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Originally Posted by roscoe36  |
This Orlando Sentinal guy is very creative in his use of the word "near."
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Hill told me earlier in the year that he'd like to go out on a healthy note, which never seemed possible until now, and near the top of his game.
And that's exactly where he is now.
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If Hill is near the top of his game then so is Webber.
The writer doesn't seem to understand what Hill was like before the injury. I remember during the 2000 series against Miami seeing him cry on the bench because he was so frustrated he couldn't play. I thought "good, he really cares about winning." At the time, the media were portraying the injury as something he might be able to play through, and when he signed with Orlando, the injury was being described by everyone as no big deal, even though he was on crutches at the time. I'm having a hard time seeing how the missed diagnosis could be all the Pistons' fault, given that the Magic obviously didn't understand what was going on several months later when they gave him the big bucks.
This article in the Orlando Sentinal has more:
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When the Pistons got back to Detroit after Game 2, doctors finally X-rayed Hill and discovered his bruised ankle was actually a broken ankle. Although Pistons doctors said at the time that playing on the already-sore foot probably didn't cause the broken ankle, Hill doesn't buy it. He says there's no telling how long he played on that broken ankle and how much damage he did too himself.
"That's the great unknown," Hill says. "How much worse did I make it by playing on it?"
Hill learned some valuable lessons throughout this unsavory ordeal. He learned that there's a reason they are called "team" doctors. They work for the team, and the team "wants its investment out on the floor at playoff time."
But he also learned he should have been more responsible, too. He's a competitor and he wanted desperately to play in those playoffs seven years ago. Detroit is a tough town and the athletes are expected to be tough, too. Detroit is where the "Bad Boys" played. The fans here have little tolerance for sissy boys.
"There's always pressure to play in professional sports," Hill says. "Ultimately, what I've learned is you have to take ownership of yourself and your body. You can't put trust in somebody else. If I could do it over again, I'd try to find out what was going on with my ankle as opposed to accepting the fact that they [team doctors] say it's fine, then it must be fine."
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This sounds like revisionist history. At the time, Hill was the future of the franchise, and just about everybody thought he was going to re-sign. It's hard to believe they would risk his career for a couple of playoff wins.
04-24-2007, 05:29 PM
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