IT WAS THE start of the fourth quarter and the Boomers, the Australian Olympic men's basketball team, were in a tight game against Italy in an important group stage match. The Aussies had inched ahead and a finishing kick would guarantee advancement to the medal round. Coach Brian Goorjian peered down the bench, looking to put his rugged center into the game.
The Aussie had been playing well; he had 14 points in 14 minutes and nailed a couple of 3-pointers, which had become the big man's specialty. Now, he was needed on the inside to battle fellow NBA players Nicolo Melli and
Danilo Gallinari. But he was nowhere to be found.
Where was Aron Baynes?
It was a long way to the bathroom in the Saitama Super Arena outside Tokyo, and Baynes had gone to use it between the third and fourth quarters. He had to go diagonally across the court, down a hallway and a flight of stairs. It still didn't make sense. Baynes had left running so as not to miss the start of the final frame.
Concerned, one of the staff members went to look for him, tracing Baynes' steps. As he did, the staffer found him. In the locker room on a tile floor near the bathroom, the 6-foot-10 Baynes was sprawled on the floor, blood on his uniform and on the floor from two deep, inexplicable puncture wounds in his upper arm.
The team doctor was summoned. Then paramedics. Still on the floor, Baynes was groggy and couldn't get himself up. He remembered running around a corner to head toward the bathrooms.
Then, nothing.
An investigation was launched. There were two hooks on the wall for towels that looked like they could've caused the cuts. Maybe Baynes had hit his head on the ground. As the team of medical officials got him onto a stretcher, he was texting photos of his wounds to his agent in New York and keeping an eye on the end of the game, which the Boomers had eked out by three points.
He still had not used the bathroom and needed to go, so he got up off the stretcher.
He immediately fell to the floor.
In the confusion of the moment, no one had realized that Baynes had lost his ability to walk. Or that he was headed for a nightmare that would derail his basketball career and leave him isolated in a Japanese hospital, weeping in pain day after day, with the possibility that he might be paralyzed.
"The loneliest time in my life was laying in that hospital, going in and out of consciousness, going over my life plan and my goals and just crying," Baynes says, speaking about the ordeal for the first time.
"My uncle Don had an accident 10 years ago. He's a quadriplegic," he says. "My family's had first-hand experience with this going down. I was so scared."
I hope this rumor picks up steam. There’s nothing funnier than Knicks fans getting their hopes up about acquiring a superstar only for them to strike out and end up with a Julius Randle level player as their big offseason acquisition.
Love has been cooking all season breh
