The Javale McGee Appreciation thread - part deux

[Zonkerbl]

It's entirely possible that he started treating his asthma and was able to get into better shape, is playing longer minutes during the game and discovering that he still has symptoms and needs an adjustment to his prescription.

Just based on what I've seen. He looks like he's sucking wind at the end of games -- but before he'd never even make it that far.

[Nivek]

Wizards have been treating McGee for asthma, which kinda makes this latest thing more puzzling. Shouldn't a professional medical staff be monitoring his condition on a basically constant basis? Makes no sense that they would watch his performance decline for a few weeks, and then say...hmm, maybe we should get him to a doctor. Seems like this is the kind of thing McGee should be talking about with the doc constantly to make sure they have it right.

I can understand not diagnosing it right away. When you see a young'n getting winded when he runs up and down the floor a few times, the first thought isn't usually "asthma," it's "that guy needs to get in shape and build some stamina." But the team has known for awhile about his asthma, so when they see him getting gassed quickly -- that should be their first thought.

[no D in Hibachi]

Washington medical staffjust determined to do a simple lung transplant for McGee. Should correct his asthema outright, expect him to be out 2-3 weeks.

[The Consiglieri]

He's been breathing at 75% for the past several years. I wonder.

Symptoms



The most common symptoms of asthma are wheezing, shortness of breath, chest tightness and coughing. However, there are more severe symptoms of asthma that indicate an effect on the brain. Some patients experience severe anxiety because of the shortness of breath. Others may have a decreased level of alertness, such as severe drowsiness and confusion. The drowsiness and confusion can indicate that the level of oxygen in the brain is lower than normal.

Read more: The Effects of Asthma on the Brain | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/about_5147559_effec ... z1mHEXGrn3

This is horrible, 75% makes it impossible to even play. Imagine cutting off your supply of oxygen by 1/4, it doesnt sound that bad until you feel what its like, you can't breath deeply, all the air you take in is sucked in in tight short breaths, the only thing that helps is deep breaths, but its damn near impossible to breath deeply when you have bad asthma, and its also difficult to sleep. God, it's unbelievable that this has been going on. BIzarre.

[The Consiglieri]

Wizards have been treating McGee for asthma, which kinda makes this latest thing more puzzling. Shouldn't a professional medical staff be monitoring his condition on a basically constant basis? Makes no sense that they would watch his performance decline for a few weeks, and then say...hmm, maybe we should get him to a doctor. Seems like this is the kind of thing McGee should be talking about with the doc constantly to make sure they have it right.

I can understand not diagnosing it right away. When you see a young'n getting winded when he runs up and down the floor a few times, the first thought isn't usually "asthma," it's "that guy needs to get in shape and build some stamina." But the team has known for awhile about his asthma, so when they see him getting gassed quickly -- that should be their first thought.

There are things as simple as peak flow meters i used in the eightiest to measure how bad my issues were and things as complex as special chambers that can register your breathing called i think a pulmonary function test, and both are obvious simple and straight forward, run the tests, hook the guy up with the right meds, there are great meds for this stuff, oh and monitor the hell out of what he eats and drinks, sulfites in dried fruit, and certain types of ingredients in candy and gum, and sulfites in wine can all exacerbate asthma symptoms. I know all this and Im just a regular guy who works as a teacher, not a multimillion dollar athlete playing in a billion dollar industry. The issues here are just bizarre, totally bizarre.

The only potential exception i can see is if he suffers from very, very severe asthma that simply can't be medically fixed, only treated to some degree (i have a cousin like this), but these cases need special portable equipment and would NEVER have been able to play college hoops let alone NBA period, so it can't be that.

[dobrojim]

Two straight nice games from McGee. Nice to see him get out of that funk.

Not that I talked to him or anything like that but I can't help but
think/wonder if all the criticism over the dunk really got in his
head. The last 2 games have been more like the somewhat hopeful
play we saw bits of earlier in the season.

First step towards mental improvement is putting
out of your head the criticism in the media. Listen
to your coaches young man.

[Illuminaire]

The Wiz medical teams wins at life AGAIN.

Sigh.

[GoneShammGone]

Worst part from Mike Lee's blog post is that McGee apparently decided himself to go to his doctor. The Wizard's medical staff seemed to have nothing to do with it...

After the Wizards lost to New York last week, McGee finally decided to get checked out and his doctor discovered that the Wizards center was having some complications with his athletic asthma.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wizards-insider/post/javale-mcgee-playing-better-after-getting-new-asthma-medicine/2012/02/13/gIQAr3zsAR_blog.html

Yes, Javale is a grown man and responsible for his own health, but seriously, if you are paying somebody several million dollars a year for what is in no small part competitive breathing, shouldn't you try to stay on top of his asthma problems? Why does Javale have to decide on his own to go seek more treatment?

[Ruzious]

Worst part from Mike Lee's blog post is that McGee apparently decided himself to go to his doctor. The Wizard's medical staff seemed to have nothing to do with it...

After the Wizards lost to New York last week, McGee finally decided to get checked out and his doctor discovered that the Wizards center was having some complications with his athletic asthma.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wizards-insider/post/javale-mcgee-playing-better-after-getting-new-asthma-medicine/2012/02/13/gIQAr3zsAR_blog.html

Yes, Javale is a grown man and responsible for his own health, but seriously, if you are paying somebody several million dollars a year for what is in no small part competitive breathing, shouldn't you try to stay on top of his asthma problems? Why does Javale have to decide on his own to go seek more treatment?

Agreed. I've been critical of unproven criticism of the Wiz medical care before, but this is factual stuff. And it's not really the medical staff at fault; it's the coaching staff and management - for not getting this looked at before. I just sent a scathing note to Ted about it, and it'd probably be good for others to do so.

[Nivek]

That part about McGee needing to go seek treatment on his own is what's most puzzling about this. How does the medical staff have a guy with asthma and then NOT have regular checkups scheduled? How is the medical staff NOT monitoring him in practice and games?

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

If you're not getting enough air in your lungs you're also not getting optimal air to your brain, either. Right? This young man has been getting roasted for lack of effort when he has been struggling with lack of oxygen???

Mental lapses and lack of stamina that the casual fan might attribute to stupidity and/or lack of conditioning, could be mostly brought on by pure fatigue.

I felt that McGee was emotionally down during his slump. My best friend growing up used to have asthma attacks a lot more frequently when stuff wasn't right with his emotional well being. I thought stress might have contributed to McGee's asthma.

Regardless of the cause(s), I hope the adjustment provides sustained relief and McGee feels better.

[Induveca]

Asthma or not, the guy needs consistent effort at this point. We're years into his career.

Like his effort as of late, but much like Kwame/Blatche etc etc, need to see it for more than a 20 game stretch to become a believer. It's 100% about consistent production for me at this point as a Wiz fan, sick of "potential" and "upside".

Wall is the only player on the squad I think could be plugged into a championship level team today. He'd look a lot more Rondo-ish with the Lakers or Spurs.

[Illuminaire]

I think it's fair to question how much of his effort issues stem from not being able to breathe.

That might not be the case, and I agree that we need him at 100% all the time for him to be a worthy player, but if his energy/effort woes are a) due primarily to asthma and b) entirely treatable, that matters.

[tontoz]

I am tempted to send Ted an email.

"I'd like to apply for a job on the Wizards medical staff. I heard there was no medical experience necessary. "


Seriously what are those clowns getting paid for?

[Zonkerbl]

That part about McGee needing to go seek treatment on his own is what's most puzzling about this. How does the medical staff have a guy with asthma and then NOT have regular checkups scheduled? How is the medical staff NOT monitoring him in practice and games?

God, it just makes no sense. Here's a guy you're hoping will be a cornerstone of a championship team, and you don't even bother to monitor his asthma treatment?

WTF????

[Induveca]

Agreed, did a quick lookup.....Isiah Thomas, Dominique Wilkins, Dennis Rodman all had asthma. They played in their prime 20 years ago. Paul Pierce has asthma as well.

To me....the asthma angle sounds like an excuse for poor play/effort. Obviously I could be wrong, but asthma isn't a debilitating affliction these days. You take your meds, have your inhaler and go about business.

But should they be monitoring it? Of course........

[Ruzious]

Agreed, did a quick lookup.....Isiah Thomas, Dominique Wilkins, Dennis Rodman all had asthma. They played in their prime 20 years ago. Paul Pierce has asthma as well.

To me....the asthma angle sounds like an excuse for poor play/effort. Obviously I could be wrong, but asthma isn't a debilitating affliction these days. You take your meds, have your inhaler and go about business.

But should they be monitoring it? Of course........

Yeah, that's why I thought in the past when the asthma excuse was used it was a crock, but in this case - it sounds like it wasn't being monitored. If he's all of a sudden able to play harder for more minutes, ya gotta wonder if this was a problem all along - that was very treatable.

[The Consiglieri]

Worst part from Mike Lee's blog post is that McGee apparently decided himself to go to his doctor. The Wizard's medical staff seemed to have nothing to do with it...

After the Wizards lost to New York last week, McGee finally decided to get checked out and his doctor discovered that the Wizards center was having some complications with his athletic asthma.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wizards-insider/post/javale-mcgee-playing-better-after-getting-new-asthma-medicine/2012/02/13/gIQAr3zsAR_blog.html

Yes, Javale is a grown man and responsible for his own health, but seriously, if you are paying somebody several million dollars a year for what is in no small part competitive breathing, shouldn't you try to stay on top of his asthma problems? Why does Javale have to decide on his own to go seek more treatment?

Maybe his mother was right on the systemic issue (committment to actually produce results by detailed work) and wrong in the particulars (whether or not getting a top of the line big man coach was essential or not), or right on both. The only thing I know for sure, is that if this story is right, in the details, then Leonsis needs to fire EVERYBODY yesterday!

It's insane and inexplicable, and for the record, suffering these issues when its bad is crippling, even mentally, when its hard to breath because of an asthma attack its almost impossible to think about anything else. If you're swimming under water, what are you thinking about when you need to come up and get some more air because you've been under for quite a while? You're not thinking about how detailed and efficient your stroke is, or how well you're executing in terms of technical form, you're thinking "air". An asthma attack is similar. It destroys the ability to focus on anything except the gasping need for more air.

What in the hell is wrong with this freaking FO? Granted McGee is an idiot, but this is not all on him, and we already know athletic culture and how players deal with concussions (try not tell anybody), eye issues (carlos rogers never admits he may need contacts, finally gets them and goes from the worst corner at generating picks/versus opportunities, to trippling his best season ever in terms of interceptions (2 to 6), knee issues, and and all manner of other issues. Remember when TD went down with the migraine and there were whispers of "soft"? Now we know how migraines work, and we can understand that suffering from the worst sort as TD did and Percy Harvin does now, prevents the ability to play, period, until they're over. Baseball, hockey, football, hoops? Why our FO's sophisticated with things as arcane as the most obscure of metrics, and not with something as simple as "he can't ----ing breath for god's sake!!!!"

Maybe the truth will be much less damning, i pray it is, and renders all my vituperative posts as mundane pointless chatter, but if this played out as it seems like it might have, this FO is beyond incompetent.

[The Consiglieri]

If you're not getting enough air in your lungs you're also not getting optimal air to your brain, either. Right? This young man has been getting roasted for lack of effort when he has been struggling with lack of oxygen???

Mental lapses and lack of stamina that the casual fan might attribute to stupidity and/or lack of conditioning, could be mostly brought on by pure fatigue.

I felt that McGee was emotionally down during his slump. My best friend growing up used to have asthma attacks a lot more frequently when stuff wasn't right with his emotional well being. I thought stress might have contributed to McGee's asthma.

Regardless of the cause(s), I hope the adjustment provides sustained relief and McGee feels better.

Absolutely, when you're stressed, if you don't handle your breathing well you can have severe asthma attacks, even things as unusual as pollen, or as was famous among my friends, seeing a particularly hilarious movie (my fits of laughter switched to a building, then eventually very severe asthma attack that required a trip to the hospital). It's a big freaking deal, and you are right, I didn't notice any dumbing down in my own experience, but, if he has allergies on top of it i can only describe my experience and that of those close to me: the attacks makes it difficult to concentrate on anything at all save breathing, and in my case, i spent my childhood suffering from moderate grade asthma and severe allergies, and has special ed for learning disabilities (pretty amazing I made it to UCB), and I only realized this past year how negatively my medication probably effected my learning. i had to be taken out of school repeatedly for illness, and asthma, and growing up, the meds i used had sever drowsiness side effects which made it maddeningly difficult for me to concentrate and stay awake in class. Since I was allergic to seemingly everything on the planet, i was usually drugged up in the fall and the spring, and getting colds in the winter which meant i was almost never in even normal "learning shape".

I don't know why I never realized the degree of negative impact that could have had on my learning in the classroom as a child, it certainly explains a lot though. Asthma is almost always connected to and sometimes described as basically an unusal allergy (maybe somebody can explain it better), if McGee also suffers from allergies, good lord. Everything is explained. Especially if he uses allergy meds that cause sleepiness on top of it. Hopefully that's not going on, hopefully it's just this and nothing else, but even this alone merits mass cannings all around if true. Some aspects of life and management are hard, and difficult to solve, i give GM's a free pass on things like Alexander Volchkov blowing, Kris Beech blowing, guys like Ryan Leaf blowing up in your face, or Ross Detwiller never seeming to become special (though now maybe we'll see a different path in his career), but this? THIS IS FREAKING EASY and there is no excuse for fumbling something as basic as simple health care with one of your two and only two players who has a chance to be a franchise guy AND YOU ALREADY KNOW ABOUT THIS ISSUE to begin with. It's unforgivable if this is all true.

[The Consiglieri]

Agreed, did a quick lookup.....Isiah Thomas, Dominique Wilkins, Dennis Rodman all had asthma. They played in their prime 20 years ago. Paul Pierce has asthma as well.

To me....the asthma angle sounds like an excuse for poor play/effort. Obviously I could be wrong, but asthma isn't a debilitating affliction these days. You take your meds, have your inhaler and go about business.

But should they be monitoring it? Of course........

Okay, here is how it works: asthma comes in inumerable gradations, it's like wine, just as there are 95-100 ratings (classic) 90-95 (excellent) 85-90 (good) 80-85 (adequate) 79 and below (don't serve it to your worst enemy), as a kid, as I understood it, there were severe (my cousin, who could die from any attack, as that model died in the nineties), moderate-severe (bad to very bad, but not constant medical requirements), moderate (me-hospitalizations about once a year, severe attacks about bimonthly to monthly), lower-moderate (what I had in my late teens and early twenties-exercise induced attacks, occasionally if i ate the wrong stuff, rarely if ever required hospitalization), and lower (my brother-occasionally he had wheezing issues, but they never bloomed into full scale attacks).

We know absolutely nothing about how severe the asthma was that Thomas, Wilkins, Rodman had, at least as far as I can tell, and also how effectively their teams addressed it, we know that McGee's asthma is probably moderate severe or at best moderate (i can't see him having any kind of athletic career if his was like my cousins). No offense, but it's nonsense that he's a wuss or soft because of this. If he is having these issues, its because he has the wrong prescriptions and/or a bad diagnosis and he has bad asthma. To be able to play basketball, you have to be able to have asthma to some degree under control, if he is able to play as much as he does, and still needs the rests, it means the meds are wrong, and/or his asthma is really, really, bad. This has NOTHING to do with being soft.

Though i would definitely check his house to see what he's eating. If guys like Beast Mode Lynch, and Lamar Odom love to shovel candy in games, then who knows what McGee does and I can tell you straight out that diet and drinking habits can dramatically effect how manageable one's asthma problems are.