Prior to the Sixers game versus the Cavaliers on Sunday night, February 23, Sixers GM Billy King and Todd MacCulloch discussed the current medical condition of the Sixers center. Read what they had to say:

MacCulloch played in 42 games this season, averaging 7.1ppg and 4.7rebs before being put on the injured list on February 19. Jesse D Garrabrant NBAE/Getty Image

76ers General Manager Billy King
“He’s been diagnosed with Charcot-Marie-Tooth. He’s going to go see another specialist up at Mass General tomorrow. There is no definite ruling on his career or on this season. We are going to do everything we can to make sure that we get to a point that Todd is much like all of us. He hasn’t been able to. I give Todd all the credit because he was trying to play pro basketball – which is difficult as it is – with Charcot-Marie-Tooth. Now, he is going go to Mass General, and to see the specialist here (in Philadelphia), and see if we can come to grips with exactly what it is and the best possible treatment for Todd so that he can be comfortable. Basketball will be looked upon after that.”

76ers center Todd MacCulloch
On the knowledge of the possibility of having Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease
“It’s good and it’s bad. I think it’s good to know what you are dealing with – the fact that it is CMT. At least the part of it, that is not treatable, is probably a negative thing. I wish they had come up with something that said, ‘well, we know exactly what it is, it’s totally treatable.’ But that’s not what we’ve seen. A lot of people have CMT and are able to live normal lives. So that’s a good thing. It’s not life threatening. It usually affects your peripheries and things like that. A lot of people live full, happy lives.”

On whether he has both CMT and CIDP
“It’s really hard to know. There’s no one specific test for CIDP. It’s impossible to know whether I have it. There’s a certain amount of things that you can test for, to put pieces of the puzzle together. She (Dr. Heiman-Patterson) thinks that there is some evidence of it, but I don’t have all of the criteria that it takes for CIDP, but some people have parts and other parts. That’s one thing that she thinks could have caused sort of an accelerated type of deterioration over the period that I’ve had it. It has been a long time, but in the sense of Charcot-Marie-Tooth, where you are usually talking about years, from birth to 70, things have happened quite rapidly. So she thinks that CIDP could be one thing that would come on that rapidly.”

On the possible treatments for Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease
“As far as I know, there aren’t really treatments for CMT because it is a genetic disorder. They are working on gene therapy, but what they tell me is (that) if they ever come up with anything, it is going to be used on people that have much more serious things. That technology is not going to be used on people with CMT because it is so gradual.”

On his playing future
“(My) career is secondary now. If the treatments start to work right away and it just goes away, then basketball would be the No. 1 thing on my mind. I don’t think it would take very long to get back into it. It could very easily shift from being something that is maybe not as important right now to being one of the most important things in my life. It really all depends on how my body reacts and how it is able to recover.”

On his emotions throughout the process
“It’s been really difficult for me. I feel I’ve had kind of a charmed life – a blessed life. Everything has gone extremely well… I was just kind of wondering when things weren’t going to go so well. It’s been difficult.”

“In this business, you feel like you can control a lot of things and, mind-over-matter, put things out of your mind. This was something that I had a really hard time putting out of my mind. It’s been difficult. I guess I just decided that I can’t control everything about it, and I’m not going to worry about the things I can’t control.”