April 29^th – May 5^th

-Derrick Rose and Sport Tragedy: It would be quite easy for me to remind everyone that Derrick Rose is not dead or dying. He still has a net worth in the hundreds of millions of dollars, a good head on his shoulders, and has recently become a father. True, his ACL tear was the death knell of an ominous season for him, riddled by nagging injuries, and an obvious end to the championship hopes the Bulls carried with them into the playoffs, but sports, for all of its drama and finality, is but a small footnote in one’s biography. Rose is a young man, the beloved son of his hometown city, and will likely come back from his injury and have a long, productive NBA career. In addition, he will likely remain in the public’s favor for many years to come, owing to his reserved nature keeping him away from scandal. And everyone knows all these things; but we can’t help but worry. A knee injury of this magnitude could take some of the athletic thunder that makes Rose such a special player, though there is no clear science that proves or disproves this possibility. Mostly, we just have to wait and see, though everyone seems unable to do so. People are expecting the worst, thinking that the best of Rose is now gone and that a chapter of promise has ended. But even if it’s true, and Rose never matches his previous level of play and he never leads the Bulls to a championship, he’s still just a 23-year old kid. We didn’t know his future a week ago and we don’t know it post-injury. Because we care so much about sports and our sports heroes, we love to speculate about what is to come, but just because the future is unclear doesn’t mean it’s doomed to failure . In the week or so since Rose’s injury, I’ve heard nothing but sadness about what happened to Derrick. Our Derrick. Chicago’s Derrick. But we don’t know how Rose will recover from this injury anymore than we know if the Bulls would have won the championship if he never got hurt. Sports are not interesting due to certainty. Sports are interesting because we never know what the hell is going to happen. And this is true in the good times and the bad times. So, rather than be sad over something we lost, which was really nothing more than some collectively imagined future, we should just be patient and await the future that does come. And whatever that future is for the Chicago Bulls, you can bet your life Derrick Rose will be a part of it. So cheer up.

-Injuries, Replays, and Obsession with Gore: On Friday in Philadelphia for Game 3 between the Bulls and the 76ers, Joakim Noah sprained his ankle making an aggressive move to the basket. Find the video HERE. As usual, the channel broadcasting the game went into a furious montage of different angles and speeds showing the injury taking place. I didn’t count, but they had to have shown the injury a dozen times, if not more. My father told me a story about the injury that ended Joe Theismann’s career, which occurred on Monday Night Football in 1985, in front of millions of viewers. He said that Theismann got sacked near the sideline and it wasn’t completely clear what happened, other than that Theismann was left immobile from the vicious hit. The players on the field, however, were immediately clamoring for medical personnel to attend to Joe, as something had gone very wrong. The cameras zoomed in on Theismann to find that his leg, apparently, was in pieces. In fact, the damage to his leg was so extensive, Theismann never played again. Now, if you were to ask my father, just after the play happened, if he was interested in seeing how Theismann’s leg had gotten so mangled, he would have passed on the opportunity. But as is customary, even back then, the production crew got busy finding the best camera angles of what happened to Joe’s leg. My dad remembers, “At one point, after ten or so replays, they found a perfect view of what happened. Theismann’s leg was literally snapped in half at the shin. It was just dangling there, held on by tendons and skin.” Openly disgusted, he still couldn’t turn away. “At some point, after seeing that leg dangle a couple dozen more times – in replays they showed for the rest of the game, in highlights on the news – someone decided that it was too gruesome to keep showing. So they stopped. I never saw it again. I don’t want to.” Wikipedia backs up my dad’s memory of events, claiming that it wasn’t until the cameras showed exactly what happened that anyone was aware of how grizzly the injury was, “the reverse-angle instant replay provided a clearer view of what had actually happened—Theismann's lower leg bones were broken midway between his knee and his ankle, such that his leg from his foot to his mid-shin was lying flat against the ground while the upper part of his shin up to his knee was at a 45-degree angle to the lower part of his leg.” For those who can stomach it, find the video of the injury HERE. Theismann’s injury was a rare instance of sports injury, much more gruesome than most, but the question remains: What use is it for live telecasts to repeatedly show the point of impact for an injury? Granted, when the player is down and being attended to by the trainers, the show must go on. The announcers have to talk about something and the production crew has to show something, so the injury that causes the delay is certainly worthy subject matter. In addition, fans are definitely curious to see how something happened, as many injuries are tough to spot in the jumble of bodies (particularly football and basketball). We want to know if the guy stepped on someone’s foot, how they got their arm twisted, how they fell so awkwardly, or see them bang their head. But beyond that preliminary curiosity, which is mostly factual curiosity, just to see what happened, I think most people could do without repeated viewings of injuries. It isn’t that people are squeamish, though I certainly am, it’s just that one or two viewings is plenty when it comes to an injury. But injuries seem to get more replays than slam dunks or home runs nowadays. And the worse the injury, the more it’s shown. Theismann’s injury happened almost 30 years ago and nothing has changed. I saw Noah’s ankle twist and go horizontal to the floor, completely perpendicular to his leg, from every angle Comcast could muster. Stacey King, the announcer, rattled along with each replay, “And it happens right HERE. Yes, right HERE. That’s when the foot tucks sideward. Right HERE.” I don’t think Stacey or Comcast has any morbid obsession with gore or injury, there is just a disconnect between what the viewers can stomach and production crews over-utilizing technology. Just because you have instant replay doesn’t mean you have to use it. I was watching the Bulls/76ers game in a bar, and after the first six or seven replays of the injury, I was not alone in my clamor for them to stop showing the damn thing. By the tenth or eleventh replay, it seemed the entire bar was squealing with disgust and joined in chanting, “STOP SHOWING IT!” Even in our “2 Girls 1 Cup” Youtube Generation, where warnings of explicitness are more of a dare than anything, there are still limits to what we want to see. I’ve been a little disturbed at some of the awful UFC injuries I’ve been shown by friends and, at the very extreme edge of the issue, I’ve read stories about people being seriously traumatized by watching those Al Qaeda execution videos that float around the web from time to time. As usual, my advice is nothing more than common sense. Whoever was calling the shots in the control room for that Monday Night Football Game in 1985, the second he saw how brutal the injury to Theismann really was, he probably should have made the prudent decision not to show it on live television to millions of viewers. The public is not naive; we know what injuries look like and we know what they entail. Still, I see no advantage in seeing a terrible injury twenty different times. Noah’s injury turned out to be nothing but a badly sprained ankle, but I’m telling you now sports networks, if the truly unthinkable happens and a finger snaps off, or an eyeball gets dislodged, or a torn scrotum spills a testicle to the hardwood...one replay will be more than enough.