GOD PREPARED ME FOR THE STRUGGLES AND THE JOY

Champions' TriBUne Archive

By: Jake Lindsey

Champions' TriBUne is a special feature through Baylor Athletics that will give you the student-athlete's perspective and tell their story in their voice. A second-generation Baylor basketball player, Jake Lindsey is the son of Utah Jazz general manager Dennis Lindsey. An all-state pick at Olympus High School in Salt Lake City, Utah, Jake played in 103 games in his first three seasons at Baylor and led the Bears to two NCAA Tournament appearances and last year's NIT:

THANK YOU!

Thank you to my family: Dennis, Becky, Matt, Meredith and Jessica. For all the love and support you all give me every day, I can't say enough. Thank you for all the times you guys sacrificed your time, energy and money so that I could have a chance to play the game I love. Love you guys.

Thank you to my loving, kind and beautiful fiancé, Tiger. The influence you have had on my life and the way I see the world is something I can't do justice with my words. You are such an incredible blessing in my life, and I am so excited that I am privileged enough to call you mine for the rest of my life. I love you.

Thank you to all the coaches and teachers who have poured into my life, invested their time in teaching me about basketball and life.

Thank you to all the former Baylor players who came before me, for giving me a dream to go after, and a standard of excellence to continue when I got there.

Thank you to Coach Drew for offering a skinny white kid a scholarship, even though less than half of his staff had ever seen me play.

Thank you to all my teammates, both at Baylor and previously, for a lifetime worth of memories. Additionally, thanks to the managers and GA's who work tirelessly to make the program go.

Thank you to David Chandler and Charlie Melton, two people who I credit with prolonging my career. Your respective expertise and willingness to adjust to the needs of different players truly are the backbone of our program.

Thank you to all the fans who ever came to a game, watched a game at home, tweeted about a game, or reached out to me in person to offer a few words. Most athletes, myself included, like to play it cool when someone says "good game" or offers praise. But, from the bottom of my heart, I always appreciated the fact that someone cared enough about one of my games to invest his or her time into it.

Thank you to the person reading this, for caring enough to read this story. I presume that you all have lives that often feel busy, so I appreciate that you would spend your time reading something I have to say.

Most importantly, thank you to God, whose presence in my life I didn't really acknowledge until recently. I'll talk more about Him later. There's probably an important person I forgot to thank somewhere in there, but I don't want to keep you reading all day.

With that being said, I have some unfortunate news: I've played my last game in a Baylor uniform.

I don't mean to seem dramatic, but it took me a long while to be able to write that sentence, and much longer than that to come to grips with it. Getting to be on the Baylor men's basketball team is truly a childhood dream that I've been blessed enough to live out every day for the last four years. Explaining why I'm done is a complicated story, but I'll do my best.

I first injured my left hip in the playoffs of my sophomore year of high school. I had always had "tight hips" and lacked flexibility, but it had never really given me too much trouble until that point. When we had my hip imaged, the doctors told me and my parents that I had a medical condition called "femoral acetabular impingement," which I will call FAI from here on out.

Jake Lindsey

Now, that sounds a whole lot worse than it really is. FAI is a condition where there is some extra bone growth on the ball of the hip socket, creating a scenario where the hip ball and socket rub against each other, causing pain in certain movements. Honestly, FAI is not a terribly uncommon medical condition. However, every hip is different, so one person's FAI could be extremely painful, while another person with FAI may be able to exercise regularly with very little pain. Case in point: I had FAI in both hips, but my left hip was much worse than my right.

As I progressed through high school, my left hip slowly got worse. When I arrived at Baylor, DC, Charlie and I understood that my hip was essentially a ticking time bomb, and that I would need to manage it in order to avoid surgery before my time at Baylor was done. We tailored my rehab and lifting to accommodate my inability to squat and do certain motions.

Well, as many of you know, that time bomb eventually did go off. It's hard for me to say exactly when my hip got really bad, because i always had generally understood that my hips just weren't great. But in the fall before my junior season, my discomfort had increased to the point where DC and I would be constantly rehabbing, trying to preserve my body as well as we could. I really felt like an old man, and we often joked that I moved like one.

Come to the end of the season, and our team fell short of its goals despite our talent and experience. That year will forever be hard for me to stomach. My hip had continued to deteriorate to the point where surgery was pretty much a foregone conclusion. However, I needed to wait to get the surgery until I had gone back to Salt Lake City in May so that I could rehab and avoid post-surgery travel, as well as finish my classes.

By this point, we had discovered that I had fractured my hip socket clean through and that the rest of my hip socket had been eroded to the point where a very optimistic recovery timeline would put me back on the court around the beginning of the season in November.

No problem, I thought to myself. I'll use the non-conference to get my rhythm and wind back and be good to go for conference. Or so I thought. I had the surgery on May 15, 2018, in Salt Lake City.

Here is where things started to get odd. A few days after my surgery, I started suffering nerve pain in the area around my left shoulder. For those of you who have experienced nerve pain, you understand that it's just a different beast. There are really no words I can use to describe what exactly was happening in my shoulder area, except to say it really wasn't all that fun.

The pain continued for about three to four days. After that time period, I was able to start moving around on crutches, but something just wasn't right. I crutched around for several weeks, but it felt like part of my left side was still numb, and it made the rest of the muscles in my left arm and neck area very sore and tight.

People who are relying on crutches are prone to bouts of tendonitis, so I was fairly certain that's what I was dealing with. Except it didn't go away. In early June, we scheduled a visit to the doctors so that we could make sure I didn't have a bulging disk in my neck. This whole conversation is going to get a little technical, but bear with me.

First was the X-ray: Negative.

Second was the MRI: Negative.

Third came the CT-Scan: Negative.

Finally, we got the EMG test. An EMG test is where they prick your muscles and make sure they are functioning properly by the response they give to an external stimulus.

So off they went, muscle by muscle in my upper body, starting on my neck. All was good. Arm muscles, fine. Teres major and Teres minor, both good. The test isn't painful at all, and I was optimistic at this point that I was going to be fine.

Then they got to my infraspinatus. No response. Supraspinatus, same thing. The doctors briefly looked at each other, and then continued the test.

If you know me very well, you know that I truly love to play cards. Spades, Blackjack, Poker, Uno, doesn't matter. Doesn't even have to be for money or anything of value. I just enjoy the mental challenge of trying to figure out what cards the other people are holding. One thing about playing cards is that it teaches you to recognize when other people are hiding something.

Watching these doctors trying to hide what they knew from me gave me that same pit in my stomach that you get when someone smirks at your final call in a hand of poker. I didn't know what they were about to tell me was wrong with my shoulder, but I for sure knew it wasn't going to be good.

Parsonage-Turner syndrome.

I'm sorry?

The doctors repeated it to me, this time handing me a 10-page packet describing their rather obscure diagnosis. I skipped all the med-school terminology and graphics, looking straight at the symptoms.

Weakness in the upper body. Check. Nerve pain. Double check. Atrophy of major muscles. Wait, what? I reached around to feel the muscles they described as being affected. Keep in mind, I had been showering sitting down due to my surgery and hadn't really looked at my back in weeks.

Gone. Where those two muscles were supposed to be, there was kind of this weird crater in my back. It was as if my back muscles were a balloon, and someone took a pin and popped it.

Okay, mind scrambling, how did this happen? The doctors couldn't tell me. The problem with Parsonage-Turner syndrome is that there is no known cause. It's simply a rare condition that takes place about 1 in every 100,000 people. There's also no known cure or accelerant of the healing process. The nerves around your shoulder just die. Frankly, I'm kind of lucky that only two of my four main shoulder muscles died, because I could've lost further function of my arm.

So, Doc, how long until I am on the court again? (Being stubborn and blind to a bigger picture is kind of a theme with me.)

A pause.

I'll never forget the way he looked at me when he told me he wasn't sure if I'd ever play high-level basketball again. There was no certain answer. The nerves had to grow back, and that could be months, or it could be years. Even then, I'd have to rehab them and hope that my shoulder stayed healthy.

This was, as our team likes to say, tough.

The phrase that athletes die twice is far truer than any former athlete ever wants to admit. It's hard. So much of who you are becomes wrapped up, in my case, in your ability to throw a ball in a hoop. Then it's taken away, and you are kind of left scrambling.

Fast forward to this season. I'm back at Baylor, taking a light class load, learning how to break down film for the coaches, rehabbing my hip, waiting on my shoulder to maybe wake up, and hanging out with my fiancé. Life is good.

Jake Lindsey

First game comes around. Loss to Texas Southern. Ouch. Win a few games, lose a few games, then drop another at home to SFA. Double-ouch. I don't mean that in a derogatory sense toward those programs. They have talented players and coaches and they deserved to win those games. But from an objective point of view, those were the two worst losses I had been a part of as a Baylor Bear, and I had to watch them from the bench.

It was not ideal. Our team was (and still is) young and inexperienced, trying to learn how to play basketball at this level. I felt we were better than we had shown, but I wasn't sure what our identity as a team was really going to be. Then we beat Iowa State at home, things were kind of on the upswing.

Then, Tristan Clark goes down with a knee. Are you kidding me? The guy had been a stud for us, an absolute rock on both ends of the floor all year. Now, he's sitting next to me, watching us lose at home to Kansas. That was a difficult night.

Then, something funny happened. Coach Drew came in smiling. We changed the whole way we thought about offense. We really believed that we could do this thing. King, truly my brother, goes bonkers at Oklahoma State to start it all off. Makai Mason happens (and this time for the good guys). Devonte starts making everything, Mark continues his all-out assault on the glass. Freddie G comes out of nowhere to anchor our zone.

The ever stress-inducing Matthew Mayer and Flo grow up in a hurry and help our team in huge moments. Darius and O cap off our win at OU in style. Mario gets his legs underneath him and starts looking like the guy we had seen in practice. Jared freaking Butler happens. (Enjoy watching that guy for the next few years, Baylor fans. He's far better than I was and well worth any sacrifice it took to get him here.)

And I got the best seat in the house to watch the whole thing. As a competitor, I wanted to be out there, tasting that type of success again firsthand. I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a small part of me that was bitter. I definitely missed that rush. When those feelings come into my mind, I often hear my dad's voice, reminding me that, "Just because your feelings are real doesn't mean they are right."

When I have those moments, I try to focus on the little details. It's hard to mope and pout when you're watching how excited Davion and MaCio get when Makai sizes up some poor soul, preparing to open his preposterously deep bag of isolation moves. It's hard to think about yourself when you're watching how excited Jackson gets celebrating one of those genuinely bewildering no-no-no-no-how-did-he-make-that shot from Matt. Watching that little smirk on Coach Drew's face when he realized that he found the out-of-bounds play on his card that was going to send the 'Horns home sad was priceless.

I don't know about you all at home, but I truly cannot remember enjoying watching a team play basketball as much as I love watching our guys hoop. Judging by your tweets, you all seem to like it. But you guys only get a small taste. Watching Coach Tang, Coach Jakus and Coach Brooks desperately trying to beat Coach Drew with the scout team will never get old. Coach Drew constantly searching for new stories to inspire our team is a window into how much he pours into each game. Watching Jared and King go at it with Davion and MaCio in practice is always good theater.

By the way, if you enjoy good guard play, stick around for next year. Davion, JB, MaCio and Devonte will be an absolute treat to watch.

These guys aren't perfect. Many of them have flaws that drive me and probably some of you crazy, but they all have one thing in common: they have a knack for overcoming things. At a certain point, we found out that overcoming things as a group is a really good time. Coach Drew isn't perfect, but it takes all of five minutes of being around our program to figure out where that positive attitude starts. His attitude is infectious. Our team believes it can do crazy things. It's kind of what we do.

Look at our roster. Each guy deserves his own story. It feels like an injustice to not write about them, but it's 1 a.m. and I just got home from the plane ride back from K-State, so forgive me. But for example, my guy King literally plays with his heart on the line. He's having his best year yet, and then he tweaks his knee. Another setback. Another opportunity to come back. He was good tonight, and I expect him to keep getting better as he gets his old rhythm. I could go on and on. They are a fun group to talk about, to pour into. It's truly a blessing to be a part of this thing.

If at any point in reading this story you felt sorry for me, I hope you don't anymore. I know I don't. This season has been a blast. If you had told me when I was a little kid that I would get to be on the Baylor basketball team for four years, and for three of those years I would be a somewhat-important part of what the team did on the court, I would've taken that in a heartbeat. If you had told me that I would meet the love of my life during that whole process, I would've said it's too good to be true. I truly thank God for what He has done in my life through Baylor University.

I told you at the beginning I was going to talk about God here. Yet, even now I hesitate to write this part. You see, it's often a struggle for me to try and reconcile who I am in competition (and who I am on my worst days) with who I am called to be as a Christian. Many days, the two don't add up. Discussing faith and sports can feel awkward to some, and downright disingenuous to others. As a long-time skeptic, I understand it.

But of all the things I'm grateful to Coach Drew and his staff for, I'm easily most grateful for their being willing to discuss their faith openly and passionately with young men like me. Does anyone ever portray the Christian faith perfectly? Of course not. But the constant conversations that they've presented in our chapels during my time here put bigger questions about my life and faith into the back of my mind.

I don't know how I would've gotten through the whole process without the faith that Baylor Basketball helped contribute to. When my idol of basketball was ripped from me, I found that God had been preparing me for that struggle through this place, these people that I interact with every single day. Many days I struggle, knowing that I still fall short in so many ways. But I now know, in a way that I never did in my early years at Baylor, that there's grace through Jesus there when I do. I now know that God has a plan for my life and that His plan is so good (shout out to Coach Tang's chapel today).

When Tiger graduates in May, she and I will be moving to Salt Lake City, where she wants to go to PA (physician's assistant) school, and I hope to attend law school. We'll be married in September. I hope to get into basketball, but I understand there are no guarantees. Beyond that, my true hope is that I can spend the rest of my life serving others in a way that honors the way I was served here at Baylor.

I know I'll be forever grateful for it all. Thank you!

Jake Lindsey

Previous Champions' TriBUne Features
Softball - Nicky Dawson (Feb. 21, 2019)
Baseball - Josh Bissonette (Feb. 14, 2019)
Men's Tennis - Will Little (Jan. 31, 2019)
Men's Basketball - King McClure (Jan. 17, 2019)
Women's Basketball - Chloe Jackson (Jan. 3, 2019)
Football - Blake Blackmar (Dec. 13, 2018)
Volleyball - Braya Hunt (Nov. 29, 2018)
Soccer - Jackie Crowther (Nov. 16, 2018)
Cross Country - Alison Andrews-Paul (Nov. 8, 2018)
Football- Ira Lewis (Nov. 6, 2018)

GOD PREPARED ME FOR THE STRUGGLES AND THE JOY

Players Mentioned

Tristan Clark

Jake Lindsey

Makai Mason

Matthew Mayer

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GOD PREPARED ME FOR THE STRUGGLES AND THE JOY

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Players Mentioned

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Jake Lindsey

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Matthew Mayer

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