Nice article about Jim Nairus in the Telegram....
Feb 18, 2020 8:07:34 GMT -5
rgs318, Non Alum Dave, and 1 more like this
Post by HCFC45 on Feb 18, 2020 8:07:34 GMT -5
Bill Doyle
Telegram & Gazette Staff
Posted Feb 17, 2020 at 11:09 PM
Updated Feb 17, 2020 at 11:09 PM
As is the case with a lot of former basketball players, Jim Nairus needs a knee replacement, but the College of the Holy Cross Athletic Hall of Famer is putting off the surgery for as long as he can.
“When you have a hip replacement, it feels like a normal hip,” he said. “When you have a knee replacement done, it has a mechanical feel to it. It doesn’t feel like a normal knee. The people who feel that the most are younger patients. Hip replacements, you can run and jump on them afterward. Knee replacements don’t feel right running or jumping. They also don’t do as well, and in general they don’t last as long as hip replacements do.”
He certainly knows what he’s talking about. He’s an orthopedic surgeon at New England Baptist Hospital in Boston and performs 600 to 700 knee and hip replacements a year, as well as other types of knee surgeries. Boston Magazine regularly names him one of Boston’s top orthopedic surgeons.
Nairus, 51, urges his patients not to rush into knee replacement surgery.
“I use myself as an example,” he said. “I say, ‘Look, I need one, and I do them all the time. If you can wait and put it off, I’d try to do that.’ ”
The 6-foot-10 Nairus tore his anterior cruciate ligament before his sophomore year at Holy Cross, but kept playing by wearing a brace on his right knee. He started for three years and as a senior in 1990-91 he led the Crusaders in scoring (18.4 ppg) and rebounding (7.8 rpg) during their first year in the Patriot League. He was also named first-team All-Patriot League and to the Patriot League All-Tournament team. His career scoring total is easy to remember, 1,234 points, and he ranks second in school history in career 3-point shooting (48.1%, 116 of 241).
Nairus was named to the Academic All-American second team as a junior and first team as a senior. He was also the first Patriot League Scholar-Athlete of the Year and the 1991 Crusader of the Year.
After graduation, he planned to play professional basketball in Europe, but he failed the physical exam because of his knee. So he underwent knee surgery — but not knee replacement surgery — and he credits Holy Cross pre-med adviser Mike McGrath with helping him get into medical school. Because he expected to play basketball in Europe, he hadn’t applied to medical schools before he flunked his physical. McGrath, however, arranged late interviews for him at the University of Cincinnati and Case Western Reserve University in his hometown of Cleveland. He got into both and chose Cincinnati.
He even considered playing overseas after medical school, but decided against it.
“I kind of regret that, not having that experience,” he admitted, “but when you’re in medical school you just don’t have the time to keep your basketball skills up, so that was it for me.”
After medical school, he returned to Worcester for his residency at UMass Memorial Medical Center. He also spent a year learning joint replacements at New England Baptist Hospital. Then he returned to UMass Memorial in 2001 before rejoining New England Baptist in 2008.
His wife, Deb, is an emergency room physician at Emerson Hospital, in her hometown of Concord. The two met when Jim was an intern and she was a medical student at UMass.
Because of his knee, Nairus hasn’t played basketball in a decade. When he worked at UMass and lived in Bolton, he belonged to the Worcester Country Club with several other Holy Cross graduates. Eight years ago, his family moved to Concord and he joined the Concord Country Club, but the golf course prohibits carts so he doesn’t play often.
Nairus said his co-workers at New England Baptist make fun of him because a large percentage of his patients come from the Worcester area. On Fridays, he sees patients at the Whittier Rehabilitation Hospital in Westboro.
Five years ago, Nairus performed a total right knee replacement on Holy Cross all-time leading scorer Ron Perry Jr., and last November he repaired a torn quadriceps tendon above his left knee.
Perry’s left knee was in pain after he tripped on the stairs at home, so he immediately called Nairus. The doctor called back an hour later, after he had finished surgery for the day, and brought an immobilizer from New England Baptist to Perry’s home in Quincy that night. Then he scheduled surgery for him the following week.
Perry, who is a partner with the commercial real estate firm Avison Young in Boston, said both of his knees feel fine. So he would know better than anyone if Nairus is a better doctor than he was a basketball player.
“He got to the top of the collegiate game at hoop,” the 61-year-old Perry said, “and he’s basically transferred that same mentality to the surgical world. I feel he’s at the very, very top of his game as it relates to being one of the very best surgeons in our area, which says a lot, because this is the mecca for that kind of work.”
Nairus is a modest person, who insists he would never call himself a great basketball player or a great surgeon. But he does believe in working hard.
“I knew that I was given the gift of height,” he said, “but I did not want my height to be the only thing that made me a good basketball player, and that is why I spent countless hours practicing shooting and was able to be a good 3-point shooter as a very tall person before that was commonplace. In orthopedics, I spend a tremendous amount of time with my patients in the office and in the operating room and do not rush through things, in order to be the best orthopedic surgeon that I can be. Whether it was in basketball or as an orthopedic surgeon I am never satisfied and always trying to get better.”
At 6-10, Nairus is not only the tallest doctor at New England Baptist Hospital, he’s taller than most Boston Celtics, who receive medical care at the hospital. He doesn’t see any Celtics as patients, but he occasionally runs into them and they seem surprised to see such a tall doctor.
Nairus was 6-foot-8 in high school, but grew 2 inches the summer before his freshman year of college, and he thinks he grew even more as a person at Holy Cross. He hopes his 17-year-old daughter, Callie, a senior at Concord-Carlisle, decides to go to Holy Cross in the fall. Nairus took his daughter to the other colleges she’s considering attending, Georgetown, Fordham and Santa Clara, but he saved Holy Cross for last.
Callie had attended Billy Gibbons’ basketball camps at Holy Cross, but she hadn’t seen much of the campus.
“Holy Cross was so good to me,” he said, “and I owe Holy Cross so much. I would just like her to get the same experience. I’ve had a hard time this past year because I’ve been trying to find the right balance of pushing her to go there and not pushing too hard.”
College is a ways off for his son, Connor, 13, a seventh-grader who plays basketball and baseball.
The Holy Cross game that stands out to Nairus the most is the one during his junior year when he scored 28 points at the Hart Center in an 84-81 loss to LaSalle to match the point total of rival Lionel Simmons. The LaSalle star won both the Naismith Award and the John. R. Wooden Award as the nation’s top college player and was drafted No. 7 overall by Sacramento.
Nairus’ father recently gave him a VHS copy of the broadcast of that game, for which Tom Heinsohn provided color commentary, and he plans to convert it to Blu-ray or CD so his son can watch it.
Nairus also remembers his final Holy Cross game, an overtime loss at home to Fordham for the Patriot League title. He thought he took a charge early in OT, but he was called for a block and he fouled out. So his career ended on the bench.
His father coached him while he grew up and played him at point guard to learn to shoot and handle the ball. His high school coach took one look at his height and told him to stay near the basket. Nairus remembers his coach getting upset and benching him after he made a 3-pointer because he had strayed from the basket.
Holy Cross assistant coach Ed Reilly, now the Worcester Academy athletic director, was at the game recruiting and Nairus had to explain the reason for his benching.
Holy Cross coach George Blaney had no problem allowing him to shoot 3-pointers, and he made nearly half of his college attempts.
Nairus said he feels indebted to McGrath, Blaney and former Holy Cross assistant coach Greg Herenda, who coached Fairleigh Dickinson to its first NCAA Tournament victory last season.
Opposing fans poked fun of Nairus in high school for being so tall and skinny, so he was accustomed to the razzing when he entered college. During a game his freshman year at the Hart Center, however, he was surprised to hear a Holy Cross fan zing him. He was called for a foul and the referee shouted to the scorer, “Foul on No. 33 with the body,” indicating he had bumped his opponent with his body. But a Holy Cross fan yelled, “With the body? He doesn’t have a body.”
“I turned beet red,” he said. “I was so embarrassed.”
But Nairus has learned to laugh at that comment.
Holy Cross left the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference to join the Patriot League for Nairus’ senior year.
“At the time, I thought it was a mistake to go into the Patriot League,” Nairus said, “because it was a non-scholarship league and longer bus rides and everything, but then as time has gone on, since pressure was put on by a lot of Holy Cross alumni to get all the schools to offer scholarships, it’s a much better league now.”
Nairus usually attends five or six home Holy Cross games a year, but he’s been to only one this disappointing season.
Telegram & Gazette Staff
Posted Feb 17, 2020 at 11:09 PM
Updated Feb 17, 2020 at 11:09 PM
As is the case with a lot of former basketball players, Jim Nairus needs a knee replacement, but the College of the Holy Cross Athletic Hall of Famer is putting off the surgery for as long as he can.
“When you have a hip replacement, it feels like a normal hip,” he said. “When you have a knee replacement done, it has a mechanical feel to it. It doesn’t feel like a normal knee. The people who feel that the most are younger patients. Hip replacements, you can run and jump on them afterward. Knee replacements don’t feel right running or jumping. They also don’t do as well, and in general they don’t last as long as hip replacements do.”
He certainly knows what he’s talking about. He’s an orthopedic surgeon at New England Baptist Hospital in Boston and performs 600 to 700 knee and hip replacements a year, as well as other types of knee surgeries. Boston Magazine regularly names him one of Boston’s top orthopedic surgeons.
Nairus, 51, urges his patients not to rush into knee replacement surgery.
“I use myself as an example,” he said. “I say, ‘Look, I need one, and I do them all the time. If you can wait and put it off, I’d try to do that.’ ”
The 6-foot-10 Nairus tore his anterior cruciate ligament before his sophomore year at Holy Cross, but kept playing by wearing a brace on his right knee. He started for three years and as a senior in 1990-91 he led the Crusaders in scoring (18.4 ppg) and rebounding (7.8 rpg) during their first year in the Patriot League. He was also named first-team All-Patriot League and to the Patriot League All-Tournament team. His career scoring total is easy to remember, 1,234 points, and he ranks second in school history in career 3-point shooting (48.1%, 116 of 241).
Nairus was named to the Academic All-American second team as a junior and first team as a senior. He was also the first Patriot League Scholar-Athlete of the Year and the 1991 Crusader of the Year.
After graduation, he planned to play professional basketball in Europe, but he failed the physical exam because of his knee. So he underwent knee surgery — but not knee replacement surgery — and he credits Holy Cross pre-med adviser Mike McGrath with helping him get into medical school. Because he expected to play basketball in Europe, he hadn’t applied to medical schools before he flunked his physical. McGrath, however, arranged late interviews for him at the University of Cincinnati and Case Western Reserve University in his hometown of Cleveland. He got into both and chose Cincinnati.
He even considered playing overseas after medical school, but decided against it.
“I kind of regret that, not having that experience,” he admitted, “but when you’re in medical school you just don’t have the time to keep your basketball skills up, so that was it for me.”
After medical school, he returned to Worcester for his residency at UMass Memorial Medical Center. He also spent a year learning joint replacements at New England Baptist Hospital. Then he returned to UMass Memorial in 2001 before rejoining New England Baptist in 2008.
His wife, Deb, is an emergency room physician at Emerson Hospital, in her hometown of Concord. The two met when Jim was an intern and she was a medical student at UMass.
Because of his knee, Nairus hasn’t played basketball in a decade. When he worked at UMass and lived in Bolton, he belonged to the Worcester Country Club with several other Holy Cross graduates. Eight years ago, his family moved to Concord and he joined the Concord Country Club, but the golf course prohibits carts so he doesn’t play often.
Nairus said his co-workers at New England Baptist make fun of him because a large percentage of his patients come from the Worcester area. On Fridays, he sees patients at the Whittier Rehabilitation Hospital in Westboro.
Five years ago, Nairus performed a total right knee replacement on Holy Cross all-time leading scorer Ron Perry Jr., and last November he repaired a torn quadriceps tendon above his left knee.
Perry’s left knee was in pain after he tripped on the stairs at home, so he immediately called Nairus. The doctor called back an hour later, after he had finished surgery for the day, and brought an immobilizer from New England Baptist to Perry’s home in Quincy that night. Then he scheduled surgery for him the following week.
Perry, who is a partner with the commercial real estate firm Avison Young in Boston, said both of his knees feel fine. So he would know better than anyone if Nairus is a better doctor than he was a basketball player.
“He got to the top of the collegiate game at hoop,” the 61-year-old Perry said, “and he’s basically transferred that same mentality to the surgical world. I feel he’s at the very, very top of his game as it relates to being one of the very best surgeons in our area, which says a lot, because this is the mecca for that kind of work.”
Nairus is a modest person, who insists he would never call himself a great basketball player or a great surgeon. But he does believe in working hard.
“I knew that I was given the gift of height,” he said, “but I did not want my height to be the only thing that made me a good basketball player, and that is why I spent countless hours practicing shooting and was able to be a good 3-point shooter as a very tall person before that was commonplace. In orthopedics, I spend a tremendous amount of time with my patients in the office and in the operating room and do not rush through things, in order to be the best orthopedic surgeon that I can be. Whether it was in basketball or as an orthopedic surgeon I am never satisfied and always trying to get better.”
At 6-10, Nairus is not only the tallest doctor at New England Baptist Hospital, he’s taller than most Boston Celtics, who receive medical care at the hospital. He doesn’t see any Celtics as patients, but he occasionally runs into them and they seem surprised to see such a tall doctor.
Nairus was 6-foot-8 in high school, but grew 2 inches the summer before his freshman year of college, and he thinks he grew even more as a person at Holy Cross. He hopes his 17-year-old daughter, Callie, a senior at Concord-Carlisle, decides to go to Holy Cross in the fall. Nairus took his daughter to the other colleges she’s considering attending, Georgetown, Fordham and Santa Clara, but he saved Holy Cross for last.
Callie had attended Billy Gibbons’ basketball camps at Holy Cross, but she hadn’t seen much of the campus.
“Holy Cross was so good to me,” he said, “and I owe Holy Cross so much. I would just like her to get the same experience. I’ve had a hard time this past year because I’ve been trying to find the right balance of pushing her to go there and not pushing too hard.”
College is a ways off for his son, Connor, 13, a seventh-grader who plays basketball and baseball.
The Holy Cross game that stands out to Nairus the most is the one during his junior year when he scored 28 points at the Hart Center in an 84-81 loss to LaSalle to match the point total of rival Lionel Simmons. The LaSalle star won both the Naismith Award and the John. R. Wooden Award as the nation’s top college player and was drafted No. 7 overall by Sacramento.
Nairus’ father recently gave him a VHS copy of the broadcast of that game, for which Tom Heinsohn provided color commentary, and he plans to convert it to Blu-ray or CD so his son can watch it.
Nairus also remembers his final Holy Cross game, an overtime loss at home to Fordham for the Patriot League title. He thought he took a charge early in OT, but he was called for a block and he fouled out. So his career ended on the bench.
His father coached him while he grew up and played him at point guard to learn to shoot and handle the ball. His high school coach took one look at his height and told him to stay near the basket. Nairus remembers his coach getting upset and benching him after he made a 3-pointer because he had strayed from the basket.
Holy Cross assistant coach Ed Reilly, now the Worcester Academy athletic director, was at the game recruiting and Nairus had to explain the reason for his benching.
Holy Cross coach George Blaney had no problem allowing him to shoot 3-pointers, and he made nearly half of his college attempts.
Nairus said he feels indebted to McGrath, Blaney and former Holy Cross assistant coach Greg Herenda, who coached Fairleigh Dickinson to its first NCAA Tournament victory last season.
Opposing fans poked fun of Nairus in high school for being so tall and skinny, so he was accustomed to the razzing when he entered college. During a game his freshman year at the Hart Center, however, he was surprised to hear a Holy Cross fan zing him. He was called for a foul and the referee shouted to the scorer, “Foul on No. 33 with the body,” indicating he had bumped his opponent with his body. But a Holy Cross fan yelled, “With the body? He doesn’t have a body.”
“I turned beet red,” he said. “I was so embarrassed.”
But Nairus has learned to laugh at that comment.
Holy Cross left the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference to join the Patriot League for Nairus’ senior year.
“At the time, I thought it was a mistake to go into the Patriot League,” Nairus said, “because it was a non-scholarship league and longer bus rides and everything, but then as time has gone on, since pressure was put on by a lot of Holy Cross alumni to get all the schools to offer scholarships, it’s a much better league now.”
Nairus usually attends five or six home Holy Cross games a year, but he’s been to only one this disappointing season.
