Jake Lindsey, the son of Utah Jazz GM Dennis Lindsey has been forced to call it a career due to a rare medical condition.
The Utah Jazz and the Baylor Bears feel intrinsically linked on and off the hardwood these days; almost like separate branches of the same basketball family. After all, GM Dennis Lindsey, big man Ekpe Udoh and swingman Royce O’Neale all found their way from Waco, Texas to Salt Lake City, Utah to ply their trade for the Jazz.
On Monday, another member of both sides of that family made a major announcement about his basketball future.
Jake Lindsey, the Jazz GM’s son and a key player in multiple NCAA tournament runs for Baylor, has decided to call it a career. The 22-year-old, who has been affected by the rare medical condition Parsonage-Turner syndrome, announced his retirement and discussed his diagnosis on BaylorBears.com’s Champions’ TriBUne.
Wrote Lindsey —
"I have some unfortunate news: I’ve played my last game in a Baylor uniform.I don’t mean to seem dramatic, but it took me a long while to be able to write that sentence, and much longer than that to come to grips with it. Getting to be on the Baylor men’s basketball team is truly a childhood dream that I’ve been blessed enough to live out every day for the last four years."
Lindsey had already ruled out playing for the Bears in 2018-19 after undergoing hip surgery last summer. The plan was to return to Baylor next season as a medical redshirt, but in the days and weeks following his surgery, it became clear that something was amiss.
Literature at the US NIH National Library of Medicine defines Parsonage-Turner Syndrome (PTS) as “a rare disorder consisting of a complex constellation of symptoms with abrupt onset of shoulder pain, usually unilaterally, followed by progressive neurologic deficits of motor weakness, dysesthesias, and numbness.”
In Lindsey’s case, two of his four main shoulder muscles have essentially died.
Nevertheless, the 6-foot-5, 200-pound guard is staying positive and forging ahead with his life. He plans to get married in September and hopes to attend law school in Salt Lake. A future in the sport he starred in as a player also remains a possibility.
In his final season at Baylor, the 2017-18 campaign, Lindsey started in 14 of 35 games and averaged nearly eight points and six assists per 40 minutes. He also finished in the Big 12 Conference’s top 10 in assists per game (3.4), assist percentage (23.6) and steal percentage (2.7).
His most memorable collegiate performance may have come against the Kansas Jayhawks that same year. Lindsey scored 11 points on 4-of-8 shooting in the contest to lead his squad to an 80-64 win over the nation’s 10th-ranked team. It was Baylor’s first win over KU in five years.
The previous year, he scored 16 points on 6-of-7 shooting in a road win over Texas. And as a freshman, he famously shut down Iowa State star and future Jazzman Georges Niang in crunch time to help the Bears best the 13th-ranked Cyclones.
Lindsey was also one of the more heralded prep players to come out of Utah in the last five years. After his father joined the Jazz, he enjoyed three successful season under coach Matt Barnes at Olympus High School. He was a perennial all-state player and earned region MVP honors as senior, averaging 24 points, nine boards, six assists and two steals per game.