Where were you when you heard Reggie Lewis died?
That was the question all over the radio and social media Saturday, which marked the 20th anniversary of the Boston Celtics all-star’s death at 27. Articles, columns and talk show hosts paid tribute to the player and the man.
I loved Reggie Lewis. I miss him as much as any Celtics fan. But I didn’t read or listen to any of it.
Lewis was in the prime of his career and his life when he died on the basketball court on July 27, 1993. He went into cardiac arrest and collapsed on the basketball court at Brandeis University during a summer workout.
While heart problems had caused Lewis to collapse on the Boston Garden floor just a few months earlier, the news of Lewis’ death still left Celtics fans in shock.
As a 23-year-old diehard C’s fan, it left me in tears. For hours and hours after the news first broke, I stayed glued to ESPN and tuned to AM sports and news stations out of Boston, praying that the reports had turned out to be wrong. That Lewis had just suffered another episode. That the worst that would come of it would be a forced retirement from basketball.
For Celtics fans, it was like reliving a nightmare. Unfortuntely, we had been through this before. We were asking the same questions when Len Bias died just seven years earlier. How could someone seemingly so healthy die so suddenly? How could an elite athlete be struck down in his prime?
I was asking those questions in 1993, too. But Reggie Lewis’ death haunted me for another reason.
It scared me. Not that you could have ever gotten me to admit it at the time. But for the first time, I really, truly wondered if basketball could kill me.
I have Marfan’s Syndrome. It’s a genetic disorder of the connective tissue. It causes defects of the aorta and heart valves, which can be fatal if not detected and treated.
In June 2006, I underwent surgery to replace an aortic valve (shout out to the cow that gave its life for me). The replacement valve is supposed to last 15 to 20 years, so if I’m blessed to be still around, I’ll be in line for another one in 8 to 13 years (must … resist … Obamacare … joke).
Fortunately, I was diagnosed with Marfan’s when I was 11, which, truth be told, coincided with my athletic peak. I lived with it through an active pre-adolescence and adolescence. I didn’t truly understand what having Marfan’s meant for a long time, but I was always thankful that my parents allowed me to remain physically active, even though they had already lost my older sister as a baby and were more scared than I.
I grew up like any red-blooded, American boy in the 1980s. I played pick-up tackle football with my brother and friends. I played Little League and Babe Ruth baseball.
And I played basketball. I was one of the tallest kids in my class, and I played a ton of basketball.
I wasn’t that good, mind you. I stopped putting on a Lake Region uniform my junior year. But I still played basketball, almost every day. I couldn’t live without it.
There were days I played one-on-one on the elementary school blacktop in the morning, pick-up at the Bridgton Town Hall or Camp Wildwood in the afternoon and open gym at Jordan Small School in Raymond at night. Back then, if you had a key to the town hall, Bridgton Academy or a school gym in Bridgton, Naples, Casco or Sebago, my friends and I had you on speed dial.
My jump hook started to rust in college, although I still played some intramural hoop and got together with my buddies for some pick-up whenever I came home. After I graduated college in the fall of 1992 and moved back home, it was back to the old dribbling grounds for a few months.
Throughout it all, I never once thought basketball would kill me. A big part of that was because, like most young people, I didn’t think anything would kill me. Hank Gathers’ death in 1990 certainly made me pause, but I could ignore the aftermath. I was mimicking Bo Kimble’s free throw tribute to his fallen teammate long after the doubts put into my mind by that tragedy had subsided.
I couldn’t escape the aftermath of Lewis’ death. Details slowly emerged about his heart problem. Rumors and reports swirled about cocaine use contributing to his death, but ultimately, doctors attributed it to a heart defect.
In the months after his death, I pored over every article, dreading the thought of reading an autopsy report that might reveal Lewis had Marfan’s. When reports said he had a different defect than mine (hypertrophic cardiomyopathy), I was somewhat relieved.
And yet, through the fall and well into the winter after Lewis’ death, I couldn’t completely shake the fear. My friends called to set up a game and I wouldn’t hesitate to say yes, but sometimes when I’d hang up the phone, I’d think of Reggie Lewis.
When I stepped on the court, I played as hard as I ever had. But there were many times I ran down the court and the image of Lewis stumbling and collapsing to the parquet in the playoffs against the Charlotte Hornets flashed through my mind.
I started playing a lot less in the months after the tragedy. I’ve always told myself it was because I was starting a career and a family at the time. I moved to Auburn less than a year later.
Maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t. I’m still trying to figure it out. All I know is, I’d stopped playing by the time my son was born 10 months after Lewis’ passing.
I wish that I could turn this into a “Reggie Lewis saved my life” story. I wish that I could say that I saw myself in him, a young man with a young family, and that his death forced me to actually confront my condition the way Bias’ death convinced me never to try cocaine. But I can’t.
For too long, I went through the motions of treating Marfan’s, but I didn’t take care of myself. That sure wasn’t because of Reggie Lewis.
I’ve lost some weight over the past couple of years, and I’m putting less stress on that valve ol’ Bessy gave me, but I still have a long way to go. It helps that I have a lot more respect for Marfan’s than I did when I was 23, or even 33, but it took me too long to get to this point, and I’m damn lucky I got here.
Maybe the reason I can’t read the tributes isn’t because I don’t want to revisit the scared young man I was for a few months in 1993. Maybe it’s because I know I should have been a hell of a lot more scared.
May the tributes to Reggie Lewis continue for years and decades to come. He certainly deserves to be remembered, and not just on July 27.
I’ve got some reading to do.
Randy Whitehouse is a staff columnist. His email is rwhitehouse@sunjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter at @RAWMaterial33.
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