Nets assistant coach and advance scout Jim Sann collapsed and suffered a heart attack during the team’s practice on Sunday afternoon and was revived by the team’s training staff, according to a report from Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports:
“I was on my way out,” Sann said by phone Tuesday afternoon from his bed in a Northern New Jersey hospital. “I was gone.”
Sann is a fit, trim 46 years old, the father of a 9-year-old boy and 7-year-old girl who lost their mother to cancer three years ago. And of all places that Sann could’ve gone into cardiac arrest on Sunday, he had been blessed with good timing, good fortune and the presence of one of the best trainers in the NBA: the Nets’ Tim Walsh.
Between CPR and a defibrillator, Walsh and his training staff brought Sann back to life. Sann awoke on his back unsure what had happened, only to see the trainers and coaches standing over him, and, yes, perhaps the surest sign he had returned to the living: “Kevin Garnett was yelling,” Sann said.
Sann, was attending his first practice back with the team in weeks, according to the report, and had it happened in a hotel room on the road, could’ve faced a much scarier result.
It’s been a big month for Tim Walsh’s talents: the Nets trainer also recommended Mirza Teletovic stay back at a Los Angeles hospital for further testing after being hospitalized for shortness of breath. Doctors found blood clots in Teletovic’s lungs, and he could have died had he taken the plane home with the team. Walsh also won the Joe O’Toole Athletic Trainer of the Year Award for the 2013-14 season.
Yahoo! Sports — Nets assistant Jim Sann lost his wife to cancer – and nearly his own life to a heart attack at practice
