'You got one brain and one heart': Suns' Landry Shamet details his concussion recovery

Phoenix Suns backup two-guard Landry Shamet said Friday he expects to return from concussion protocols when the team hosts the Utah Jazz on Saturday.

Shamet was slated to miss his seventh consecutive game Friday night when Phoenix plays the Detroit Pistons in the first of their back-to-back home games.

Shamet said the road win against Minnesota on Nov. 9 was when he began to feel symptoms. He speculated that the Suns' home loss to Portland five days prior was when he suffered the concussion, and detailed the progression toward his comeback.

Shamet’s status: “I feel a lot better. You know, trusting our medical staff, they’ve been great. Concussions are weird. I don’t know, they just are. Sometimes you don’t really know what your feeling or what you’re supposed to feel, so really just communicating with them, trusting them. They’ve been great taking the lead and I feel really, really good, progressing back and I’m excited to get back going here (Saturday) hopefully.”

The concussion protocols evaluation process: “Daily check-ins. They want to monitor everything, see if any symptoms come up, the smallest of symptoms, they want to know everything.  …

“It’s tedious. Sometimes you don’t want to go through the whole symptoms checklist but you gotta do it. They’re doing their jobs well.”

Shamet’s concussion symptoms: “First time I had a concussion was in college and that one right away I had everything, was confused, disoriented. This time my neck just kind of cranked, my neck a little bit so my neck was just tight. Everything else I felt great for a couple days. Then as symptoms came up, it was over time. It was really strange, so I’d never experienced anything like that. I think a lot of it was like, ‘Wait, what am I, a couple days ago, why am I feeling it now?’ Very bizarre in a lot of ways. …

“We have our head trainer (David Crewe) used to be in the NFL, so he’s got a lot of experience with head injuries, concussions, return-to-play stuff. I’m just lucky to have them. You can get a lot of surgeries after your done playing on your knees, ankles, joints, bones, whatever, but you got like one brain and one heart. That’s something nobody should play with.”

Symptoms that Shamet suffered the most: “We landed in Orlando − my siblings, Jacksonville’s home to them, so they came to visit me, one of my sisters, and that was when I felt like really bad. It was also the hurricane, so we flew into a hurricane, and with a concussion that’s just awesome (smiles). When we got to dinner, I couldn’t focus, the light, sounds, whatever, everytime I stood up, I felt like Bambi, felt like I was gonna fall out. So that’s when it got like, ‘OK, this is kinda scary.’ I don’t throw up. I got really nauseous and threw up a couple times. A lot of that stuff I don’t take lightly. That’s what got me to be like, ‘This isn’t just a little headache I had.’”

Suns’ improvements Shamet's seen during his absence: “One of the things we’ve talked about is that game plan disclipline. There’s never been a dropoff in our effort. You know we’ve had guys out, been shorthanded, so our effort, I mean, guys have been playing hard. That’s one of the things Coach (Monty Williams) was talking about kind of closing that gap a little bit. We playing hard but sometimes we weren’t sticking to our game plan, making some mental errors. I think that’s the biggest piece I’ve gathered. We’ve kind of tightened the screws there in terms of our game plan, knowing personnel, knowing what we’re doing, being on the same page."

Thoughts on Pistons and Jazz before Suns host them in back-to-back home games: We saw at Utah, we saw what they’re capable of. I don’t think anybody’s at the point of taking them lightly. It was the ‘surprise team’ early on but they improved. They’re a good team. (Friday night) the Detroit team are a bunch of young guys, hungry guys and (Bojan) Bogdanovic is a certified (veteran), Alec Burks coming off the bench, guy who know how to play, play fast, free, they’re gonna iso a lot. Two good tests for us defensively. Guards one-on-on, be on a string, be able to help each other.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Suns' Landry Shamet talks about his concussion, expected return vs. Jazz