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來源：https://yhoo.it/3vJ3omt

原文參考（付費完整版）：https://bit.ly/3fGkJXO


作者：Liz Roscher

原文＋翻譯：

It was a stunner when 35-year-old LaMarcus Aldridge announced his retirement
in April after a 15-year career. He'd been playing great basketball and was
part of a Brooklyn Nets team that was destined to make waves in the playoffs.



With all that in his favor, it wasn't a decision he reached lightly. Aldridge
played his entire career with Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, a heart
condition that can cause a rapid or irregular heartbeat. He'd had it under
control for years, but as he told The Athletic's Shams Charania in his first
post-retirement interview, one tough game followed by a very scary night
changed his entire perspective on continuing to play.




'Scariest night ever'
「最可怕的夜晚」

Aldridge had only been with the Nets a few weeks when he had a heart
incident. He had signed with them on March 28 after reaching a buyout
agreement with the San Antonio Spurs, where he'd played since 2015. He'd play
just five games for the Nets, and the game on April 10, which would end up
being his last NBA game, is when he experienced an irregular heartbeat he
just couldn't shake.



"I had irregular rhythm the whole game, and I hadn’t experienced that
before," Aldridge told Charania. "Normally when I get on the court, my case
study is that I would go into regular rhythm as I got my heart rate up. It
had never been out of rhythm in a game and then it was out of rhythm for the
Lakers game and I was just off and couldn’t get no energy. I just couldn’t
get myself going. I couldn’t figure out what was going on."



Aldridge told Charania that normally, when his heart rate goes up, his
heartbeat returns to normal. So he tried multiple things to get excited and
hyped up about the game, including repeatedly crashing shoulder-to-shoulder
with assistant coach Ime Udoka. Nothing worked, and when he got back to his
hotel room, his heart rate didn't improve.



"It was still off after the game, but at like two, three in the morning, it
got really, really crazy. My heart was beating really crazy, and that’s when
it got really bad for me. From two to five in the morning, I was just trying
to evoke some breathing and then around 5:30 or so, I texted the team doctor
and I went to the hospital. It was probably the scariest night ever."



His heart had started to return to normal by the time he got to the hospital,
but the experience had changed the way he felt about continuing to play. He
decided that the risks were too great.

當他到了醫院的那一刻，心跳已經恢復正常，但這段經歷導致他對於是否繼續上場打球的
看法改觀。他認定，假如繼續下去，風險會過大。

"I can be in rhythm one second and out of rhythm the next second. No one can
pinpoint when it can happen. It’s very unpredictable, and I didn’t want to
keep playing and feeling the way I felt that night anymore and risk … no one
knows for 100 percent if you can have something bad happen. My first time in
2006, I blacked out on the bench. That’s when we first found out that I had
this condition. So what if I’m on the court and a big guy is coming down the
lane, my heart is beating funny, and then I black out? He runs into me, and I
can hurt my head on the floor. I can be paralyzed. What if I’m going for a
dunk and I black out? There’s so many things that can happen in a bad way."



Dealing with his new reality
面對新的現實

Aldridge made the decision to retire in the span of a few days, but dealing
with the aftermath of that decision has been hard. He told Charania that he's
struggling to figure out who he is now that he's no longer an NBA player.

在短短數天內，AGG 決定退役，不過要解決該結果所產生的後遺症，實在很麻煩。在訪問
中，AGG 表示正努力分辨清楚他如今不再是球員時的身份。

“I’ve been depressed, and I’m trying to figure out how to navigate through
not competing on the floor, learning not to be depressed,” Aldridge told The
Athletic. “I still love basketball. I still feel like I have a lot to give.
But even now, I’m still trying to find myself. When you go from doing
something you love for so long and you lose it overnight, it’s a shock. Even
though I knew it was the right decision, those next couple days there was a
lot of back and forth with my family, my agent, with the Nets, and they
definitely supported me either way."



What made everything more difficult was how at home he felt on the Nets.
Aldridge said that he embraced the team and they embraced him right back,
giving him the "cohesiveness that I had wanted for a while in a group." Not
being on the team and having to watch them in the playoffs has been the
hardest part of retirement for Aldridge.



"That was the hardest part. Being in a position to get to the Finals and have
an opportunity to be on that stage and be a part of history and make my mark.
I had never been to the Finals. I’ve been to the West Conference finals, but
not the actual NBA Finals. So it was a chance for me to make that next step,
a chance for me to add to my legacy and see what it feels like. I’ve always
prided myself on embracing moments and trying to grow and learn from every
moment. I wanted to get there and see what it’s like, help those guys win
and be a part of the journey. And then if we got there, hopefully we would go
back two or three more times. So that was definitely the hardest part for me."





短評：

這沮喪的感覺，似乎難以言語吧……

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