December 11, 2003
Bring in the Gimp
Last night, two premier shooting guards, playing on different teams in two very different parts of the country, went down with debilitating right ankle sprains in the first half of their respective games. Coincidence? Quite possibly. In fact, I'd say definitely. I can say with great confidence that beyond the fact that both players sprained their right ankles, the similarities between the first shooting guard (Clippers' star Corey Maggette) and the second (myself) come to an abrupt end. Maggette, as you probably know, is super-athletic, built like a tank, and can get to the hole at will. Yours truly is relatively athletic, weighs a buck sixty, and much prefers shooting a 15-foot j to mixing it up inside. I can tell you that, most likely, as Corey Maggette was going down after awkwardly rolling his ankle, he was probably wondering the same thing I was as I made a rare baseline drive in my recreational basketball league and landed on someone's foot: why, with all of our modern medical innovations, can we not prevent the sprained ankle? In all honesty, save losing a body part or being paralyzed, I can't think of a worse injury than a sprained ankle. It's horrible. Not only does it basically incapacitate you, it takes forever to heal and never really regains its full strength. Also, I don't know about any of you, but when I sprain an ankle, I get my money's worth. Last time I did it (about 2 and a half years ago), I was on crutches for about a month and my armpits were rawer than Kobe Beef (I'm talking about the Japanese steak, you sickos). Seriously, though, I suppose I can understand why people like me sprain our ankles, but I can't fathom how it happens so often in NBA games. These guys have access to the top athletic trainers in the world, yet sprained ankles plague the NBA like cholera plagued people in...Love in the Time of Cholera. Actually, I didn't even read that book. Is it about cholera? No matter. The point is this: with all of our amazing advances in medicine, is the best we can do to prevent sprained ankles taping the ankle or wearing a brace? This just befuddles me. NBA franchises lose hundreds of thousands of dollars when players miss games with sprained ankles every year, yet all we can think to do is tape the things up. Clearly it's not working well enough. When I was in elementary school, we had a gym teacher named Jackie Brown, whose solution to any injury, no matter how debilitating, was "Put a wet paper towel on it." A kid could have a javelin sticking out of their neck and Jackie would suggest a wet paper towel. I feel like that's about where we are with sprained ankles in this so-called "enlightened" period in our history as humans. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to hobble off to the pharmacy to fill my prescription of 8 bags of ice and an ace bandage. Thank you, modern medicine.
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