I'm not a doctor, but I know head trauma in sports when I see it. So when Wesley Matthews and Jason Terry knocked heads in the first quarter of Tuesday night's NBA playoff matchup between the Portland Trail Blazers and Dallas Mavericks, it sure looked like Matthews suffered a concussion. He took a shot to the temple, immediately crumpled to the ground and laid motionless near the bench for a few minutes.
Wesley Matthews, Jason Terry Collide, Leaving Matthews Knocked Out
Here’s video of the incident as a baseline for what happened (via Blazersedge).
It's important to note Nate McMillan told the TNT broadcast crew Matthews was knocked out for a moment and was out of it when trainers arrived. A few minutes later, Matthews was up and headed to the locker room. On the way there, he was lucid enough to talk smack to the fans without falling over, which was a good sign.
But one has to wonder if Matthews would be held out if it wasn’t the playoffs. With tougher concussion rules in place in most sports, being “out cold” is usually taken seriously and players are sidelined despite their own pleas to the contrary. In this case, it was not as Matthews reentered the game just minutes after being knocked out cold, according to his coach and the sideline reporter in attendance.
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