LaMarcus Aldridge is back with the Brooklyn Nets after his sudden retirement announcement. For him to get to this point, he understandably had to pass a number of hurdles. One of the last ones was to convince Nets GM Sean Marks that he was truly ready to return
Aldridge had been dealing with his heart arrhythmia for years with the same routine he's always had. That's why when the day came that his usual practices didn't work, and the subsequent reactions compounded for Aldridge, he made the quick decision to pull the plug on his career.
Via Kristian Winfield of New York Daily News:
“It was just a combination of things I had never experienced that came after what I had never experienced,” said the Nets star. “There was just kind of an overwhelming 24 hours of new experiences with a heart condition that (three heart specialists) put together a game plan for me for how I should feel or what should happen in each stage of the game, workout, whatever. So it’s like all that research was flushed down the drain in one game because I had never been in that position before.”
And yet here we are, with LaMarcus back on the Nets. After the initial fear stemming from his past routine no longer working, Aldridge made a concerted effort to test his limits and see if he could realistically make a return. He started with the treadmill to get his heart rate up comfortably. Then he had to pass the medical tests. After overcoming both, it came down to convincing GM Sean marks, who actively tried to convince him to stay retired.
“I said, ‘Why? You don’t need this. Why would you come back?” the Nets GM said. “I think it’s important to see the conviction. And it’s not conviction made without really doing your due diligence. He had already gone above and beyond in terms of talking to specialists and so forth, and being cleared. He wouldn’t have made that comment to me and have had those conversations without already taking those steps. And then we further did our own testing, he’s been up here with our doctors, and that’s where we arrived at the opportunity to bring him back.”
For something as serious as a heart condition, getting through multiple obstacles is truly necessary to ensure you're making the right decision. LaMarcus Aldridge knows what's at stake, but a life without basketball was perhaps too much for him to bare while he still could. If the Brooklyn Nets win the NBA title like many predict, it becomes that much sweeter for the former All-Star.
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