Worst injuries you ever saw

[FiddySicks]

It's just weird that this is the game of basketball as well. You wouldn't think that gruesome injuries would happen. Football is more violent and dangerous, so you can understand injuries like that happening, but it's just weird and unexpected in basketball. With injuries like this and the numerous ACL tears in the NBA you really wish there can be a way to make them preventable. (I'm not a medical expert by any means)

It's actually more common than you'd expect. If you think about it, it makes sense too. Most basketball players are thin and lanky, and can jump to abnormal heights. When you're coming down from that high and have that little muscular support in your legs, it would stand to reason you'd see injuries like this. I had a good buddy who played basketball for my old college who had nearly this exact same injury TWICE. The first time it happened in high school and according to him his leg just gave out completely on a fairly calmly contested shot. The second time it happened while he was playing a pick up game with his cousin who was an NBA player (Andre Miller), and he barely left the ground and landed on a flat surface.

[Cosmic]

I think that Ware injury might be one of the goriest we see, because of how little equipment basketball players wear... nothing to hide the injury. The video of the Malarchuk injury isn't gory, but it is horribly disturbing to see a pool of blood like that forming around somebody. The story goes that the trainer stuck his finger in Malarchuk's carotid artery, and that probably saved his life. That happened in Buffalo, and so did the Zednik throat slash. Freak coincidence. The Zednik video isn't as gruesome as Ware or Malarchuk, but watch how fast he skates off the ice at the beginning of the video, and then @:45, you can still see what a substantial trail of blood he left down the length of the ice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGK5mj0K9s0

[raysfan24]

Hey guys, just wanted to let you all know that Kevin Ware had a successful surgery and will be staying in Indianapolis until Tuesday. I got this info from USA Today. The bone was reset and a rod was inserted.

[habsfan1]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWfp_GlCWlA

[CS85]

The Malarchuk thing is the worst sports injury I've ever seen, but this is definitely up there. Any of the MMA/wrestling fights where a guy suffers a compound fracture and their limbs flop around horribly is right on par with this one.

[CS85]

Dravecky's pitch in Montreal. Oh, God, that sound.

Tony Saunders is worse, I feel. The audible *kak* of his arm exploding and the heart-wrenching screams make it unwatchable.

[jr79]

Shaun Livingston's knee dislocation/break was fairly brutal from what I recall. Videos on youtube are grainy but his entire leg bends 90 degrees the wrong way from his knee.

David Busst was another...

[BlueSky]

Not sure if I'm going to get the right name here, but Dave Dravecky's arm snapping during a pitch for the Giants was reall bad for me to watch when it happened. Ware's leg is to worst break I have ever seen, but the worst injury I have ever seen period was Napolean McCallum's knee going backwards during a Raiders-49ers Mondy Night Football game

That one was terrible. Another candidate was Bryant Young of the 49ers. He was trailing the ballcarrier and Ken Norton Jr. dove at the ballcarrier but sailed over him when the guy went town. The crown of Norton's helmet caught Young right in the middle of his shin and his lower leg broke and bent backwards into a V. Holy s*** that was awful to watch.

This latest thing...that's what paramedics usually see after car wrecks. Prayers out to the player for a complete recovery.

[Sport]

I was keeping a close eye on the game while folding laundry, happened to look up just as it happened. It's the worst injury I've ever seen in a game that I was watching and I don't care to watch it or look at pictures again.

I asked my dad who was at Super Bowl 23 if it was worse than Tim Krumrie's injury and he said it was because Krumrie's bone didn't stick out of his leg.

It's easy to forget how fragile we are.

[Foxxtrot44]

This thread....

[nuordr]

I was keeping a close eye on the game while folding laundry, happened to look up just as it happened. It's the worst injury I've ever seen in a game that I was watching and I don't care to watch it or look at pictures again.

I asked my dad who was at Super Bowl 23 if it was worse than Tim Krumrie's injury and he said it was because Krumrie's bone didn't stick out of his leg.

It's easy to forget how fragile we are.

I am wondering if this injury will lead to more health issues for Ware, like leukemia or calcium disease because it just seems weird that a young man (20) could have this happen to him when he is in the best shape of his life. As far as Tim Krumrie, I would have to say Ware's is work as this happened in Basketball and not a contact sport like football.

[tBBP]

Dravecky's pitch in Montreal. Oh, God, that sound.

Tony Saunders is worse, I feel. The audible *kak* of his arm exploding and the heart-wrenching screams make it unwatchable.

This will forever be etched in my memory. I didn't watch the game, but I remember watching SportsCenter the day after and they were showing the highlights of that game...they put on that clip, cut off all the background sound, dude wound up, brought his arm forward and—SNAP! Sounded like someone snapped a tree branch. The worst thing is you can see his arm kinda just dangling there in the second or two it took him to realize what had just happened.

The reason I remember that so well? I saw that the same morning I left for Basic Training. Not the image you want in your head before heading off to boot camp.

[walby2]

Bone injuries look nasty but for the most part the worst case scenario is going to involve a career coming to an end and maybe lingering pain.

That Clint Malarchuk injury, on the other hand, was the nastiest thing I have ever seen and the drama was heightened by the fact that a lot of people who saw it happen probably thought he was going to die as a result of it. And he likely would have but for the fact that Buffalo's trainer knew how to handle the situation as a result of his battlefield experience:

Malarchuk's life was saved by the team's trainer, Jim Pizzutelli, a former Army medic who had served in Vietnam. He reached into Malarchuk's neck and pinched off the bleeding, not letting go until doctors arrived to begin suturing the wound.

(from Wikipedia)

[maz]

My brother had it on and I happened to be looking away when it happened. He said it looked bad, but knee injuries always bother him because he has bad knees, so I assumed it was a typical torn acl or something like that. Then when I saw players and coaches crying, opposing players with a blank look on their face, and how there was no repay, I knew something had to be up. We looked up the replay on YouTube and I saw it... damn.

My question is, who is the photographer that had enough stomach to look at that, bring up his camera, snap a picture, and then proceed to look at/edit it for publication later on?

This is an amazing gif. Just look at each person's unique reaction, from the woman who just calmly covers her face, to the players nearest who jump away in shock, to the waterboy who slowly sets down his cup and gets ready to hurl.

[GFB]

After avoiding the replay all yesterday, some put the picture of Ware's splinted leg on Facebook and it showed up in my newsfeed... As someone who is extremely queasy when it comes to injuries, I started immediately dry heaving. That was the most gruesome injury I've ever seen... worse than Tyron Protho's broken leg.

While they aren't gruesome, the scariest injuries I've seen was a tie between seeing Reggie Brown lying paralyzed on the Silverdome turf in 1997 (I was 8) and Jiri Fischer going into cardiac arrest, because I was questioning whether or not I had just watched someone die. Then there were the cases of the EPL player dying after suffering a heart attack on the field last year and that hockey player who had his throat gashed by a skate that I saw the replays of, but there's a difference between seeing a gruesome injury like Ware's where you are concerned, but you don't have to worry about the player's life at stake; and something where their life is in serious jeopardy.

[nuordr]

I believe that Ware's injury is the worst injury in sports and/or entertainment since Sid Vicious broke his leg in WCW.

[pianoknight]

Kickboxing - not sure who the guy is, but this is brutal:

[vicfurth]

If you're going for life threatening, the saddest thing I witnessed was Dale Earnhardt.

[RyanB06]

If you're going for life threatening, the saddest thing I witnessed was Dale Earnhardt.

That was life terminating, not life-threatening. Big difference.

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Joe Theismann or Marcus Lattimore yet. (And no, I won't link the videos or photos. Look them up yourselves.)

[CS85]

The Theismann is easily the first thought the general public has in regards in terms of televised horrific injuries, but Lattimore on down to Allan Ray's eyeball being poked out, none of these had the unfortunate luck to show the spotted, white bone clearly having broken the skin. The bone is really what makes this one horrifying, and up there among the worst of all time.

There's nothing worse than Malarchuk's. It easily should be near the top of any list of "Worst Things To Happen On Live Television" right there with 9/11 and R. Budd Dwyer's suicide. The man should've died, and if that had happened in the HD age of sports, there'd be fewer things worse. If it wasn't for his trainer reaching into the hole in his neck and closing the vein shut, Malarchuk would've died and we wouldn't have to question where it stands in terms of horror.

My question is, who is the photographer that had enough stomach to look at that, bring up his camera, snap a picture, and then proceed to look at/edit it for publication later on?

Not sure, but this is what photographers live for. It's their job to snapshot moments in history at any given moment, especially if it's something horrifying. There must always be those willing to document the grim moments throughout culture, from a broken leg to a flaming monk to a murdered college student.