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Gordon Matheson.Ladder

Gordon Matheson, of Calgary, is the team doctor for the Golden State Warriors, professor emeritus at the Stanford University School of Medicine, former director of sports medicine at Stanford University and chairman of the board of directors for Calgary-based WorldPlay, a disruptive online-video platform provider.

I've always had a fascination with how the body works. As a kid, I loved biology. I loved zoology. I did science fairs in Calgary. I read medical books. I walked up to Foothills hospital to a lab and got Petri dishes and grew bacteria in my bedroom.

When I went into sports medicine [after graduating from University of Calgary medical school], colleagues thought I'd lost my way. They said, 'What you are doing is ridiculous.' The problem I discovered with medicine early on was it was limited in making people better, especially those with chronic disease. I saw physical activity and diet as a way of improving the body's capacity and preventing treating disease.

Athletes want to get better, and that's an important part of healing. Sports medicine looks at functional capacity more than diagnosis. You may have [a] grade three lateral ankle sprain, but the real question is, what's your range of motion? How much strength do you have? What's your balance like? There's a huge lesson there for medicine.

At [the University of British Columbia], I earned a doctorate and was one of the team doctors for the Vancouver Canucks. I was recruited by Stanford to set up a new sports-medicine program.

I really like fixing things that I believe are broken. The health-care system for most athletes in [The United States] is administered as an 'athletic model.' In my mind, this was a potential conflict of interest – what comes first, getting the athlete back on the field or their health? At Stanford, we took health care out of the training room and changed to a medical model. We built new facilities where the athlete saw a doctor in the way one would expect to be treated in any medical facility – confidentially. This was an incredibly lonely journey; there were lots of threats. The coaches and athletic trainers were afraid they'd lose control. As it turned out, Stanford has been more successful than ever athletically.

I testified at the Michael Jackson wrongful death trial about physician conflict of interest.

I was never a big basketball fan. I barely knew who the players were. The Warriors contract with Stanford is to provide medical care. I found this to be a high-class organization. The players are remarkable individuals – everyone of them.

On game day, I have breakfast with the team. I work out. I just do paperwork around the hotel until about an hour before, when I put on a suit, catch the team bus and sit a few rows behind the players.

Basketball is an emotional environment. Basketball is a celebration.

The medicine is no different. If there's an injury or illness that's going to be prolonged, there's likely a second and third opinion.

The best three-point shooter of all time is Steph Curry. He's cares about his team members, expresses joy on the court and has a quiet form of leadership. He can adjust the angle of his shooting with such precision. He's remarkable to watch.

Right now I'm helping UBC create a new master's program in disease prevention.

We have more morbidity and mortality from preventable chronic disease than we did 40 years ago. It's the end user that matters. We can say 'exercise three times a week' or take your blood-pressure medication but that's top-down information. It doesn't meet the patient where they are.

Roger Martin at the Rotman School wrote The Design of Business. And he showed two overlapping curves: one is top-down analytical thinking relying on reliable data that doesn't change the way people think, and the other curve relies on intuitive data that is highly relevant. Where those two curves overlap is a sweet spot. 'Human-centred design' is a fast-growing field that hasn't made its way into health care.

I'm also working with Lifemark on a new patient-care model for a national network of clinics.

I really believe in an overhaul of the Canada Health Act. I'm involved as an expert witness in the group making a constitutional challenge [the Cambie case]. I don't believe a single-payer socialized system is sustainable long term.

It is an incredible travesty what happens to some people as a result of waiting or being denied health care – and the system's constraints have begun to erode confidence to the point where [the] morale [of] health-care workers is much lower than it used to be.

I love high-intensity training. I do strength training. I love just feeling like I have the functional capacity to do things.

As told to Janice Paskey

This interview has been edited and condensed.

‘They care a lot about values, they care about the purpose of organizations, they want to be inspired’

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