Kansas basketball guard Darryn Peterson is one of the top prospects to enter the draft this year, and he showed that he has the talent to take a team to the next level. When he was on the court with the Jayhawks, he turned heads, but there were a lot of times when he wasn’t on the court because of his cramping.
Nobody knew why he kept having those episodes, and finally, it was revealed that he was taking high doses of creatine.
“I’d never taken it before [he got to college],” Peterson said via ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne. “But after the season I took two weeks off and they did tests which showed my baseline level was already high. So, they said when I dosed [a process of increasing a dose over time to create maximum benefit at the beginning of taking a supplement], it must’ve made the levels unsafe.”
Peterson recalled the moment that he dealt with it the worst, it was during Bill Self’s annual weeklong boot camp in September. He ended up in the ambulance and at the hospital.
“I made it to the training room and just started begging them to call 911,” Peterson said. “They were trying to get a vein to get me the IV, get me back hydrated. But I was cramping so hard they couldn’t get a vein.
“I thought I was going to die on the training table that day.”
Peterson dealt with the fear of having that situation happen while he was playing on the court, but he pushed through it. He missed 11 games and asked to come out of games throughout the season. At the end of the season, he played more than 30 minutes in eight of the final nine regular-season games.
With Peterson now knowing what caused the cramping, NBA teams can evaluate him accordingly, and it shouldn’t be anything that hinders his draft stock.
Kansas basketball guard Darryn Peterson is one of the top prospects to enter the draft this year, and he showed that he has the talent to take a team to the next level. When he was on the court with the Jayhawks, he turned heads, but there were a lot of times when he wasn’t on the court because of his cramping.