MANHATTAN (CN) — When every second mattered, a rising basketball star received no life-saving intervention after his heart suddenly stopped in the final minute of the last game of the season. Two months after Zeke Upshaw’s tragic passing, the mother of the late 26-year-old now wants a federal judge to hold the NBA liable.
Zeke played in Michigan, and his mother lives in Nevada, but Jewel Upshaw filed her suit in New York on Wednesday because the NBA has its headquarters there. Neither the NBA nor the Detroit Pistons have returned requests for comment.
Represented by the firm Hilliard Martinez, in Corpus Christie, Texas, Upshaw accuses the league of failing to address decades of documentation about the risk of young NBA stars dying suddenly from cardiac events.
“The NBA’s policy is startlingly poor, and its every day preparation and enforcement during the long basketball season, at every level of team play, for every single team and every individual player is dangerous, life-threatening, haphazard and inconsistent,” the complaint states.
Before collapsing on the court, Zeke had played two seasons with the Grand Rapids Drive, a G-league development team for the Pistons.
Upshaw says it was her son’s best season to date, and that the Pistons general manager had suggested to Zeke’s agent that they might move him up to the Pistons in the spring.
“Unfortunately, spring never came for Zeke,” the complaint states.
In painful detail, Upshaw’s 20-page complaint recounts the point guard’s final moments on March 24 at the DeltaPlex Arena:
“He laid where he fell, unmoving, face-down on the court. His arms were twisted in the awkward, unnatural position as occurs when the limbs of an unconscious person fall with the body to the ground. No movement was seen during the fall by the arms or hands to protect or break the fall – indeed, no movement can be seen from that point forward. Zeke’s heart had stopped.”
Though the Illinois State grad was dead in that moment, his mother says the immediate start of emergency lifesaving treatment could have saved him.
“Zeke Upshaw, improperly attended, was left to lie unconscious on the hardwood, in his team’s full uniform, slowly dying as his otherwise healthy heart sat, unbeating in his chest,” the complaint states. “A heart that likely only needed a compression series, or a charged delivery from a defibrillator, to begin to pound again and to pump blood and life back into Zeke Upshaw. However, according to witnesses, no one ever attempted to revive him.” (Emphasis in original.)
Upshaw notes that video of the game fully documents the league’s inaction, even capturing the fans who frantically attempted to speed up slow-moving personnel.