Ira Winderman of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports:
The Miami Heat’s three-game road trip added one more city to the itinerary early Sunday morning, when the team plane was diverted to Chicago after a member of the flight crew became ill.
Team trainers tended crew member who lapsed into what appeared to be a diabetic coma. He then was transported to a hospital there before the flight from Saturday night’s 97-84 victory over the Minnesota Timberwolves resumed.
The team charter plane eventually landed in Miami at 5:04 a.m., roughly an hour behind schedule.
Michael Wallace of the Miami Herald reports:
Heat guard Dwyane Wade sent out a message through his Twitter account at 1:27 a.m., asking for his followers to pray for the mechanic.
“Hey everyone pray for our pilot,” Wade wrote on Twitter. “We just had a emergency landing in Chicago. He went into a coma. God bless this man and his family.”
A Heat spokesman confirmed that the team’s plane landed about 1:30 a.m., about 90 minutes after its 11 p.m. scheduled departure from Minnesota. The team was waiting at the O’Hare airport as the mechanic was taken to a hospital. The team resumed its flight to Miami at 2:27 am.
