Cuttino Mobley Wants One More Shot at the NBA

Former NBA guard Cuttino Mobley, who retired in 2008 because of a heart ailment, would like another shot at playing in the NBA.

Mobley played for 11 years with four NBA teams, but was forced to leave the game after he was traded by the L.A. Clippers to the New York Knicks.

After a routine physical following the trade, Mobley was diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

It is the same condition that led to the deaths of basketball players Hank Gathers and Reggie Lewis.

"It's a lot of different variations of HCM," Mobley said in an interview with FOX 26 Sports. "Me playing 40 minutes a game for 11 years straight at a very high level.

"Mine is not serious at all. As you can see 11 years of playing and still playing three years later after they said you shouldn't play. You shouldn't run. You shouldn't do this. You shouldn't play that. A lot of different things they said you shouldn't do."

This week Mobley was back on the court in Houston taking part in pick up games with NBA players like Washington Wizards forward Rashard Lewis, Indiana Pacers guard T.J. Ford and Houston Rockets guard Kyle Lowry.

However, Mobley wants more than that.

He wants to play with and against those guys again when the games matter and he said he and his agent, Andy Miller, have made the NBA aware of his situation.

"I've been trying to do that," Mobley said. "You have to get doctor's evaluations and all this other stuff, but you got to understand too what the Knicks put out there, the notion, nobody wants to take that chance now. I've been playing with it for so many years. You ask yourself was it genuine or did you do it for a reason?

"I'm not done. It depends on what the league says when the time comes. It's been a difficult process.

"What the Knicks did kind of putting a stomp in it and giving people that fear about me, something I was born with."

Mobley said he is not happy with the way the Knicks handled his situation in 2008.

"At first I was cool with it because I didn't do research on it, but then doing research and getting different opinions, then I became upset because the corporation, the big company trying to get as much money as they can and do different things like that, for me I don't think that was right," Mobley said.

"You either waive me, you don't take me in, you let me go somewhere else, let me create my own destiny like I did in 1999 when I came to the Rockets. Let me create my own decisions. Don't make the decisions for me, clogging my heads with different things.

"I'm not upset now because I know it's a business and that's how they treat it as a business, but it's two and a half, three years I haven't played. It's been a waste."