ARON BAYNES

Whatever happened to Aron Baynes, should never happen to you.

Or to me.

Or to anyone.

But let’s back up…

Aron Baynes is a professional basketball player, a very large, athletic and agile human being.

He can run and he’s physical.

These two attributes define his game on the hardwood.

Oh yeah, he can shoot a little too.

From beyond the arc.

And rebound; he takes up a lot of space.

The 6’10” 260 pound Australian center represents the “Down Under” to a “T.”

Tough.

Happy.

Rugged.

Fun-loving.

Team-oriented.

After playing college ball at Washington State, Baynes enjoyed nine seasons in the NBA with five different teams.

He has banked nearly $40 million.

In 2014, he won a championship with the San Antonio Spurs.

In 2019-’20 with the Phoenix Suns, he enjoyed a career year.

Contributing 11.5 points and 5.6 rebounds per game in a complimentary role, he landed a two-year $14.3 million contract with the Toronto Raptors the following season.

All was good.

Well.

Well?

The 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo were on the horizon.

Australia’s Men went on to win the Bronze medal.

But not with Aron Baynes, the best player they had.

It was the start of the fourth quarter against Italy in a very close and important game for the Aussies–-‘the Boomers’ — in group stage play.

A win would advance Australia to the medal round.

Baynes had already posted a 14 points in 14 minutes line–including a pair of three-pointers–but he wasn’t on the bench.

Or in the locker room proper.

He was nowhere to be found.

He had to go to the bathroom.

As respected ESPN Senior Writer Brian Windhorst explained,

“It was a long way to the bathroom in the Saitama Super Arena outside Tokyo, and Baynes had gone to use it between the third and fourth quarters.

He had to go diagonally across the court, down a hallway and a flight of stairs.

It still didn’t make sense.

Baynes had left running so as not to miss the start of the final frame.”

In the locker room, on a tile floor near the bathroom, the 6-foot-10 Baynes was sprawled, blood on his uniform and all over the place.

He had two deep, inexplicable puncture wounds in one of his upper arms.

The team doctor was summoned.

Then paramedics.

Baynes was still on the floor, groggy.

He couldn’t get himself up.

He remembered running around the corner, toward the bathrooms.

Then…nothing.

He didn’t fully grasp it at the moment, but he’d lost his ability to walk.

Frightening!

An investigation was launched.

Did two towel hooks on the wall pierce his arm?

Did he hit his head on the wall or the floor when he went down?

He still hadn’t gone to the bathroom, so he tried to get off the stretcher provided for him.

No go.

He collapsed, folding like a house of cards or an unsecured bounce house in a stiff wind.

He immediately fell to the floor.

No one realized that Baynes could not walk.

Baynes, on the other hand, was looking down the double-barrel shotgun of paralysis.

Out of nowhere.

He was in a Japanese hospital bed, and one day turned into another…and another…and many, many others.

“The loneliest time in my life was laying in that hospital, going in and out of consciousness, going over my life plan and my goals and just crying,” Baynes recently and painfully recounted.

“My uncle Don had an accident 10 years ago,” he continued.

“He’s a quadriplegic.

My family’s had first-hand experience with this going down.

I was so scared.”

The Australian basketball world and the world of Aron Baynes was reaching its apex in anticipation of the 2020 Olympics in Japan.

The greatest generation of Aussie Boomer ballers was champing at the bit for its first Olympic medal.

And they were good.

Baynes and fellow NBA names such as Patty Mills, Joe Ingles, Matisse Thybulle, Dante Exum, Matthew Dellavedova and Jock Landale headlined the roster.

They’d beaten Team USA the previous two times they’d played, and the thought, hope and prayer was that they could do it again, on the way to gold.

When he was first discovered in the locker room area and was roused to consciousness, medics thought that he’d suffered a concussion.

But as time passed, his legs started to tingle.

Then he realized he couldn’t move his left hand and arm.

Still needing to relieve himself, someone brought him an empty water bottle.

He couldn’t go.

“Over about a half hour I really started to deteriorate,” Banes recalled.

Victory in hand, his teammates came back to the locker room to check on him.

Keep in mind that they all knew unquestionably, who the toughest man on their team was.

“We came into the locker room just wondering where Baynsie was at,” said Dellavedova.

“He was in a bad way. At first it was like, ‘Can he play in the rest of the tournament?’

And then we were like, ‘Is he going to be OK?’”

Baynes was taken by ambulance to the hospital and immediately underwent a battery of tests and an array of scans.

An MRI showed he had internal bleeding that was putting pressure on his spinal cord.

It was going to be a long while before Aron Baynes and the word, “OK” would appear in the same sentence.

“I was still hoping to play in the next game,” he divulged.

Naturally.

“The Japanese [doctors] thought I was crazy.

Looking back, I can’t believe what was happening.”

He got an Australian neurosurgeon on the phone who had seen the condition before and had crafted a treatment plan of medication and physical therapy to reduce the swelling.

The idea was to get him home.

But he could not stand.

If and when he could, he’d be cleared to fly from Tokyo to Brisbane, no short trip.

Nerve pain searing through his body, he faced it head-on.

For two weeks.

At first, he had to have therapists move his limbs for him.

“I couldn’t cope.

I was like a combination of burning, fire, knives,” he said.

“I needed the pain meds, but they knocked me out immediately, so I had to time it around the games.

The nurses showed me so much compassion.”

Ten days after the accident, the Boomers wound up with a Bronze medal, brilliantly and decisively dispatching Slovenia, 107–93, winning its first-ever medal in Olympic competition.

Mills went off for 42, the 10th-highest scoring performance in Olympic men’s basketball history.

When it came time for the medal ceremony, Baynes, alone and watching from his makeshift hospital bed in between doses of rocket fuel-like pain medication, wept.

Seeing his teammates receive their medals, and then hearing his name announced, produced enough tears to water a good-sized lawn.

The next day, Dellavedova and teammate Nathan Sobey posed as doctors to pass through security in order to present Baynes with his medal.

The swelling on his spine had decreased and he was getting stronger with therapy.

The hospital allowed him to see the team doctor and the athletic trainer for 15 minutes a day.

Bingo!!!

Enter Drs. Dellavedova and Sobey.

“It was a pretty emotional visit, you know?” Dellavedova began.

“It had been such a long journey for us to get there and he was such a big part of the program.

There were a few tears.

I don’t want to get in trouble with the Japanese officials, but I’m glad we were able to get in there.”

And certainly so was Baynes who commented, “Delly got an online degree.”

Baynes turned 35 during this horrific ordeal and miraculously, he’s almost all the way back, thanks largely to daily aggressive rehab.

He watches NBA games.

He likes the way the officials are calling the games, allowing for physical play.

One of his signature calling cards.

“It looks so much more fun now,” he observed.

“That’s how I grew up playing and I really want to get back to it.”

No problem Aron.

Too bad you’ve already worn Celtic Green (2017–2019).

Maybe one more go-round?

I don’t know what the path will look like, but I’m going to give it one hell of a crack.”

They could use a man just like you.

Just like you!!!

[Editor’s Note: This piece was written by Mr. Kaplan in February 2022.]