I'm okay with JO as a player however I think he's either severely brain damaged or just plain scared of surgery. I blame him for thinking he could play though pain (which he did surprisingly well) for entire seasons and playoff runs.
It's understandable for Jermaine.
He had serious problems with the doctors in Indiana. The ones the team organized for him. When he started having all those serious injuries. According to JO, they gave him lots of bad advice and mishandled his surgeries and made his injury situation much worse than it originally was. I can't remember the specifics but screwed something up really badly and that is where JO's mistrust of doctors comes from. He blames those doctors from his Indiana days for ruining the best years of his career.
That is why he doesn't trust doctor's opinions who are paid for by the team. That is why he is always goes for a second or third opinion from doctors that are not on the team's payroll. That is why he is so wary of surgery. That is why he takes so much time to make up mind what course of action is best to follow after receiving multiple doctor's opinions.
Because of how things went in Indiana. I think he ended up getting a surgery he didn't need. Or they misdiagnosed a problem and didn't fix the right thing and then he got injured soon after he returned. Or they made something worse in the surgery and made him more vulnerable to injury. Something. Something really bad (at least according to JO). Ahh, I can't remember exactly what it was.
It was some big screw up that badly scarred JO and made him distru****l of doctors. Anyway, that is why JO has such problems with doctors / medical advice. Because he got screwed over in the past and it had very damaging effects on his career.
Edit: Why is distrust-ful blanked out? Censored.