That's a good question. A lot of times people wonder, "Why now? Why did it happen now? Why does this kid play basketball in junior high, high school, two years of college and now all of a sudden something happens?" The answer is partly bad luck. The wrong thing happens at the wrong time, starting off a rhythm disturbance which is now not recoverable. As I said before, athletes change as they go through high school and college and some of these inherited cardiac abnormalities don't really surface, don't really manifest themselves until certain things happen as the cardiac system ... And a lot of times it's the electrical system in the heart that matures to a point where now it's an issue.
You take a guy like Pete Maravich, who died playing pick-up basketball after a long, relatively storied career in high school, college and the pros. And he dies playing pick-up basketball because he had a fairly rare cardiac abnormality, congenital cardiac abnormality and just, things went wrong at the wrong time and then it happens.
Probably if you looked back in depth at their history, there was some evidence somewhere that wasn't quite right. Not that anybody would ever think of it at the time that that was something that needed to be done, and if you'd went and chased every little thing, you'd have nobody playing anything. But it just happens. The maturity or the degeneration, if you will, of the cardiac electrical system or just bad luck and bad timing.
