilight of his career, may still get some serious consideration for Hall of Fame induction when he finally decides to retire, in my opinion. And he actually should get that consideration.

Even with the renaissance he has had as a productive player for the past three seasons (which goes a long way toward confirming he would have had the raw numbers necessary for hall of fame candidacy if he had been healthy), Hill has been the type of player I would love to see given a place in Springfield for his character alone, facing what he faced for four or more years with his ankle injury.

Professional sports are generally very high-risk/high-reward propositions. The greater the expectations are, the more likely it is that the short-term of a franchise or its players is often disregarded, if not totally expendable. Anyone who has played organized sports at any level from high school on has an innate understanding of the risk they put their physical (and at times, mental and emotional) well-being at risk for the glory, fame and fortune of being a professional athlete.

It is unfortunate that, in the fervor and rush and zeal to compete and win at the highest level, often it seems that the powers-that-be are all-too often willing to go around the corner simply to get across the street.

You don't win at professional sports without the best talent and the best teamwork It would seem an obvious fact that, in the course of realizing this, that an organization's primary goal would be to keep those players whom they've vested so much resource in in as fit a shape to compete as they can possibly manage. Professional athletes are adults (after a fashion, anyway), so they are certainly responsible, to an extent, for their own well-being.

But the point of a team and organization is to manage such things together, with the primary goal being the welfare of the team both immediately and for the forseeable future, as much as the next practice or game. That would automatically extend itself to the players on the court for you, because at the end of the day, they will be the ones who will perform (or not) for your ballclub.

That's why the players make the big bucks.

Well...THAT...and a sloppily constructed collective bargaining agreement...but I digress....

Hopefully for Grant Hill, he will not lament what could have been for his career. There is now way to gauge his mood or feeling from simply reading something he said in print, but Hill has always seemed to be a very well-rounded human being...and I'm fairly certain that he has found other things in his life for which to be proud of.

There is no heroism in martyrdom or suicide. Nobody wins a war by volunteering to die. In conflict, such risks and consequences go without saying, obviously...and I am in no way comparing an athletic competition of ANY kind to real war (of which I, myself, was a part of some years ago)....

.....but any general worth his salt will tell you that his greatest assets are the men under his command, and thus in his care. His responsibility to them is just as great as his duty to win...and one goal cannot be accomplished without honoring the other.

We saw two sides of the same coin with the Rockets handling of both Tracy McGrady and Yao Ming's persistent injury troubles. One was handled with little to no regard for the player, and the other was handled with so much regard for the player that it compromised the the team dynamic.

Hindsight, as I've said here on more than one occasion, is wonderfully accurate, and woefully inadequate. Looking back is not the best way to look forward. But if anything, it can give you a sense of what does and does not work, so that you can make better decisions in the future.

Grant Hill is the definition of professional basketball player. If he had not confirmed that the past three seasons as a role player for the Phoenix Suns, he certainly did with this article.

There's more than one way to be great....

 

maybe , but it may take awhile if he doesnt get a ring

 

I tend to agree, but with that type of investment, why not take precautionary measures...But players don't want to seem weak and will usually play through the pain...

 

I dont think anyone is saying he should take full responsibility, but just some. It's his body, his property. I've been in a similar situation. Bad ankle sprain as a teen, dealt with ankle pain, weakness, inflammation, and spasms, all over 10 yrs. Saw 4 different doctors over that time and also 2 of those holistic healers. If i just took their word for it i'd still be in pain with a closet full of orthotics and braces. I even had one doctor tell me there was nothing wrong at all. At some point you've got to realize there's more to it that these guys aren't looking into. Take it upon yourself to look further or find someone willing to.

Turns out it was an alignment issue and no one ever bothered to take that into consideration. IIRC, the root of Hill's problem was also an alignment issue. That's why Phoenix nailed it, they practice looking further into the body and it's alignment, not just the ankle.

 

i just listened to the podcast, something else he said:

- the team never had him take an xray, just an MRI, which is why they didnt see the break in his foot/ankle.

-when asked why a pro team wouldn't go for something so simple as an x-ray, he said, from his experience, there's some players who want to come back early and some who milk the situation. You have to know your players and protect some of them, as pushing them too much can be harmful. He though some teams don't always want the xray because you dont want the player to think something is really bad, or at least that's what he makes of it. He can't make sense of why teams commit/invest so much money and then make boneheaded decisions when it comes to medical care. He kind of implies the bad decisions also include bad doctors.. "Half of all doctors still finish in the bottom half of their class."

 

This is what I've always said, and why I've always felt so bad for Grant... He was just approaching his prime, and he lost what probably would have been the best four years of his career. I mean the injury happened RIGHT ON TOP of his prime. It's a damn shame...

... What makes it even more sad is that he would have been playing those four years with a busted out Tracy McGrady. My god, what could have been (and on that note, you gotta feel bad for all the missed opportunities with McGrady, too).

Gotta wonder how different the sports world would be if we could find a way to outlaw injuries, heh.

 

... "to a certain extent"? Are you kidding me? McGrady is right up there with all of those guys. He was more proven than both Roy and Penny by the time his career started coming apart, and he was at least on par with Hill.

McGrady is one of the saddest wastes of talent in NBA history... although part of has to do with his lack of work ethic, but much of it has to do with injuries.

... Still, it's kinda crazy to think about all these guys. Orlando is like the Bermuda Triangle of the NBA. Look at all the careers that have started falling apart due to health after a trip to Orlando:

Penny
Hill
McGrady
Francis
Mobley

 

This is different, I 've had a bum kneee and needed surgery, and went around and got every opinion and did all my research. That said, his employers who have or should have the same agenda as him tell him something, its hard for him to question it. Remember he is talking to 3-4 team doctor experts that say you are ok to go, not just one, but these guys are the ones paying his check, and if they say go but it still hurts you, but then your finger stil hurts from it being jammed os on, but they said look we looked at xrays this and that just go for it, its hard for a guy to just know the difference and not try to tough it out. I realize ultimately its on him, he suffered his career and legacy, people say he still got 120 million, grant has given up millions in pay check the last few years bc he grew up affluent and while money still always matters, there are other opportunities and he clearly just values contributing, building his legacy, being on the court, and winning. so I really think he would've lost more than people tink he did when they say he got his pay check. We are talking about a guy(if you ever had surgery, you know how hard and painful rehab is) who did intense rehab for years, rebroke it, still kept going, almost died from one of the side effects of his surgeries, and just pulled through. he didn't do it to fulfil his contract or to earn another one, this man wanted to be out on the court. He learned the difference, but nonetheless the pistons/magics doctors were in the wrong in this without a doubt

 

The thing is they didn't look at xrays. They didn't even take one initially, which is why he was playing on broken bones and made it worse. If they had truly looked at various things and found nothing, then i guess i could understand why he'd feel nothing was left to do but listen to them, but only an MRI was done. Maybe he was too naive about the issue, but i dont think that's enough to say he shouldn't take any responsibility. He was a grown man, with a college education and a whole lot of money. He wasn't a child dependent on his parents or a high school/college kid who had to depend on what his school trainer said because he couldn't afford other medical care. He had what he needed get another opinion, to get another doctor to do more for him, and he didn't do it.

That being said, i'm not saying they didnt screw him over. They did. They deserve a lot of blame, but if he had looked out for himself he may have been able to offset some of that and save himself so much rehab and lost time.

 

Tirple Doubles not trouble. Anyone remember this song from one of Hill TV ads?

 

Its just not that simple, if you are not inclined to know and have never felt a broken ankle(he mentions he has never been injured) you don't just know man I need an xray, basketball has so many bumps and brusies, no one just gets one as a precaution for everything. Case in point, I tore my acl, hurt like hell when it happened I thought something was wrong, but I've been hit around the court to know soetimes its just pain and you can wait it out, next few days I was walking fine wihch you can do with an ACL and then I could even run at times(i was just careful mentally) this whole time I could not tell anything was wrong, but it will buckle again and thats when I knew, but sometimes if you don't have previous experience like he did not, hes not in the medical field, hes in a sport where you get bruised up and banged up every game no matter what and its common not to get those x rays, its hard to tell at times. He was in pain, but somtimes if you have a bruise in your thigh it still hurts but its not structurally wrong, and all the team doctors are saying you are fine you just have to tough it up for aguy 25 and under, I am sorry, I see your point certainly, I just don't think it aligns for this case

 

I think you're missing the part that he had pain, not over a game, but games. The point i'm making is that it wasn't getting better. In fact, it was actually getting worse. He says he got treatment and toward the end of the season it worsened. I can understand the doctors initially saying it's fine and Hill accepting that. But if after that you feel more pain, to the point where you have to leave games, then common sense should tell you something is wrong, or has at least changed since that first check up. If the doctors say it's still fine, then they are missing something. Pain doesnt increase when something is healing or "fine". His mistake was being too trusting and not following his gut feeling. sounds harsh, but it's a mistake even i made with my own injury. I can't just blame everyone else when I was the only one who could really feel the symptoms. I decided to ignore them and believe them. Gotta trust your body more than that.

In the examples that you are giving, like the thigh bruise, you may have the same pain for a few days, but it slowly lessens over time and that's how you know it's gettign better, although there is still pain. Hill had the opposite happen.

If you hurt your ACL, yes, you may try to keep going at that moment, within that game because you're not sure what happened. It's basically what happened to Yao against LA, he kept going even after feeling pain earlier in the game. The difference is your caught up in the game and so is the team, so tests and xrays aren't always a priority. With Hill, it was more than one game. There was plenty of down time between games to re-evaluate his injury. He even took the final 3 games off, rested. Still had pain when the playoffs began. He had been given treatment, rest, and not only is it still hurting, but hurting more? Something was definitely not right. They failed to see that as a red flag and Hill failed to speak up instad of going with whatver they wanted. It's probably just a sign of his personality. Earlier in the podcast, he said he's not the kind of person to rock the boat. I can relate with that and probably why i did the same thing.