Another headache

OAKLAND, Calif. – When NBA union chief Michele Roberts watched Stephen Curry return to a game after his head slammed against the floor and he walked woozily to the locker room, she immediately took a closer look at the league’s concussion protocols.

Two nights later, when Curry’s Golden State teammate Klay Thompson was cleared to return after being kneed in the head only to later be diagnosed with a concussion, her reaction was much stronger.

“It mortified me,” she said.

Now Roberts wants to take an even closer look. The union has hired neurologists to examine the policy and determine whether any changes are needed to prevent players from playing with an undiagnosed concussion.

With the two high-profile head injuries in less than a week, the NBA is taking its turn in the concussion cross-hairs that are usually focused on the NFL and NHL.

The director of the league’s concussion program, Dr. Jeffrey Kutcher, said the Warriors handled both instances properly even though Thompson later was diagnosed with a concussion.

Roberts is not convinced that players shouldn’t be held out longer out of caution after being hit in the head. While stressing she is a lawyer, not a doctor, and that she will wait to hear what the medical experts tell her, she also said one player being allowed back in a game with a concussion is too many.

“That number is sufficient to make us all look at whether we want to risk a player’s health for a game,” she said. “To say it happens so rarely or doesn’t happen frequently enough to change the rules is not enough. We’re talking potentially about someone’s life. I don’t think we should play an odds game when it comes to a player’s life.”

When a player is suspected of having a possible concussion, team doctors or athletic trainers test a player’s short-term memory and recall with cognitive tests, test balance and coordination, and make other observations based on the injury and the mannerisms of a player.

Still, brain injuries aren’t as easily detected as a knee or ankle injury.

Kutcher said about 25 percent of concussions never show symptoms until hours – or even a day – after the injury.

“That’s just the nature of the injury,” he said. “One of the fallacies that we deal with is the idea that every concussion can be diagnosed if only they would have looked hard enough.”

Curry returned to Game 4 of the Western Conference finals after he passed the tests twice. Thompson was also cleared in Game 5 but didn’t end up playing again in part because he needed stitches to stop bleeding from his ear.

The combination of the delayed reaction and the added risk to a player who receives another blow to the head after already being concussed has some experts questioning why players are allowed back into games before doctors have definitively ruled out a concussion.

Chris Nowinski, a co-director of the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at Boston University, said the fact that both Curry and Thompson didn’t immediately get up after being hit should be considered a sign that they probably were concussed.

“Doctors at the professional level aren’t considering on-court symptoms as part of the concussion tests,” Nowinski said. “If a player passes the test despite the fact we know it’s far from perfect, doctors rarely feel confident enough to hold a player out. The GMs and coaches just listen to the doctor and don’t make a decision.”

Roberts knows talk of holding players out could be unpopular among her constituents, who are often more concerned about staying on the court than their long-term health.

And she’s OK with that.

“It’s not for them to decide,” Roberts said. “They’re not doctors.”