LITTLE ROCK — Will Neighbour figured he had spent enough time being torn between what he wanted and what he eventually realized he needed.
The UALR junior forward previously planned to have surgery to repair a torn labrum in his left shoulder and a torn left bicep about a week after the Trojans’ men’s basketball season ended March 4.
But he spent almost a month debating whether to have surgery now, followed by three to six months recovery time, or putting it off so he could pursue a spot on the British national team for this summer’s London Olympics.
“It was really tough” he said.
But not long after UALR’s spring break ended March 25, Neighbour decided his best interest should be with his current health rather than a unique opportunity to play for, and in front of, his home country.
So he’s scheduled a surgery for April 12 in Little Rock, putting an end to a bid to make the British Olympic team before it really began. He said he could be back on a basketball court by August, and almost certainly by the time practice begins in October.
A successful pursuit of a spot in the Olympics would have tied him with the British national team until August. A surgery scheduled after that would have kept him away from basketball until December, a month into UALR’s season.
Plus, a spot in the Olympics would have meant playing even more games with an uncomfortable injury in his shoulder initially suffered late in a Dec. 31 victory at Denver.
“Playing with those big guys, you never know what’s going to happen,” Neighbour said. “The [shoulder] could come out again. ... I figured out what I really needed to do.”
It certainly wasn’t a decision made easily.
Neighbour, who’s hometown of Grayshott, England, is about an hour southwest of London, first made a British national team in 2008 when he played on the under-18 team at the European Championships.
He played in the same event two years later for the under-20 team and last summer played in tournaments for its under-23 team, a squad that sends two players to a tryout camp this summer to set the Olympic roster.
During his rise through British basketball, Neighbour, who rarely gets a chance to play in front of family and friends, had always eyed a spot in this summer’s Olympics, when he’d play games in an arena just north of Olympic Park near downtown London.
“I was thinking ‘GB, I’m playing for GB,’” Neighbour said.
The British national team wanted him to keep playing, too.
He said he received an email recently that asked him to spend a few days in England for an under-23 tournament this spring, then head to Houston — Houston Rockets assistant coach Chris Finch is the British national team head coach — in June for a camp that would decide the final roster.
Neighbour said about 16 players were invited to the camp, and the final roster would include 12 to 14 players. The 6-10 Neighbour thought his outside shooting — he made 41.3 percent of his three-pointers for UALR this season — gave him an edge on some of Great Britain’s other big bodies.
UALR Coach Steve Shields is pleased his leading returning scorer — Neighbour averaged 10.5 points per game this season and was named second-team all-Sun Belt Conference — is taking care of his injury. But he understood his dilemma.
“He was torn,” Shields said. “My whole take was, we’re going to support him with whichever decision he decided to make. ... But it sounded kind of obvious, the quicker you get this procedure done, the quicker you’re going to be back.”
Eventually Neighbour, who had surgery to repair the labrum in his right shoulder in 2010, came around to that line of thinking, too.
He’s spent the last month strengthening his legs and doing bench presses — he’s up to a personal-high 222 pounds now — and hopefully four months after surgery, he’ll be completely healthy for the first time in about eight months.
“Let’s get it done as soon as we can,” said Neighbour, whose surgery is scheduled for a week from today. “I could be back by the start of the season.”
Sports, Pages 24 on 04/05/2012