A Follow Up to the Lakers Medical Staff = Crapfest Post

By Craig Kwasniewski

Just a quick follow up to the incompetent Lakers training staff post from yesterday...

I was actually kind of surprised to see so many people in agreement with us. Normally we get a ton of "you guys are idiots!" in the comment section and frankly, I'm getting uncomfortable with all the love. Expect some more Houston Rockets "truths" to get us back in the right frame of mind (off course after they get bumped in the first round... again).

Anyway, I received two very interesting comments/emails regarding yesterday's post that I thought you should read. The first is from my buddy Matt at Basketbawful. The dude's a huge Karl Malone fan (I think he likes logging and trucking and he'll fight you to the death over the Mailman's 1997 MVP award). I wanted his take on the knee injury experience with the Lakers in 2004:

I couldn't believe what happened with Karl. The Lakers medical staff basically told him it was a ligament strain and that he could work out as hard as he wanted. In reality, it was a ligament tear, which meant that working out was the worst possible thing he could have done. And this was Karl Malone, so it's not like he was doing some light jogging. He was spending five hours a day on the stairmaster and running up and down the mountains near his home in Utah. Totally tore up the knee, and one of the NBA's great iron men was reduced to a stumbling shell of his former self.

It sucked too because he was the glue holding the Lakers together. That team wins the title with a healthy Karl Malone, I have no doubt in my mind. None at all.

I totally agree! Malone was merely a shadow of himself after the injury. It was especially sad to see a player so driven to win a title finish off his career in street clothes for Game 5 in the 2004 Finals. I never really liked Malone until I got to see him in person on a daily basis. For the 5 weeks that he was healthy, he was the crafty veteran who always knew how to draw fouls, he blended in the very difficult triangle offense simply because of his hoops IQ and he was the emotional leader of the team. But all of that (along with the possibility of 2 more NBA titles) were taken away simply because of a misdiagnosis by the Lakers doctors.

The second one was from a comment post by "lakergirl" who has a first-hand experience with one of the doctors used by the Lakers:

I went to their so-called renowned spinal surgeon and he misdiagnosed me--said I had a rotator cuff injury in my shoulder. After months of worthless physical therapy and ending up with a frozen shoulder (from protecting it b/c of the pain), I finally had an MRI of my neck (after demanding it) and discovered I had 2 ruptured disks in my NECK which were causing the radiating pain in my shoulder and down my arm!! This so-called reknowned spinal surgeon then said he didn't know if he could help me! I ran out of there as fast as I could and went to a real professional (neurosurgeon!) who diagnosed me properly, and operated on me within 2 weeks! And these are the sports doctors who are taking care of OUR LAKERS!

Fare thee be warned Bynum, Gasol and Ariza!

Comments

[krayman]

Is there someone out there who can forward these posts to people in charge at the Lakers?

[Craig W.]

These 'stories' really, really scare me, and I am a person who treats doctors like plumbers - you always have to keep your eyes open for a better one, because even the good ones start to decline when you use them too often.

I think the Lakers cannot afford to 'stay with the same doctor' because they know them. It is up to the business staff to constantly be doing evaluations on doctors treating and experimenting with common basketball injuries.