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Rich
Posts: 27410
Alba Posts: 6
Joined: 12/30/2003
Member: #511
USA
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btw, I e-mailed Rhoden.
October 6, 2005
Curry's Health Has Become a League Matter
By WILLIAM C. RHODEN
DAVID STERN, the N.B.A. commissioner, is out of the country and out of touch. But when he returns, he will have a minor tempest on his hands: a 22-year-old player named Eddy Curry has an unspecified heart issue.
Curry was a high school star drafted by the Chicago Bulls in 2001. Last season, he came on strong and became a major factor in helping the Bulls rediscover themselves. But just when the team needed him, Curry was hospitalized with heart problems.
This summer, the Bulls asked Curry to take a more rigorous genetic test as a condition of continued employment. The DNA test could determine if he is at risk of a potentially fatal heart condition. He refused to take the test, and now he is a Knick.
This is a new variation on the N.B.A. physical farce, in which a player can fail a physical examination based on a bad knee. In this case, however, the Bulls backed off because of a player's heart condition, and a rival scooped him up.
Curry is a siren song for the Knicks, who desperately need that one big-time player, that one stud, to pull them to the next level. He is a talent who could save a team president's job and make a new coach's task easier. Curry could be the Knicks' ticket to the playoffs.
But what is the cost of that ticket?
The N.B.A. has to step in and encourage, if not implore, Curry to take the more sophisticated test. The league cannot rely on the Knicks.
Curry was in New York yesterday to take a battery of tests, but not the genetic one that the Bulls wanted. He arrived at the Knicks' training camp in Charleston, S.C., last evening and submitted to more tests.
Stern has to step in. You have two smart organizations, the Bulls and the Knicks. But the Knicks are desperate, and they should not make Curry a part of any desperate measures to improve.
The N.B.A. is treating this as a sort of states-rights issue, a Knicks thing. The league must intercede and encourage Curry to take the genetic test. If something happens, it won't be a Knicks problem or a Curry family problem, but rather an N.B.A. problem. The league should work out an arrangement with the players union to have Curry take the test and assess what type of risk, if any, he faces if he continues to play professional basketball.
Isiah Thomas, the Knicks' president, told reporters Tuesday that too many people were speculating and jumping the gun on the nature of Curry's condition.
The truth is, nobody knows about Curry's condition.
Maybe we are jumping the gun, but many of us lived through the Reggie Lewis tragedy. I still have vivid recollections of the game in which Lewis, the Celtics star, collapsed. And I still remember the chilling news reports when he later died.
We lived through the tragedy of Hank Gathers, the nation watching in horror as he dunked during a conference tournament game and collapsed and died two hours later. I remember the somber plane ride with his teammates from Los Angeles to the funeral in Philadelphia. The crowded church, his mother, the family, the circle of friends.
I remember sitting in Susie Gary's North Chicago living room days after she buried her 16-year-old grandson, Devon Mills, who collapsed and died after practice because of an undiagnosed heart ailment.
From high school to the N.B.A., many of the issues have not changed in the past 10 to 15 years. How best to test? In 1994, in the wake of sudden deaths, the questions were the same: Can more be done to detect hidden and potentially fatal heart conditions? What will it cost? When is a condition threatening enough to declare someone unfit for athletic competition? Who should make that decision?
As many as 200 to 300 high school and college athletes may die of sudden cardiac death each year in the United States, with a third caused by hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, according to Barry J. Maron, a Minneapolis cardiologist and leading authority on the condition. The condition is largely inherited and is estimated to affect 1 in 500 people. Death is uncommon.
After Lewis's death in 1993, Luther T. Clark, now the chief of cardiology at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, said that there was another factor to consider beyond medical tests.
"Athletics is a dream that a lot of people have," Clark said. "You can do a lot with millions of dollars. That is the human side of the problem."
In a telephone interview last night, Clark said that because the financial stakes had grown so drastically, teams and leagues must show restraint.
"Although the athlete's desire to play may be the most important thing to them," Clark said, "their health should be the major consideration."
Eddy Curry might well have been one of those young athletes who went through the system with heart problems that didn't surface until he had played several years of pro ball. And we still don't know the answer to this question: What, if anything, is wrong with Curry?
What caused him to miss the playoffs, just when the Bulls needed him? Could it cost him his life? The Knicks need to win. Eddy Curry can help.
This season, fans, coaches and Stern will all watch Curry and the Knicks with a sense of trepidation. But the N.B.A. should step in now, before the season even begins. Seven months is a long time to hold your breath.
E-mail: wcr@nytimes.com
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10/5/2005 10:16 PM
