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Celtics, fans mourned Reggie Lewis'
death in '93
By Dick
Heller
When Boston sportscaster and family friend Jimmy Myers reached
Donna Lewis to give her the news, she stopped him. "Wait, Jimmy,"
she said. "I've got something to tell you first."
Donna's news was joyous: She had just
learned she was 2½ months pregnant with her second child.
Jimmy's
was tragic: Her husband, Boston Celtics star Reggie Lewis, had
collapsed while shooting baskets at Brandeis University and was on
his way to Waltham-Weston Hospital. "We're living this nightmare
again," he told Donna. "We've got to get over there."
Four months earlier, Lewis had become
dizzy and disoriented during a regular-season game. A month after
that, he had collapsed in a playoff game. Although conflicting
medical reports left it unclear whether he could play basketball
after the second incident, he was determined to try. But he never
really got the chance. Nearly two hours after he collapsed at
5:07 p.m. on July 27, 1993, the hospital announced Reggie
Lewis was dead at 27.
Lewis entered the
Brandeis arena with a friend at about 4 p.m. to prepare for a
fullcourt pickup game that night, his first since April. Several
girls in the gym came over to talk with him, and he held his hand
against theirs to compare sizes. The atmosphere was cheerful and
light.
After about an hour on the court
without even working up a sweat, Lewis crumpled near the 3-point
line. Said a Brandeis security guard who arrived minutes later: "His
eyes were open, but he was clearly unconscious." The guard tried
mouth-to-mouth resuscitation while his partner pumped Lewis' chest.
There was no response. The player wasn't breathing, and his pulse
was virtually undetectable. Then came the ride to the hospital and
subsequently the grim announcement.
The
sad news sent Celtics Nation into shock. Lewis, a former star at
Baltimore's Dunbar High School and Northeastern University, was the
cornerstone of an impressive rebuilding effort by the aging team.
The Celtics had suffered a literally mortal blow seven years earlier
when Maryland superstar Len Bias died from cocaine use two days
after the Celtics made him the second pick in the NBA Draft. But the
former perennial champions were luckier the following spring when
they selected Lewis. Over six seasons, he averaged 17.6 points and
captivated fans with his sunny nature and good works off the court.
Now, shockingly, it was all over. With
Lewis, the Celtics had enjoyed six straight winning seasons. Without
him and the retired Kevin McHale in 1993-94, they slid from 48-34 to
32-50 and out of the playoffs.
An
estimated 15,000 mourners — black and white together in an often
racially divided city — filed past Lewis' open casket over the next
few days. During a memorial service attended by 7,000 at
Northeastern's Matthews Arena, Celtics CEO Dave Gavitt remarked in
his eulogy, "Isn't it amazing that here in conservative, staid New
England, this soft-spoken, gentle young man had to leave us before
we felt it was OK to say that we love each other and care for each
other?"
The entire Celtics family was
stricken, of course. Assistant coach Jon Jennings told Sports
Illustrated how he had taken Reggie and Donna to a Boston Pops
Christmas concert the previous December, and the athlete had
whispered, "Next year, I'll bring Reggie Jr."
Said Jennings, in tears: "Next year,
I'll bring Reggie Jr."
It was so sad.
Then, over subsequent months and years, it became so ugly. There
were unconfirmed reports cocaine had been at least partly
responsible for the tragedy, and a debate arose among doctors
whether the death could have been prevented.
After his first collapse in April, Lewis
had been examined by two teams of cardiologists in Boston and one in
Los Angeles. Speaking for one of the Boston groups, Dr. Gilbert
Mudge said May 10 that Lewis had "a normal athlete's heart" and
suffered only from a minor fainting condition called
neurocardiogenic syndrome.
The other
Boston group, a Dream Team of cardiologists assembled by Celtics
doctor Arnold Scheller, reached a far more ominous conclusion: Lewis
was susceptible to ventricular arrhythmia — a potentially lethal
condition that had led to the oncourt death of Loyola Marymount star
Hank Gathers three years earlier.
"The
real tragedy is that right now we should be saying, 'Reggie has a
pacemaker and can't play basketball anymore,' " veteran star
McHale said after Lewis' death. "Instead we have to mourn him."
When all the tests were completed,
everybody waited and wondered. Said NBA Players Association
executive director Charles Grantham: "I am concerned about a system
that puts medical teams into adversarial positions. ... You can be
sure this issue will be raised with teams and the league."
After the Dream Team's diagnosis,
Scheller said on television that Lewis might never play again.
Meanwhile, the California doctors detected a prominent abnormality
in his heart. But shortly thereafter, Mudge — the respected chief of
clinical cardiology at Brigham and Women's Hospital — said at a
press conference there was no damage to the heart muscle and that
Lewis could return to basketball "without limitation." Elated,
Gavitt and the Celtics chose the last evaluation.
In 1999, Donna Harris-Lewis filed suit
against Mudge and fellow cardiologists Mark Creager and Peter
Friedman, charging a misdiagnosis. She also denied her husband had
used cocaine, which the doctors claimed made an accurate diagnosis
impossible.
The jury in that suit
deadlocked, causing the judge to declare a mistrial. A second jury
cleared Mudge of malpractice the following year. Harris-Lewis
appealed that verdict in 2003, but last February an appeals court
denied her request for a third trial.
Eleven years after his death, Lewis is
remembered as a fine man and athlete who well deserved the honors
paid him. The athletic center at Roxbury Community College near
Northeastern and a leadership program at a local health center are
named for him. Each year students and teachers create a united front
against racism and discrimination through Team Harmony, an
organization he helped start. Others continue charitable efforts in
his name.
If there seems little question
about the value of Lewis' life, debate still rages in many minds
whether his death was necessary. Beyond that lies a wider issue: Do
the people who run professional teams and the doctors they employ
care about the athletes' health beyond keeping them on the field or
court?
Regardless, Reggie Lewis is gone,
and the loss still affects many.
Said
former assistant coach Jennings: "I remember [Washington Star
columnist] Mary McGrory talking about when President Kennedy died
and saying, 'You know, we'll laugh again, but we'll never be young
again.' I really think that's what Reggie's death meant to all of
us."
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