This is the online version of our daily newsletter, The Morning Win. Subscribe to get irreverent and incisive sports stories, delivered to your mailbox every morning. Here’s Mike Sykes.
Tuesday was an absolutely terrifying day for the sports world.
We learned that McDonald’s All-American and NBA draft hopeful Bronny James suffered a cardiac arrest while practicing at USC on Monday.
Immediately, upon hearing this, my heart sunk into the deepest depths of my stomach. “Not again,” I thought, as flashbacks of Damar Hamlin raced through my mind. My biggest hope was that it wasn’t worse. I hoped this it wasn’t another Hank Gathers or Reggie Lewis.
Thankfully, it doesn’t seem to be. Bronny was immediately tended to and rushed to the hospital in time to save his life. Now he’s reportedly in stable condition, which we should all be thankful for today because things didn’t have to end up this way.
RELATED: Bryce James posts heartfelt photo of Bronny after cardiac arrest
Sudden cardiac arrest in young athletes is rare, but it still happens more often than you think. Mostly because it’s something that you’d think wouldn’t happen at all — especially not to athletes at the highest level. There are a number of reasons this could’ve happened, as Vox Media’s Keren Landman outlines here. This also could’ve ended in a very different way.
This is a time when we should all just be thankful. We don’t have to mourn a young man who has his whole life ahead of him today. Instead, we can simply celebrate the fact that he’s still with us.
But life is never that simple, is it?
Over the course of the last 24 hours, since we learned this news, there’s been a concerning level of speculation about what’s going on with Bronny here. A particular tweet (or Xeet?) from Twitter’s lead irritant, Elon Musk, is stuck in my mind. Musk speculated that the COVID-19 vaccine might be the cause of James’ condition.
Like the rest of us, Musk is not a doctor. He’s not tending to Bronny, either. He couldn’t be further away from the situation. Yet, still, here he is bringing more questions to a situation already fraught with the unknown.
Bronny was in a position to blossom, man. He was going to USC to play basketball and live his dream. He has aspirations of going to the NBA and playing at the highest level. He was in the middle of forging his own path just like his father did before him.
Then, this happens. All of that is just put on pause at the very least until this gets figured out. We don’t know how this will turn out. We don’t know if he’ll be able to play this season. We don’t know how his plans have been disrupted.
Instead of recognizing that and showing a bit of empathy, Musk and others immediately moved to insert themselves into a situation that doesn’t call for it. At the very least, this is irresponsible behavior. At the very worst, it’s downright ghoulish.
The right move here is to simply be human. Show some care. Be concerned. Send good vibes. Because that’s what good people do.
And, clearly, we need a lot more good people.
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— Our Mitchell Northam chopped it up with Dallas Wings star Arike Ogunbowale in this incredible conversation that you need to read.
— Find you someone who believes in you the way the Chargers believe in Justin Herbert. Robert Zeglinski has more.
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— The Las Vegas Sphere is quite literally something else. Blake Schuster has the details.