Mike Freeman

Dear @DangeRussWilson… From a High School Athletic Trainer

Dustin Fink3 Comments

Dear Russell Wilson;

Mid-morning yesterday I get a text from a former coach that simply states “Water that helps concussions…thanks Russell Wilson”.

That led me immediately to the interwebs to find out what he was talking about and it took me about 3.576 seconds to get results. You were touting a product that supposedly helped with your concussion, I mean head injury, I mean injury that occurred last year in the playoffs. When I saw this I LOL’ed, seriously I laughed out loud. I thought this was a joke. Alas, it was not.

Then I get to school and another coach asked me about it as well, not so much would it work rather how big of an “idiot” you were (not my words). It was reassuring to know that this coach as well as the other two that stopped me before practice completely understood that this was not possible with what we know. But the fact that they were a little confused, even for the slightest moment, give me pause about what you and others can do with your platform.

I was glad all of this was taking place during school hours and practice so the kids wouldn’t have questions – actually statements about how you know more than me and where to get this. What I didn’t realize was that the parents of the kids had seen this; and wouldn’t you know I had my first email about it at 5pm.

I started to hope this would get out of the news cycle but late last night it picked up steam and this morning, more emails and Continue reading →

“Contussiongate”*: The Steph Curry Incident

Dustin Fink1 Comment

*I will admit that I could not come up with a catchy title for this post so I ripped this from Mike Freeman’s twitter feed (@mikefreemanNFL) last night:

But not only is this funny but it is about as accurate as it could have been when summing up the Steph Curry incident last night in Game 4 of the Western Conference series. So, thank you Mr. Freeman for your insightfulness and wonderful wordplay.

Those that were watching the game last night and happened to be on Twitter should know the entire process this sequelae; because of that I will be as brief as possible while injecting the overriding issues and thoughts on this.

It all began in about halfway thought the second quarter as the Warriors were getting throttled by the Rockets;

There is not speculation when looking at that vine, Curry hit his head on the court after taking an uncontrolled fall. What is not seen in the vine is Curry laying prone on the floor for a few minutes as the medical staff took a look at him (even noted checking his c-spine). When the world was brought back to the game from commercial we saw Steph getting assistance off the floor to the locker room, where further evaluation was to be done, obviously.

The first point to note in this event is that Curry not only immediately grabbed his head where it contacted the floor but he also was “down” for some time, that is obviously not normal. He hit his head and very hard so of course he would be slow to get up, but it was the amount of time that would and did have me concerned.

Before we go further we should define concussion for all of you out there, if you want the drawn out and dictionary definitions you can find it HERE, but for the simplest and most poignant way: a concussion is a disruption of normal brain function after a traumatic event. Notice there is nothing about getting hit Continue reading →