Mercer, Bowen injuries

[murdoch@exo.com (Hank Murdoch)]

Gregory Odegaard wrote :

>With CBS Sportsline I almost felt I was there.
.....................[parts deleted]
>Please someone who was there let us know how badly Mercer was hurt, as he
obviously did not return after his 3rd period injury.   ........[more deleted]

It was a really scary injury to see.  Mercer took a very agressive drive to
the basket, and Popeye Jones (?) laid an arm across his head that knocked
Mercer off balance and caused him to fall to the floor under the basket.
As he fell, his head went out of site out of the camera frame, but you could
see his head bounce back up off the floor into the camera frame - I would
guess his head bounced 1 or 2 feet up off the floor.  I thought he might be
knocked out or have a concussion, but he put a hand over his face and then
pulled the hand back and looked at it as if to see if there was any blood.
At that point he looked clear eyed and alert.
But after that, he stayed on the floor for several minutes while the trainer
and others hovered over him.  He eventually left the arena with someone
helping him to walk off, so I don't know if he wasn't able to walk off by
himself, or if they were just being careful with him.
In a nice gesture, Popeye came over and appeared to say something to Mercer
as he was being helped out.
Although it was a hard foul, no one seemed to take it as a cheap shot and
there didn't seem to be any retaliations.

Then Bowen was going up for a rebound in a big crowd (both teams were
fighting hard for the ball) and someone (Slater ?) swept his arm back
clearing out for the rebound and hit Bowen in the face.  Reports during the
game said he got a broken nose.

Tough game, but looked more like what you could expect when a lot of players
are going for the ball agressively.

Hank M.