SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Conrad McRae, who collapsed and died Monday, had been advised last year to quit basketball after he suffered two blackouts while with the Denver Nuggets.
McRae, 29, died Monday while practicing with the Orlando Magic's summer league team in Irvine, Calif. Results of an autopsy were inconclusive as to the cause of death. Results of further tests were expected within four to 16 weeks.
An all-star in the European leagues, McRae returned to the United States from Turkey in April 1999 and signed a 10-day contract with the Nuggets.
On April 12, prior to his second game with the Nuggets, McRae momentarily blacked out.
"He came right back around. He was coherent. We walked him into the training room and put an EKG on him," Nuggets trainer Jimmy Gillen told Syracuse paper.
As a precautionary step, McRae was taken to a hospital for a checkup. The next day, Gillen and team doctors put McRae on a treadmill for a stress test. He started to lose consciousness again, Gillen said.
Gillen said the team's cardiologist diagnosed McRae as having ventricular tachycardia, an irregular beating of the heart. The medical staff told McRae he should quit playing basketball.
"We recommended at that time very strongly that he should retire from basketball," Gillen said. "We hoped he'd give it up, but we were concerned. The tests were so conclusive, but you could tell from the way he talked that he wasn't ready to give it up."
The Nuggets terminated McRae's contract and he returned to Europe to play for Pallacanestro Trieste in Italy. He played 30 games, averaging 11 points and 11 rebounds.
On Monday, he joined the Magic's entry in the Southern California Summer Pro League. A Magic source told the Long Beach (Calif.) Press-Telegram that McRae signed a medical waiver but refused to say why. At the end of his first practice, McRae collapsed while running sprints.
McRae, from Brooklyn, played at Syracuse from 1989 to 1993. The Washington Bullets drafted him in the second round in the 1993 draft.
Former teammate Mike Hopkins, now a Syracuse assistant, said both he and McRae had been diagnosed with irregular heartbeats during their playing careers. Hopkins and McRae were required to wear heart monitors.