Off the Dribble: Knicks' Walsh to Have Surgery

8:53 p.m. | Updated
Donnie Walsh, the Knicks’ president, said he would have hip-replacement surgery next week and would return to the team as quickly as possible. Walsh, 69, has relied first on a wheelchair and then a walker since undergoing neck surgery in June to remove bone spurs.

The hip procedure, Walsh said, would allow him to walk without the use of the walker or a cane. He said he made the decision after consulting with multiple doctors.

“They both said, ‘Your legs are strong, your neck is healed, your balance is fine,’ ” Walsh said Wednesday before the Knicks played the Golden State Warriors. “When you disrupt your spinal cord and lose your bearings, you have to learn how to walk again. I’ve gotten through a lot. My legs are much stronger. I can walk down steps if I’m holding on to a wall but if I don’t have a cane or something. But if I’m walking alone and I have to dip, it throws me off balance.”

Although he will still need a cane immediately after the procedure — which is typical — Walsh said he expected to return to the team a few days after the operation, although that may be an overly optimistic timetable. He also reiterated that he had no intention of retiring any time soon.

Walsh also disclosed that he fell during the spring, before having neck surgery, while he was scouting in Europe. In 2008, Walsh had surgery to remove cancerous growths from his tongue.

Walsh is in the final season of his contract, and the Knicks have not yet picked up his option for 2011-12. Meanwhile, Isiah Thomas has increasingly spoken about his desire to return to his former job as a Knicks executive. Just last week, he told ESPN that there was not a day in the week in which he does not think about eventually replacing Walsh.

Whether the various physical challenges Walsh has recently faced will have any impact on Thomas’s chances of returning remains to be seen.

View the original article here

Read More

Did Norway suspect have surgery to look more Aryan?

Anders Behring Breivik, the 32-year-old Norwegian man who admitted killing 77 people in a bomb attack and shooting rampage, likely had work done to alter his appearance, an intelligence official suggested.

Janne Kristiansen, head of the Norwegian Police Security Service, told The Sunday Times of London that Breivik's facial structure likely was not natural.

"You do not have that Aryan look naturally in Norway," Kristiansen explained. "Hitler would have had him on posters. He has the perfect, classic Aryan face. He must have had a facelift."

Breivik, who denounced multiculturalism in his online manifesto, claims he carried out the attacks as part of a network of modern-day crusaders — the Knights Templar — to launch a revolution against a Europe spoiled by Muslim immigration, and that there are other cells ready to strike.

Story: Norway suspect's manifesto reveals delusion

According to a report in Britain's Daily Telegraph, Breivik bragged about having plastic surgery 10 years ago to a former school friend.

"I remember we were at a party," Breivik's ex-friend reportedly told the newspaper, "and he told me he had had his nose and chin operated on by a plastic surgeon in America. It was a bit weird, but he was hanging around at that time with a group of people obsessed by their bodies."

Reports of the surgery are emerging as more details of Breivik's life — and his plot — come to light.

According to the Associated Press , Breivik wrote that in his early 20s, he spent a year working alongside a mentor who schooled him in the ways of business and management. The man calls that a bizarre exaggeration, noting that the only thing he taught Breivik was how to record corporate minutes.

Those conflicts between Breivik's account and reality hint at a long thread of delusion winding throughout the 1,518-page manifesto he e-mailed to hundreds of people hours before he set out on a murderous rampage just over a week ago.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

View the original article here

Read More