A life lesson at the intersection of Marcus Mariota and Damian Lillard

BoBoBREWSKI · Mar 20, 2015

Forgive me for posting a Crapzano link, but this is worth reading.

http://www.oregonlive.com/sports/or...sf/2015/03/canzano_some_losses_are_worth.html

Five months ago, with the Oregon Ducks football team coming off that gut-punch of home loss against Arizona, I wrote about the fourth floor of the Randall Children's Hospital.

Room 406 received a special delivery in the days after that defeat. Ducks center Hroniss Grasu and quarterback Marcus Mariota sent a package to Preston Miller's room that contained a Mariota jersey they'd purchased and signed with words of encouragement. The 16-year old fighting stage four Burkitt Lymphoma smiled.

When Preston opened it and saw that jersey, his father, David told me, "it was like there wasn't any cancer for 10 minutes."

When Mariota and Grasu's gift arrived, Preston was hooked up to a half dozen IVs, dripping antibiotics and fluids into his blood. He was weak. The Madison High football player nicknamed "MEV" by his family had developed skin so cracked and chafed that infection had set in. He needed surgery to repair the skin. There would be chemotherapy and radiation treatments after that.

It was the fight of a lifetime.

One that ended this week.

Preston died on Tuesday, surrounded by his family in the hospital room that had become his home. His father, who works for a logging company, struggled all those months ago to find the words to explain what it is to watch your son fight for his life. He sobbed on the other end of the telephone one night.

"I'm not going to lie," he said, "I pray to God that if He's not going to help my son pull through this to not let him suffer so much."

Preston's mother, Jaime, was his protector. She sat with her son, all day, every day. His little sister, Brooklyn, 9, was there too. There were lines of other relatives, too, including uncle Mark, who sent me regular updates, reporting on March 1, "The cancer has become too much for him to battle."

I thought about Mariota and Grasu. They'd thought of Preston when so many others, including me, were drowning in the debate about what a loss to Arizona might do to the Ducks ranking and Mariota's Heisman hopes. Their gift was one of decency, compassion and perspective. Amid swirling hoopla, a couple of UO teammates did what more humans ought to do -- strive first to lift each other up.

Mariota's NFL draft stock is falling. He's being picked apart by critics. Grasu is too, only on a smaller scale as the non-Heisman part of that duo. I suppose it's to be expected but all I can think about today is what their gesture meant to a boy who dreamed their dreams from that hospital bed.

Their gift made him get out of bed. It made him feel like the most important kid in the world. It put cancer in the corner of the room, and a teenaged boy who should have been out getting his learner's permit instead of absorbing all that medicine, for a moment, was so alive.

A couple of weeks ago, one of the nurses alerted Preston that Blazers forward Nic Batum had stopped into the hospital and was on the eighth floor along with guard CJ McCollum. Preston climbed out of bed, pulled on his Damian Lillard jersey and made his way to the eighth floor to meet them.

"He was determined to get them to autograph his jersey," uncle Mark reported.

Lillard is Preston's favorite player. He roots for Batum and McCollum, too. And while so many of us look at the victories a sports entity posts as its most valuable commodity, Preston's smile was proof that the lifting of an ailing soul is worth so much more.

Physicians doubled the amount of morphine Preston was receiving in the last week. The tumors were growing faster than predicted. He developed a fever. His body began to shut down and his family prepared itself for what it knew would be a difficult goodbye.

Something happened though, along the way. Between the hugs and "I love you"'s -- amid the prayers and kisses -- a visitor in a sweatsuit appeared alone in the doorway of Room 406.

It was Lillard.

Preston wore a red Blazers baseball cap that day. He had on a "RIP CITY" T-shirt too. And he managed a smile and a 'thumbs-up' sign as Lillard slipped in beside him and told him that he'd heard he might need a visit.

Uncle Mark said of Preston: "He taught us how to love and to bring everyone together as a family again."

The kid was glue.

Maybe this will surprise you. Maybe it won't. But when I looked at the calendar to see when Lillard visited Preston, I just smiled. It turns out Lillard made the trip to the hospital to visit Preston the morning after the Blazers overtime victory over the Clippers a couple of weeks ago. Lillard arrived home, faced the second game of a back-to-back swing, and headed straight for the kid in Room 406.

Lillard shot 1 for 13 against the Clippers, incidentally. He went 0 for 7 from three-point range. It amounted to about the worst shooting game of Lillard's NBA career.

Kids like Preston will always be bigger than some game.
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Blazer Freak · Mar 20, 2015

Classic Canzano...write shit articles for an entire year and then write a story about a cancer-stricken fan once a year to try and get an award....am I the only one who notices this?

Of course, I feel bad about the kid, but it's so blatantly obvious that Clown-zano does this it actually makes me sick.

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A life lesson at the intersection of Marcus Mariota and Damian Lillard

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