WARNING: These photos are pretty gruesome, so if you have a weak stomach, I highly suggest that you don’t scroll down and look at them.
Mike Bruesewitz stole the ball and went in for a dunk. Then, just like that — within a matter of maybe two seconds — his life and career nearly changed.
Inches. Maybe centimeters. He was close, dangerously close, to a plethora of problems facing him — from nerve to muscle damage to even more.
All he did was try to avoid Wisconsin teammate Josh Gasser, who had caught him from behind. But then Gasser stumbled below him.
“He went right [to avoid Gasser] instead of going forward and unfortunately right was the wrong decision,” UW trainer Henry Perez-Guerra said.
Bruesewitz, Wisconsin’s senior forward and unquestioned team leader, fell on the back side of the basket standard, his right front leg sliced open by metal that was a part of the base.
It was a fluke. Perez-Guerra said he’s not sure an injury like this could or would ever happen again.
But there on the floor, in the midst of a team workout on Oct. 9, just three days before practice officially started, Bruesewitz thought immediately his career might be over — or worse, he may never walk normally again.
“I saw my bone,” said Bruesewitz of the wound that ran from the top of his shin bone down. “I didn’t go into shock. But in my mind, I immediately thought ‘Will I ever play basketball again? Will I walk normal again?’ A bunch of things went through my head.”
Definitely one of the more bizarre basketball injuries I’ve ever seen and certainly the second-most gruesome one I’ve ever looked at. The most gruesome one obviously being Kevin Ware’s injury.
I said it wasn’t for the feint of heart.
