Depression & Back <div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">It has been seven months, and he still can't play basketball. PHOTO BY JERRY LODRIGUSS MacCulloch's foot problem sent him into a temporary depression, but a radio gig calling 76ers games helped pull him out of it. And the day two years ago when he folded himself around a table at the Quiznos in Portland and talked about a Porsche seems so long ago. Yes, he still has the money. But what good is $34 million if you can't earn it? "That's been part of the confusion," he said. "(The disease) is so rare and random. Why does it happen to me now? Just when I started to make a name for myself? It couldn't seem to be better for me as a player, and I had a great wife. I had a really hard time accepting that this was something out of my control. "There isn't an answer, or at least an easy one. To hear that you might not play again was hard. But there is no clear-cut diagnosis: 'It could be this or it could be you never play again.' " It was confusing. For a while he fell into a depression. He would lie in bed in the mornings, refusing to get up, not wanting to get up. What was the point in getting up if his feet were going to hurt and he couldn't do the thing that made him whole? He calls those days "scary." Those were the mornings his wife came into the room and said, "Today's the day you will get up and your feet will be better." Eventually he believed her even if it still didn't happen. He says he feels a little more of himself every day. Last year, the Sixers asked him to work on their radio broadcast, and he jumped at the chance to stay close to the team. He worried that his droll personality might not work on the air, but the more he threw out silly lines (like the time Shawn Bradley fell so slowly in a game, MacCulloch said, "He folded up like a three-part miniseries"), the more people stopped him on the street. They told him they loved him on the radio. Suddenly, he wasn't Todd MacCulloch The Sixers Center but Todd MacCulloch Who Makes Them Laugh Three Nights A Week. He felt better. Lately, there has been the slightest feeling of improvement in his feet. Nothing big. He just notices that he's feeling better. He takes it as a good sign, maybe a miracle. "People tell you things ? things that have happened to them almost miraculously," he said. "People you know and respect and who you know aren't cuckoo. Then you know, 'I'm not being forgotten about.' " His miracle, he believes, is coming any day now. </div> Full Article Courtesy of Les Carpenter/The Seattle Times That is so sad. Having the one thing you truly love taken away from you, and on top of all that heading into depression, also he can't walk good at times as well. It's a great thing of what the Sixers organization did with the radio job, maybe giving him some confidence by being closer to the team, and the court.
Its great to see he feels he is improving for me him returning to the sixers is not even what matters at this point. What matters is him feeling better it would be great seeing him with the team again before the injury he had been part of the last 2 nba finals teams once in his rookie season in 2001 with AI and the sixers and the next with the nets in 2002 with jason kidd. He was playing very well for the team before this happened I even remembered when on the comcast sportsnet analyst said his name was pornounced differently because he was canadian and that he didnt mind people saying it wrong in new jersey, but now he does. Then another said I think the new name plays better than when he was playing with his name pronounced wrong he was really improving his game sad set he had to have this injury. He was listed at 6'11' or 7 feet I dont remember which he was a huge body and was becoming a more than decent center for the team. Though now even if he came back his minutes wouldnt be that good with all the guys at that spot skinner, dalembert, and jackson. It wouldnt hurt to have him back though.
