Dagunduro Endures Long Journey Home

When Ade Dagunduro walks across the court at Pinnacle Bank Arena on Saturday night, Nebraska basketball fans will recognize his smile.

That hasn’t disappeared. He’s still gregarious, friendly and easy going.

Dagunduro’s physical stature looks familiar, too. He remains lean and fit, with the right amount of muscle and very little fat adorning his 6-foot-5 frame. At age 32, he looks able to suit up and play today.

Only, he’s not. Far from it.

What Nebraska fans won’t realize they're seeing is a former collegiate and professional basketball player who spent months in a wheel chair, knowing his playing days were well behind him, wondering why, and what would be next.

“I’ll be thankful,” Dagunduro said, “just to walk normal.”

Dagunduro, who played at Nebraska from 2007-09 and earned third team All-Big 12 honors, is cautiously optimistic the latest of three knee surgeries, this one courtesy the Nebraska Greats Foundation, will finally ends years of pain, frustration and feelings of helplessness.

The lowest point, months after his first surgery, came with Dagunduro alone in his flat in Rome, with more questions than answers.

“It was a dark, dark time,” Dagunduro said. “That pain, man, I wouldn’t wish that on the worst dictator in human history. It was unbearable pain. Imagine being in that pain, and not being able to walk? I was by myself, in my flat. … man.”

Other “inexplicable things” that Dagunduro merely mentioned as issues, but he didn’t wish to divulge, left him questioning his faith.

“I wouldn’t say I lost my faith, but it shrunk significantly,” Dagunduro said. “I’m like, ‘Lord, wait a minute. I’m trying to serve you, and you just brought me that high to bring me down this low?’ ”

Dagunduro’s problems began in 2012, after he qualified for the Nigerian national team and played in the 2012 Olympics.

“The country was in pandemonium because it was the first time our country had every qualified in men’s basketball,” Dagunduro said. “I’m riding a huge wave.”

Nigeria opened with a victory over Tunisia, and Dagunduro scored six points. In Nigeria’s next game, a loss to Lithuania, Dagunduro injured his knee, causing him to miss his team’s next game against Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and the rest of the United States team.

“That’s when it all started,” Dagunduro said.

He returned to his professional team in Rome, Virus Roma, and tried to play and push through the pain. It wasn’t happening. Knowing his body as well as he does, Dagunduro was convinced he had a significant injury, something that wouldn’t be healed with simple time and rest.

Virus Roma didn’t believe him.

“They thought I was faking,” Dagunduro said. “For some reason, they thought I was trying to milk a vacation in Rome.”

Finally, an extensive MRI revealed a problem. It resulted in microfracture surgery, or a cartilage repair surgical technique that works by creating tiny fractures in the underlying bone. This causes new cartilage to develop from a so-called super-clot.

Recovery and rehab went well, and Dagunduro felt fine for the next four months, or so. Then he took a long walk on a cobblestone street in Rome. Each day over the next week, he progressively felt worse to the point he was back on crutches, and then a wheel chair, for about five months.

“They took me to different parts of Italy, this specialist, that specialist,” he said. “Nobody could tell me what was going on."

The captain on the Nigerian national team knew a doctor in Italy who met with Dagunduro and admitted something wasn’t right.

“He told me I needed to go home and get right with the American doctors,” Dagunduro said.

So he returned to his home in California, and there, doctors discovered the aforementioned “super-clot” had dissolved, leaving a hole in his cartilage, causing the unbearable pain.

“The long walk and the training just made the clot go haywire,” Dagunduro said.

In Santa Monica, he underwent an OATs procedure, which is an abbreviation for osteoarticular transfer system. Doctors took a ligament from a cadaver and put in his knee to repair the hole.

Results from OATs procedure, Dagunduro said, were “almost Déjà vu.” Again, the surgery went well, and again, after four months or so, his knee progressively got worse, day by day, to the point he was back on crutches, and then a wheel chair, this time for eight months.

“Now the American doctors don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know who to trust, man,” said Dagunduro, who’d also tried alternative medicines and PRP injections. “I mean, it wasn’t like they were purposefully trying to botch my surgery or anything like that. For whatever reason, my body didn’t respond to both surgeries.”

Oh, and by the way, Dagunduro, without health insurance, was paying out of pocket for his medical expenses.

“For my own sanity, I won’t tell you the numbers,” he said, laughing.

That’s when Dagunduro made contact with one of his former doctors in Lincoln, who advised Dagunduro about the Nebraska Greats Foundation. It provides financial assistance to former collegiate athletes in the state of Nebraska who, as a result of a medical challenge, have exhausted both their insurance and personal resources.

Dagunduro qualified. Not only that, a doctor through the foundation discovered what he believes has been the source of the problem all along, when he found chunks of bone spur floating around in Dagunduro's knee.

“For whatever reason,” Dagunduro said, “the other doctors couldn’t see that on the MRI.”

He had surgery Feb. 5 in Lincoln and has remained in town since, knowing that former Nebraska players will return for the program’s annual Legends Weekend on Friday and Saturday. Dagunduro has never participated in the event, this being only the second time he’s returned to Lincoln since his playing days as a Husker. Saturday night’s game against Northwestern will be Dagunduro’s first inside Pinnacle Bank Arena.

“Going to the University of Nebraska, even in hindsight, I can say was one of the best decisions of my life,” Dagunduro said. “I’m glad my older brother kind of laid the foundation.”

Ola Dagunduro, a former Husker defensive lineman who lettered from 2005-06, is coaching and teaching high school in Lancaster, California.

Meanwhile, Ade is working as a deacon with the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Antelope Valley. He’ll return to his job next week after his two weeks in Lincoln, much of it spent visiting old friends, while also doing rehab at the Hendricks Training Complex.

“I’m so cautious, but right now, I feel great,” he said. “But I felt great with those other surgeries. I’m going to take this next one slow – nice and slow.”

Dagunduro expressed his gratitude to the Nebraska Greats Foundation and to friends who’s helped him through a long, painful ordeal.

“It’s been a drag, man. I won’t lie. It’s been a drag,” he said. “But I’m thankful. It could’ve been a lot worse. I could’ve needed a knee replacement. All of it, as bad as it was, it was definitely a blessing. I’m extremely grateful.”

Reach Brian at brosenthal@huskers.com or follow him on Twitter @GBRosenthal.