Peterson Blames Creatine for Season-Long Cramping
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- Darryn Peterson told ESPN that postseason bloodwork showed his baseline creatine levels were already high, and doctors concluded that dosing the supplement pushed those levels to an unsafe range, explaining the cramping he'd never experienced before college.
- Peterson was hospitalized after a September full-body cramp following Kansas coach Bill Self's annual boot camp, telling ESPN he 'thought I was going to die on the training table that day' as medical staff struggled to find a vein for an IV.
- Peterson missed 11 games during the season and asked to come out of several more, though he played more than 30 minutes in eight of Kansas's final nine regular-season games once he learned to manage the condition.
- Coach Bill Self was barred by HIPAA rules from publicly discussing Peterson's health for most of the season, telling The Athletic afterward that 'the stops and starts definitely affected him' in conditioning, rhythm and team rhythm.
- Peterson has been training for the NBA combine and draft in Los Angeles since stopping creatine and reports no recurring issues, focusing on developing point guard skills after playing mostly off the ball at Kansas.
- Former NBA coach of the year Sam Mitchell, Peterson's AAU coach at Phenom United, defended his protégé against criticism, telling ESPN: 'That motherf---er worked his ass off. He loved this s---.'
Why it matters: With Peterson now healthy and projected as the No. 2 pick in next month's draft, the creatine diagnosis retroactively reframes an entire season of public criticism of his durability and effort. For an NBA team investing a top pick, the fact that a correctable, identifiable cause has been found — and that Peterson has been symptom-free since stopping the supplement — materially de-risks a prospect whose medical history had become the dominant narrative of his freshman year.
