a major health scare a year ago<\/a> left him immobile and near death, a fight back from an infection that came at the cost of two amputated toes and working this past season at Kaseya Center in a motorized wheelchair.<\/p>\n\u201cA year ago,\u201d he says, \u201cit was kind of in the back of my mind that I wanted to be able to get back into some form of walking and traveling in a year. And May 6th was a year.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Elisburg, events such as the combine had been his normal for decades, as had Heat road games.<\/p>\n
This season, the singular focus away from the arena was on rehab, now back on his feet enough for short walks and somewhat remarkable strides in his recovery, considering where he stood a year ago.<\/p>\n
Where the combine typically would have been a week of meetings, evaluations, interviews, fraternizing, this trip will be shorter for Elisburg.<\/p>\n
For good reason.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to miss that much therapy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
A year ago, Elisburg was transported to Kaseya Center on draft night in an ambulance, taken through the building in a gurney, an eight-person medical team at his side as he worked the night in the team\u2019s war room.<\/p>\n
In the intervening months, he became his typical courtside presence at practices and games.<\/p>\n
But at the combine, he is back in his element, including a meeting of fellow general managers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt meant as much for them as it did for me, that, you know, they can see you and touch you and just like, \u2018You\u2019re OK,’\u201d he said, \u201cas opposed to just sort of hearing it or looking at a picture and you\u2019re not quite sure until you see.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd so there\u2019s that, there\u2019s that notion of being able to kind of be out and then just be able to participate in a meeting, and it\u2019s like, it\u2019s like any other meeting.\u201d<\/p>\n
So normalcy, but, quite literally, miles still to go.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m able to walk. I\u2019m able to walk with a cane for smaller walks and having to build back my endurance for longer walking,\u201d he said, eschewing his motorized wheelchair for something more portable for this trip. \u201cBut there\u2019s a lot more, I\u2019ve been working on the form of walking, not just getting from Point A to Point B as fast as I can. It\u2019s how are you walking, walking properly, and all the education that goes into that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then he pauses for a phrase that makes abundantly apparent all the time still spent around Pat Riley and Erik Spoelstra. \u201cIt\u2019s still that sort of 1% better every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot that has happened that allowed me to get to this point in time,\u201d he said of this Chicago trip. \u201cBecause otherwise I wouldn\u2019t have been able to come if I didn\u2019t have as much improvement as I had.\u201d<\/p>\n
So, yes, he again will be at the team\u2019s draft headquarters next month, this time without a curfew to return to a hospital room, for months back in a Miami condo.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019ll still be all the draft preparation, we\u2019ll see what free agency brings and what we\u2019re doing from that perspective. I want to go to summer league,\u201d he said<\/p>\n
But it likely will be another year away from summer league, as the recovery process remains ongoing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m kind of looking to July to get a knee replacement, which I needed before any of this happened,\u201d he said. \u201cThis\u00a0 just accentuated what was already needed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Through it all, the commitment to work remained ongoing. But there also was a lesson about commitment to self, as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy next thing of where I want to travel to is to get back to New York for some theater,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s about doing the normalcy. I came here to Chicago. Next? Go to the theater.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIAMI \u2014 As Andy Elisburg speaks from Chicago, the moment is not lost on the Miami Heat general…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269093,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[114,123,125,2490,124,2295,110],"class_list":["post-269092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-latest-headlines","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-heat","tag-miami-news","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}