Rick Pitino on concussions: "The new thing is everybody has concussion"

The most disconcerting news coming out of Louisville this weekend had nothing to do with Rick Pitino's decision to recruit Ricardo Ledo through the Puerto Rican national team.

Elisha Justice took an elbow to the face in Saturday's win over. He got hit hard enough that he suffered a concussion.

Rick Pitino, however, doesn't think too highly of those that suffer a concussion:

It's the seventeenth concussion we've had this year. I've been coaching now 35 years. I've seen maybe 5 concussions in 35 years. The new thing is everybody has a concussion. If you walk out and slightly brush the door, you have a concussion. That's the way it is today.

And here is the video (jump to the 2:45 mark):



This is precisely the wrong attitude to have about concussions.

The reason there are more concussions diagnosed these days is not because more concussions are occurring. Its because we actually now know 1) how to correctly diagnose a concussion and 2) just how serious concussions are, especially when you start getting into multiple concussion territory.

The discussion is much more common in regards to football, where 350 lb are using their helmeted heads as weapons, but suffering a concussion on a basketball court is not an uncommon thing. In my playing career alone I've seen elbows that have shattered eye sockets, heads whipping against the floor when legs get taken out, and, on one occasion, a game stopped and a player taken via helicopter to New York City for emergency facial reconstruction surgery after an ugly collision (that was not a fun sight).

And I played at a level when players were significantly smaller, weaker, slower, and didn't jump as high as they do at a place like Louisville.

Concussions are a very serious issue. It is, essentially, a bruise on your brain. Does that sound, in any way, like something you want to mess around with?

To Pitino's credit, he sounds like he is saying this tongue in cheek. I think (I hope) that he is smart enough to know that rushing a player back from an injury like a concussion is unsafe, and that putting pressure on that player to come back early is unfair.