The 2017 NBA Draft pool took a shock to the system last night, as news broke that international prospect Jonathan Jeanne has been diagnosed with Marfan Syndrome. The condition is a career-threatening one, and all but ensures that Jeanne, who has been getting buzz as a potential first-round pick, will not be drafted. The 19-year old French prospect had previously wowed at the NBA Combine, and while there were plenty of reasons to be skeptical about his NBA future, it almost seemed a forgone conclusion that a team would fall in love with his athleticism and grab him at the end of the first round.
Jeanne is not the first player to be diagnosed with this disorder. Former Baylor forward Isaiah Austin was diagnosed with Marfan in the lead-up to the 2014 NBA Draft, and he only recently got clearance to return to basketball, joining FMP Beograd in Serbia in December and averaging 7.6 points and 3.8 rebounds per game. But that came after two years of extensive supervision requiring regular check-ups and limitations to his ability to perform work-outs, something that likely is in Jeanne’s future.
Marfan syndrome is a connective tissue disorder, affecting multiple body systems. It is a genetic disorder, inherited in most cases but sometimes due to a spontaneous genetic mutation. The mutation causes impairment in the body’s ability to create a protein important in giving structure to connective tissue. It occurs fairly equally in males and females, and is found in about 1 in 10,000 individuals.
Basketball is a very common sport to find people affected by Marfan Syndrome in. The disorder mostly affects skeletal development, and patients with the condition present with above-average height, long hands and fingers, and a huge wingspan. In a way, this goes a long way towards explaining Jeanne’s extreme measureables. Undiagnosed, an athlete with Marfan syndrome is almost predisposed to turning to basketball as a sport of choice. However, the condition also has some drawbacks for the sport — poor vision due to myopia, a sunken chest, weaker joints, and scoliosis of the spine, which prompted further testing in Jeanne’s case. These things create a predisposition to injury, as well as coordination issues.
However, these issues are not the primary problem. Marfan Syndrome also affects the heart, as weak connective tissue around the aorta can predispose the patient to several cardiac issues. Most commonly, this means irregularities of the valves between chambers of the heart, creating issues later in life. However, in some cases, the syndrome can cause an enlarged and weakened aorta, the part of the heart that carries blood into the rest of the body. This becomes a problem with exertional activity, such as high-level sports. This type of workload on the heart can cause a rupture of the aorta — which is deadly. If this is suspected, that gets red-flagged, and that’s why supervision and avoidance of vigorous activity is necessary — to accurately determine the risk of potential for cardiac failure with high-level sports.
Marfan Syndrome itself isn’t a disqualifier — as Austin has proven, you can come back to basketball after a diagnosis. The problem is that there’s uncertainty in severity. With a new diagnosis, it takes time to figure out what the risk is in letting a player continue to play. That’s why the diagnosis is so serious. Unfortunately, it’s a rare condition, and hard to diagnose given the constellation of symptoms that can be involved. Often, it takes something like the battery of tests that comes with the pre-draft process to correctly diagnose the problem.
Jeanne’s situation is very unfortunate. He’s likely leaving millions of dollars on the table because of a condition that ultimately hasn’t affected him to this point, and possibly never will. But because of that risk of potential cardiac problems, he needs to do the due diligence to figure out what the risk is in playing basketball. If he heads back to Europe, he will likely get a chance to play right away due to more lax health standards. However, doing so puts him at serious risk of something truly awful happening. For Jeanne, it’s not about basketball anymore. It’s about ensuring that he can even do basic exercise without his life being irreparably altered, or worse.
