• Thu. Mar 28th, 2024

March 21, 2015, Queens, NY  Do you know something that is missing from the common sense landscape in professional sports?  It’s the handling, or should I say “Mishandling,” of athletes who are injured.  Enter Kevin Durant, and see Exhibit A, Derrick Rose.  It’s about “REST” not “REHAB.”  In fact, “REST” is the “BEST” “REHAB.”

Kevin Durant’s career is in danger of being unceremoniously and unnecessarily cut short.  If you’re pitching horseshoes or playing poker, having a bad foot is not that problematic.  But if you are a young, still-not-in-your-prime basketball superstar—second only to Lebron James for “Baddest Player on the Planet,”—your feet are your tools.  Vital tools.  A shoemaker can’t function with a broken hammer.

Bill Walton would have become one of the top-five centers of all-time.  He got hurt (bad feet) and never healed properly.  He never RESTED.  He came back too fast.  His foot was never the same.  Kevin Durant is a gangly, nearly seven-foot, b-baller with the frame of a junior high schooler.  His joints, bones, tendons, ligaments, etc., are not all that sturdy, and we’re talking about a man who is abnormally tall—not for a basketball player, but for your average man.  They brought him back way too early, and now, he is gone for the season, for no good reason.

If you’re the Oklahoma City Thunder, you have to concede the season (in terms of championship aspiration).  There is a guy nicknamed RG III who plays a sport for football in the nation’s capital.  His career may be in ruins because he was not resting; he was rehabbing.

Back to Exhibit A, Derrick Rose of the Chicago Bulls.  He wasn’t playing, but he wasn’t resting.  Problem.  Especially when you consider the type of game Rose plays coupled with his pedal-to-the-metal mentality.  Dwight Howard, an uber athletic 6’9” jump-out-the-gym center is routinely injured.  He REHABBED, not RESTED.  Watch out Paul George of the Indiana Pacers.  You definitely need more time.  Why would you come back this season?  For what?  Dwayne Wade???  Are you kidding me?  He has aged prematurely because he comes back the minute he can play.  He’s never 100%.  Melo, as in Carmelo Anthony, better be mellow. Oh, and there’s this guy who has played his entire career for a team called the Los Angeles Lakers.  Kobe something.  Can’t remember his name.  It’s not in his DNA to REST.  His default is set to REHAB.   If we start discussing football players in general (not just RG III), the article would be as long as a dissertation.

Teams want to put their top-tier talent on the field, court, or ice because these players are box office and they (teams) are paying top-tier-dollars.  I got it.  However, the players are being rushed back and end up underperforming, not realizing their potential for the remainder of their careers.  It’s short-sighted.  It’s a business move.  But just because it’s a business move, that doesn’t always correlate to being a “smart” move.

Kevin Durant is on pace to be a first ballot, no brainer, hall-of-famer.  He is also a pitchman that could continue to endorse products after his career has ended.  He will be a free agent after next season. He, is playing, with, FIRE.  He, is threatening, to, lose, it, ALL.  He, is cruisin’, for, a bruisin’.  He will be on an ESPN’s “30 For 30” episode as a potential great whose career was curtailed by injury.  He’s not healing.  His health his reeling.

You want an example of another career in ruins because the athlete was REHABBING when he should have been RESTING—Tiger Woods.  The defense R-E-S-T-S.

Happy Birthday Rupert Benton!

Professor Clifford Benton can be reached at cliffb@puresportsny.com

By Vernon McKenzie

Graduate of New Institute Of Technology with a BA in Communications with a focus on Television Radio. Owner and Executive Producer of PureSportsNY

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