Rush's heart aches while his knee heals

“I don’t look in the past at all. I just look at the future and what’s ahead of us here at KU.”
| Brandon Rush

LAWRENCE | The good news is that Brandon Rush’s injured right knee doesn’t hurt anymore. His heart is another matter.

Seven weeks after undergoing surgery to repair his torn anterior cruciate ligament, Brandon Rush’s pain resides deep in his gut. Call him bitter, scorned, whatever, but Brandon Rush simply cannot stomach watching the game he loves. Not on television. Not on campus. Not even in his hometown of Kansas City, where his Kansas teammates are playing in a summer pro-am league.

“I can’t sit down and watch a basketball game right now,” said Brandon Rush, a KU junior guard. “I’m not depressed. I just can’t watch it.”

Oddly enough, Brandon Rush lifted his basketball boycott for last month’s NBA draft. He couldn’t resist the temptation. After all, it was on that stage in Madison Square Garden where Brandon Rush saw himself before everything changed on a late May evening in a Kansas City gym.

Instead, Brandon Rush was relegated to the couch on draft night, watching players he deems to be on or below his talent level slap on those new lids with the NBA logos. It was hard to watch, but it seems to have been cathartic. On Thursday, Brandon Rush analyzed the draft that wasn’t with the candor of a young ESPN talking head.

“I watched the whole thing,” Brandon Rush said. “I was pretty surprised by some of the picks. Mike Conley definitely caught my eye. I didn’t think he was going to go that high. Al Thornton, I didn’t think he was going to go that high either. Rodney Stuckey, that was a surprise pick for me.”

Don’t get him started on the Boston College duo of Jared Dudley and Sean Williams. Brandon Rush couldn’t believe the Nets took a chance on Williams, who had been dismissed from the Eagles last season after failing multiple drug tests, at pick No. 17.

“It was just a crazy draft to watch,” Brandon Rush said. “I just have to look at it like that’s going to be me next year, I hope.”

Brandon Rush has had no choice but to cling to that hope since tearing his ACL. It happened only days before the NBA pre-draft camp in Orlando, which would have been Brandon Rush’s showcase event for NBA scouts. He went up for a dunk, came down on his leg wrong and suddenly he was back in Lawrence getting an MRI. He didn’t think it was serious, but the test revealed otherwise.

“I was scared,” Brandon Rush said.

Brandon Rush hadn’t been injured since he broke his arm as a 10-year-old. But that was back when he was only little brother Brandon Rush, when basketball didn’t mean what it does now. Brandon Rush, of course, had no choice but to have surgery and return to KU for his junior season, putting his long-awaited payday on hold for another year.

“This pretty much changed everything,” Brandon Rush said.

Brandon Rush, feeling down in the immediate days after, said he looked to the words his grandmother always said: Things happen for a reason. Brandon Rush repeated the phrase several times on Thursday.

“I don’t look in the past at all,” Brandon Rush said. “I just look at the future and what’s ahead of us here at KU.”

What’s ahead for Brandon Rush is more of the same. Rehab three times a day, weights and hours on the bike. At the 12-week mark, Brandon Rush is scheduled to begin running and jumping. He says he’s a bit ahead of schedule, but still mentioned Dec. 1 — six months after surgery — as a possible return date. Brandon Rush says he will not come back to the floor for the Jayhawks until he’s 100 percent.

“I’m praying and hoping,” Brandon Rush said, “that I come back better than I was last year and the year before that.”

Like most college students, if Brandon Rush could have his way, he’d never have to take a class again. But that’s not the case anymore.

“I definitely don’t want to go to school again,” Brandon Rush said, “but I have to. I have no choice.”

Brandon Rush’s life is quite a contrast to that of Julian Wright, Brandon Rush’s former KU teammate and the No. 13 overall pick to the New Orleans Hornets. Wright has already bought two homes in New Orleans, one for himself and one for his mother.