Walton’s feet.
Bowie’s legs.
Petrie’s knees.
Roy’s knees.
Sabonis’s lower half.
Z-Bo, Rudy Fernandez, Przybilla, Outlaw…
And now Greg Oden.
You could easily put together a championship contender with the list of Blazer brokens.
And I’ve heard so many takes from so many writers, on who’s at fault or what could be done better or where things went wrong or what…
But I haven’t read much about the heart-wrenching toll of an injury.
What it actually feels like to get hurt.
What it actually feels like to realize you’ll never be the same.
What it feels like to lose hope in yourself.
What it feels like to think your best years are behind you.
What it feels like to constantly hurt, not just physically, but emotionally.
Well.
Three and a half years ago, as I was gearing up for an ultimate frisbee season at Purdue, I broke my foot.
And now, three and a half years later, I’m still trying to get back on the field.
At the time, I was a raw disc talent with plans to try out for Chicago club teams. I was playing for almost two hours a day, throwing the disc back and forth until my elbow was oatmeal. The disc Garfunkel to my Simon, Pat, and I would launch the disc almost a full city block, down a narrow street, playing “don’t hit neighbors’ cars,” parallel parked on both curbs. We rarely ever hit a car, many-a-times not even having to move to snatch our paws to disc.
Safe to say, we were serious about our sport. Pat and I thought we were the best combo we’d ever known, and if we found a team we couldn’t beat, we’d work our asses off to embarrass them the next time around.
We were not professional basketball players, playing for millions, in front of millions.
But we were all business about our sport, on track to play at the highest of levels.
And then one fateful night, when we were gonna call it a day, after two scrimmages, I, myself, convinced most to play a third.
Some left. Some stayed.
We began.
And a couple plays in, Pat had the disc, about ten yards behind me, and I made a move to my right, a move I had always made, curling around the defender, making him turn too hard, then cutting back outside, much like an out-route in football, tricking the d-back out of his cleats.
But my first step didn’t hit grass. It planted a top my buddy’s foot, and a Fielder’s-bat-to-baseball-crack was heard throughout the park. I immediately went into shock and the overwhelming pain rushed in soon thereafter. I knew instantly that my season was over, trying to walk off the field, feeling my arch bow downward, like He almighty had replaced my foot with Play-Doh.
That was three and a half years, two surgeries(one botched), years of physical therapy, hundreds of shots, HGH experimentation, ten doctors, and months of incendiary acupuncture ago.
I’ve gone through two pairs of crutches, two walking boots, orthotics, knee and ankle braces, sleeves, a cane…
For most of that time, I didn’t work because of how immobile I was.
And then when I did walk enough to work, I screwed up my foot again, partially from standing too much… at work.
Other health problems came from being immobile and sedentary for so long that had nothing to do with walking or feet, one of which was acid reflux that I now have to take prescription medication for daily.
Keep in mind, I’m twenty five.
And that’s just the physical aspect.
Because that was also three and a half years of emotional turmoil ago.
Depression surrounded every cell in my body.
I stopped talking to many of my friends, losing touch with Pat, my disc Garfunkel. I couldn’t face a job interview. I had a nasty break up with my best friend, a lady I had dated for five years.
I became angry.
I blamed the friend who I stepped on. I blamed the doctor who gave me an unnecessary surgery. I blamed everybody for not understanding. I blamed technology for not being able to fix me.
I blamed everything but myself.
It was so emotionally trying, that I hadn’t really been able to write about it, like mixing my love for writing with my hatred for my busted foot would poison my words, hurt my craft… hurt my craft like it destroyed my other.
But my love for writing brewed from being injured. It’s a pursuit I hope someday to master, and one that was born because I was sick of TV, picking up pen and paper in place of the remote.
And now, with a little writing experience under my belt… and a little perspective under my belt as well, I feel like I should share what it just might be like for these star athletes whose lives are t-boned by injury.
Because I hear so many takes on injuries by people, whose lives haven’t been turned upside-down by physical affliction, that I sometimes get sick to my stomach about how people just don’t understand.
Should I get sick to my stomach?
Should I care what other people think?
Am I some saint, whose worldly perspective is better than others?
Do I know what it’s like to be paid millions of dollars and then sit on the sidelines?
I don’t know.
I don’t know the answers to those specific questions, or most questions at that, but I do know that it’s probably extremely tough to be Greg Oden right now, and the last thing he needs is for Portland to lose faith in him, to question his moves, his motives.
Yes, he might never play again.
Yes, he might play incredibly for some other team.
Yes, this will probably end up a “business decision.”
But having the heavy feeling of a whole city feeding an energy into the team and player that screams “Ugh! What the f&%?!? Another injury??” must be
so
incredibly
daunting.
I didn’t have a whole city caring about my foot.
And I felt miserable.
And no, Oden should not listen to what others think. It will make him feel ever-so-shitty.
But he’s not a zen master, at least from what I know. He’s human. Most people, most humans, just hear things and react, without even thinking about it. And if you hear the same thing over and over and over again, you’ll start to believe things that can’t even be proven, that can’t possibly be true.
The best medicines can’t beat the troubled mind.
And a collective energy, a positive energy, at least from my most recent experiences, has been the best “medicine” for any problem.
Because Oden’s going through hell right now. After your first injury, you blindly think that science will fix you. After your second, you get a little worried, but you still believe. After a new setback, doubt kicks in. Anger kicks in. Then the setbacks pile up. Negativity, loss of hope, feelings of failure all start to fester. You stop enjoying things. You stop appreciating things or caring about others. You lose sight of the light at the end of the tunnel. You start blaming everybody. You become lost.
And for all we know, Oden might be lost right now. And he might not be “himself.”
And is all the above reaction okay? Is that the way that a person should go about fighting through adversity?
Maybe not, but again, I’m not sure. Who even knows how he actually feels. Nobody really knew how I felt. I didn’t want people to know.
But if a similar story to the above is going on inside his head right now, he doesn’t need a shit cloud hanging over his every move.
So let’s all just be positive about it. Hope for him. And if you don’t hope for him, just don’t rag on the injuries. Because now, after years of agony, I’ve been able to see my own light at the end of the tunnel, and I know that positivity, not doctors, not therapy, not science, is the core ingredient of getting through a time like this.
I may have just recently re-learned how to walk, but I’ve learned so much, mentally, from being injured, having a jerky-tough recovery. I may not have had the worst problem ever known, but it was bad enough to entirely change my life. I can’t even remember what it felt like to have a healthy right foot.
I mean, I went to the grocery store the other day, and smiled, because I could wait in the check-out line without having to lean on the magazine rack. A most-likely fake story about Tom Brady not paying child support, supporting my body.
I would have never appreciated standing in line. Ever.
So maybe Greg is learning something too.
But the only way for this franchise to start changing gears away from this injury curse, is to stop damn believing in this injury curse.
The negativity can only hurt Portland basketball. And really, it’s just a crutch that Blazer fans hang on, if only to excuse not being able to win.
There are no curses. There is no witchcraft. There are just events after events after events.
But a couple hundred thousand people believing that there is some kind of injury plague, can cause an environment of negative. And although fans’ feelings don’t necessarily cause people to rupture ACLs or tear posterior tibiali, history has shown us that an environment of negative can cause all sorts of terrible.
Think about the feeling you get when entering a funeral home. It’s definitely not uplifting. It’s heavy. It’s tough. Now pretend that surrounds you when you’re trying your damnedest to fix the most broken thing in your life.
Trying, right?
Now think about the feeling you get when you enter a stadium for a gigantic game. It’s electrifying. Energy is high. People are hopeful. It feels amazing. It’s an immeasurable happiness. You feel like there’s no other place on the planet, like this is the only room that exists for that very moment.
It’d be a little easier to get things done with that type of positive umph, no?
So think sunny times for Greg. Don’t paint him a lost cause. Don’t think of him as the next victim. Just think happy thoughts. Make him feel like he’s being cheered on by the city. I don’t know if he’s ever out and about Portland, but if he is, give him a smile. Let him know he’ll be back. Just be positive.
Because as we’ve all known, in one facet or another, it’s a wonder what a little sunshine could do here for our rainy little town.
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