Every Shot Counts by Carlos Boozer

Author:Carlos Boozer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Published: 2023-08-22T12:13:18+00:00

CHAPTER 9

LEBRON

“Did you hear what happened to Jay Williams?”

My eyelids opened suddenly, my neck snapped up from my dazing in the hot tub, as another teammate slipped down into the round pool to join us. Big Z and I had finished our morning workout at the arena and the steaming water eased our muscles.

“He was in a bad motorcycle accident.”

“You’re lying,” I said. The words fell out of my mouth before I could stop them. I’d just spoken to Jay a week earlier. He was getting ready to go on vacation with his family to Aruba. There was no way something happened to him. Still, I pulled myself out of the tub and walked briskly into the locker room. A TV mounted in the corner, set to ESPN 24/7, confirmed the unbelievable news. And it was bad. As bad as it gets.

It was mid-June, and Jay had wanted to take advantage of the sunny weather by riding the motorcycle he’d purchased a week earlier to a business meeting. He hadn’t been wearing a helmet when he and his bike collided with a utility pole in Chicago. Luckily, Jay wasn’t riding alone when he crashed and help got to him quickly, possibly a saving grace for what the SportsCenter commentators were calling a “horrific” accident. My heart sank down to the pit of my stomach.

I grabbed my cell phone from my locker and frantically dialed Jay’s number, convinced he’d pick up and tell me he was fine. However, a dozen attempts went straight to his voice mail. His mother’s and girlfriend’s phones were the same. I wanted to get to his side, but I couldn’t reach anybody for the next few days, as details from the collision trickled through the media outlets. Even Jay’s agent was having difficulty getting information about his whereabouts. I knew he was likely still in Chicago, but I didn’t know which hospital.

“It’s very bad, Carlos,” Jay’s mother said, when she called me back, four days after the crash. I could hear the exhaustion in her voice. Bad seemed to be the word everyone used to describe Jay’s current state. “He was going too fast.”

I’d figured that already. I knew my best friend had a penchant for speed and an adventurous, boundary-pushing spirit. I hopped on the first plane I could to Chicago, but couldn’t get in to see him. He was heavily sedated in the intensive care unit and had already undergone at least one major operation to mend a severed artery in his left leg.

“He jerked his bike enough to avoid a head-on collision, but he almost lost his leg,” I was told. “The doctors weren’t even sure he was going to survive the surgery.”

Though we spoke sooner over the phone, I didn’t see Jay for another two months, as he remained in the hospital undergoing a series of additional surgeries to repair his left side. He dislocated his knee, tearing every ligament in the process and needed over a hundred staples to bring his muscle and skin back together.

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