Two things can be true, and they often are. For example: Aaron Rodgers’ Achilles exploding and ending his season (and possibly his career) is not funny, but that outcome meaning the New York Jets have turn back to Zach Wilson after spending a solid seven months denigrating him at every turn and simultaneously nuking both his trade value (so they couldn’t move him) and his confidence (so he’s borderline unplayable) is hilarious for any and all objective parties.
Every moment that made it worse—Rodgers unable to get off the field; Rodgers entering the medical tent; the cart coming for Rodgers at the tent; Rodgers riding the cart while wearing the protective boot in the tunnel—had to have been a knife straight to the heart of every Jets fan. Nobody would blame them if they skipped work, cursed God and spent an otherwise productive Tuesday wallowing in the foulest pits of misery. These are the Jets, and for all I know their fans consider these hobbies win, lose or debilitating quarterback injury.
But because I am a broken human, the first thing I thought about was Kenyon Martin.
We touched on this briefly in the first little ChatGPT thought exercise on great college basketball what-ifs, but to dig a little deeper requires some explanation. Martin was an absolute stud for Cincinnati on his way to winning every conceivable national Player of the Year Award as a senior in 2000, dominating in a way that at the time was unique on both ends of the court. Guys who could patrol the paint like Martin on defense—at 6-9 with outrageous leaping ability, it should come as no surprise he’s still the Bearcats career leader in blocked shots—were rarely able to put up 19 points on 57 percent shooting and nearly 70 percent from the line (imagining someone like Joel Embiid at this time is like imagining dropping Shaq at LSU circa 1971). Contemporaries like Etan Thomas, Samuel Dalembert and Joel Przybilla—guys who would go on to be drafted and put together decent NBA careers—were largely put-back artists or tertiary options for their teams, while Martin was the first and last look for Cincinnati anytime the Bearcats needed a bucket.
And then, a few minutes into Cincinnati’s CUSA Tournament stay, which was supposed to simply be the appetizer for an extended March victory lap for a Bearcat team that spent much of that season ranked No. 1 in the country, Martin broke his leg. And that, largely, was that.
Looking back, I don’t think it’s because Cincinnati no longer had what it needed to be competitive—that Bearcat squad would send Dermarr Johnson to the lottery and featured some real Guys worth Remembering like Steve Logan, Pete Mickeal and Kenny Satterfield, and were coached by Bob Huggins. If I had to put a finger to it, I’d say that losing Martin was a crushing blow not because of what his stats looked like but because in the moment you could feel it: oh no, what’s the plan without him?
For Cincinnati, I think it was Donald Little? I’m more confident in that answer than I am in it being Zach Wilson for the Jets, tbh.
The Rodgers injury gave me the same feeling. A season napalmed in an instant. I racked my brain thinking of instances in college hoops where this happened, ultimately not coming up with any that exactly exploded on the launch pad on opening night but certainly altered the fates of programs who might have expected (and sometimes deserved) better.
First one isn’t related to anything in the aforementioned parenthetical.
Svetlana Abrosimova, Sue Bird, Shea Ralph and Nykesha Sales, UConn I say this as someone who doesn’t like their coach, but without injuries to those four players UConn might have really seven titles in a row from 1998-2004. In 1998, Sales tore her Achilles’ in February with the Huskies well on their way to a 30-win season; people remember the controversy that ensued when her head coach (I’m from Tennessee and played ball growing up with Pat Summit’s nephew: we don’t say that man’s name around here) finagled a way to get Sales a freebie layup for her to break the school scoring record, but fewer remember UConn still making it to the Elite Eight without their best player.
A year later, Sue Bird showed up in Storrs; unfortunately, she tore her ACL 10 games into the season and UConn (gasp!) only made the Sweet 16 with Abrosimova winning Big East Player of the Year, Tamika Williams being named Freshman of the Year, Ralph “avenging” a Second Team All-Big East honor by winning Big East Tournament MOP and Swin By God Cash not even making All-Freshman team. What a garbage program; should have been disbanded immediately, I say.
The next year, the disgusting Huskies went 39-1 and won a title and hoo-bleeding-ray for them. In 2001, bodies betrayed them again, this time with Abrosimova going down in February and Ralph tearing her ACL again in the Big East title game. Freshman Diana Taurasi and Bird—aka two of the literal best players the sport has ever produced—drug UConn back to the Final Four before succumbing to Notre Dame for a second time that season. Frauds, the lot of them.
Caris Levert, Michigan If Caris Levert’s left foot held up, I’m convinced Michigan looks a lot different his last two seasons. After his sophomore season, Levert had surgery on a stress fracture and came back for his junior season; Michigan was a relatively pedestrian 11-8 when he went down in January, but two of those losses were to Villanova and Arizona (and two were to NJIT and Eastern Michigan, because those Wolverines contained multitudes) and those results looked positively amazing after Levert went down due to another injury to his left foot and they ended the year 5-8 (including a five-game losing streak bookended by hated rivals Michigan State).
Levert was back and better than ever in 2015, and helped the Wolverines out to an excellent 11-3 start before he needed surgery on the same damn foot again. The Wolverines limped to a 23-13 finish and were sent to the First Four in Dayton, where they escaped with a win against Tulsa before losing to Notre Dame a few days later.
Joel Embiid, Kansas If you want to know why Philadelphia was ultra-super-duper-conservative about Embiid early in his pro career and why it will be a borderline miracle if he ever plays a 70-game NBA regular season, it probably stems back to his Kansas career. With Embiid, Kansas was 22-7, a top-10 team and presented a big ol’ problem for opponents tasked with stopping Embiid, Andrew Wiggins, Frank Mason, Perry Ellis, Wayne Selden and Tarik Black. Without him (he went down late in the season with a stress fracture in his back, which seems like it might be a long-term concern too) they went 3-3 and got bounced in the NCAA Tournament by Stanford.
Having seen what Embiid is capable of since then, and even factoring in that he was still scratching the surface of his potential at the time, I’m guessing the Jayhawks go deeper into March with him.
Robbie Hummel, Purdue There is just not really a sadder story in college basketball history.
Entering his junior season, Robbie Hummel was a preseason Wooden Award candidate bee-bopping along toward—at minimum—All-Big 10 honors and putting up the stats to prove it, at 15-7 at 45% shooting while leading the Boilermakers to a 24-3 start. Between Hummel, JaJuan Johnson and E’Twaun Moore, it might have been Matt Painter’s best team. Yeah I said it and I’ll say it again with my hand on a Bible, in front of my mama and yours too if you bring her. But in February, Hummel’s ACL caved in; Johnson and Moore ultimately got the Boilermakers to the Sweet 16 but a healthy Hummel gets them further.
No matter. He was coming back for his senior season, and so were Johnson and Moore. The gang’s all here, and they’re bringing in a top-10 recruiting class? It was good times in West Lafayette.
Until that October, when Hummel tore the same ACL and missed the season again.
By the time he could hit the court again, Johnson and Moore were off to the NBA, that top-10 class had failed to turn into much and Hummel was—still!—the best player on a far-diminished Purdue that he—still!—drug past Saint Mary’s to open the NCAA Tournament before running into a buzz-saw Kansas unit that would eventually be national runner-up.