Hurley: I Thought I Was Going to Die : Pro basketball: In first interviews since Dec. 12 crash, Sacramento King point guard says he feels ‘real lucky’ to be alive.

Bobby Hurley thought he was going to die. But after realizing he was going to live, the Sacramento King point guard says he has a new outlook on life.

“I feel real lucky,” Hurley said in interviews published in Sunday’s Sacramento Bee and New York’s Daily News. The interviews were his first with reporters since his car accident on Dec. 12, after a game against the Clippers.

“It’s like it changed my whole perspective (toward) life. I’d been down and depressed about how the (Kings) were doing and little problems with my family.

“Then you go through something like this that is so difficult and come so close to losing everything. . . . Every day this week, I’ve just been happy to wake up. My mom and dad and family and friends have come to see me and I’m just happy to have them.”

Hurley said he thought he was going to die while he was lying in a ditch after being thrown from his vehicle. He wasn’t wearing his seat belt.

“I can remember making the turn and then just seeing something coming at me for a split second,” Hurley said. “I can remember feeling the car crashing into me and that was it. I don’t remember anything else until I was in the ditch and I was in the water and feeling real cold and not knowing what was going on.

“Then I remembered I was in an accident and I thought I really was going to die.”

While lying in the ditch, Hurley said he was comforted when he saw teammate Mike Peplowski.

“That made a big difference,” he said. “I saw something familiar. He gave me his jacket, I think, and he helped me make it up the hill and that’s where it all ended. Then I don’t remember anything until (Monday) when I woke up . . . and realized I was alive. People were telling me I would be all right and it was good to hear that.”

Hurley suffered collapsed lungs, broken ribs, a broken shoulder blade, a compression fracture in the lower back and a soft-tissue back injury. He remains in intensive care at the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento.

He also is expected to undergo reconstructive surgery on his right knee within two months, and could return to the court in “about nine or 10 months” after that, according to team doctor and surgeon Richard Marder.

The driver of the other car was identified as Dan Wieland, 37, a house painter, who suffered a broken leg. The cause of the crash is under investigation.