Jamie Dixon suffered a pulmonary embolism while recruiting Steven Adams

The Post-Gazette's Ray Fittapaldo has the definitive Steven Adams feature piece in today's paper, and dropped a bomb-shell about Pitt's Jamie Dixon:

Dixon took five more trips to Wellington to recruit Adams before he verbally committed to Pitt. One of the trips was in the spring of 2010 after the Final Four. After a 16-hour flight, Dixon suffered a pulmonary embolism, the result of sitting for too long on the flight, and spent a few days in the hospital.

The morning after returning to Pittsburgh, Dixon was having difficulty breathing. Once he arrived at the hospital and told doctors of his itinerary, they made a quick diagnosis and averted a potentially dangerous situation. About 10 percent of pulmonary embolism cases are fatal.

"I kind of kept that quiet," Dixon said. "Luckily, it was only in my lungs. The really dangerous ones are when they go to the brain."

Uh, yeah. According to the Mayo Clinic:

Pulmonary embolism is blockage in one or more arteries in your lungs. In most cases, pulmonary embolism is caused by blood clots that travel to your lungs from another part of your body — most commonly, your legs. Pulmonary embolism is a complication of deep vein thrombosis (DVT), which is clotting in the veins farthest from the surface of the body.

As Fittipaldo notes, being immobile for too long - such as a flight to the other side of the world - is a common cause of pulmonary embolisms.

Pitt was able to keep the hospitalization extremely quiet and it certainly seems as if Dixon has made a complete recovery. Very good news.

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