At the Crossroads : Bobby Hurley of the Sacramento Kings Is Coming Back From an Accident That Nearly Killed Him in December

He came here Wednesday for opening night of summer league hoping to be a basketball player again, only a basketball player, but that was not going to happen.

There was the news conference about an hour before tipoff when strangers asked him to recall a horrifying event he has spent half a year trying to forget. A little later, fans in the stands called out his name in adulation as he took his turns in the pregame layup line.

People wanted to see the miracle.

This is no surprise, though, because people also still write him at the rate of about 400 letters a week, all these months later. They go up to his boss and ask that he pass along their prayers. They pick up the tab when he goes out to lunch and say, “Glad to have you back.” They sent so many flowers in the wake of the late-night accident at that desolate Sacramento intersection that his parents asked hospital staffers to spread some of them around the pediatric unit, and

every kid ended up with at least one batch next to the bed.

“Anybody I had met before the accident, the reason they knew Bobby Hurley was because of the kinds of things I did at Duke, (in) the national championships,” Bobby Hurley said. “Now, it’s more focused toward what’s happened with the accident.

“I know it’s just people being nice and it’s natural for them to do that, but once I put this past me and I get myself back on the court, hopefully I will be at the level where I can show people that they don’t need to help me get through this accident any more. Kind of put it behind me and let me continue my career.”

Which is why he has come here, to the Rocky Mountain Revue: to put it behind him.

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Robert Matthew Hurley, 23, from a close middle-class family in Jersey City, N.J., holds the NCAA record for career assists, had his jersey No. 11 retired by Duke and won two national titles with the Blue Devils and reached the championship game a third time. He has been a finalist for the Wooden Award and the Sullivan Award, was the seventh pick in the 1993 draft and signed a six-year, $16.2-million contract with the Sacramento Kings to be their point guard into the 21st Century. But to truly know who he is, you need to go back about 15 years.

A promising cross-country runner, he made the short trip with his family to New York City for the age-group national championships. The start of his race kept getting pushed back, first about 30 minutes, then an hour, then two hours. In the meantime, he had been running around a park in the Bronx on the hot and humid day, playing Wiffle Ball with younger brother Danny.

When race time finally came, about 2 1/2 hours after the scheduled start, Bobby was already exhausted and almost dehydrated, and his parents tried to get him to drink some liquids. When next spotted, with about a quarter-mile left, he looked so bad that people lining the course were yelling for him to pull out. He appeared on the verge of collapse.

Hurley didn’t stop. He didn’t want to give up. He crossed the finish line somewhere in the top 10, then collapsed. His parents were so scared, they took him to the hospital, where he got a glucose hookup before being released.

This intense drive served him well later, when, despite being only six feet, he played for his father’s nationally renowned high school program, started in the backcourt alongside Seton Hall-bound Terry Dehere and helped St. Anthony gain the No. 1 spot in the USA Today rankings. He earned a scholarship to Duke, starred there, went to Sacramento, started the first 19 games and averaged 6.1 assists and 7.1 points despite shooting only 37%.

The Dec. 12 home game against Dehere and the Clippers was typical--seven assists, but 0 for 5 from the field. About an hour after the Kings’ loss, Hurley climbed into his truck to drive a few miles back to his apartment, taking his usual route. He came to a stop sign at the intersection of Del Paso and El Centro, then started to make a left turn.

A station wagon, which according to police and witnesses was traveling at 55 m.p.h. with no lights on except a parking light, smashed into the four-wheel truck over the driver’s-side front wheel, knocking Hurley’s vehicle into a spin and then a flip onto its right side before skidding to a halt. Hurley was not wearing a seat belt and was thrown through the air before making a one-point landing on his left shoulder in an irrigation ditch.

The damage was massive: Eight hours of surgery to repair a windpipe that was torn from the main airway to the left lung. Multiple rib fractures. A broken left shoulder. A small compression fracture in his back. A torn ligament in his right knee. A cut running from the corner of the left eye to the left ear that resulted in plastic surgery. People usually don’t even reach the hospital alive when their trachea is severed, let alone recover.

“We can’t tell you how unusual it is,” said F. William Blaisdell, chief of surgery at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, “because most people end up in the coroner’s office.”

Within a few days, he was out of the woods. Twelve days after the crash, he was released. The body soon recuperated enough that the Kings encouraged Hurley to return to the more familiar and comfortable surroundings of Jersey City.

He would live, he would lead a normal life again, but the recovery process was long.

“There were so many days that I didn’t want to go through it anymore, that I fought through it,” Hurley said. “There were so many times on the treadmill when I could hardly breathe and I worked through it.

“There were a lot of things. Trying to get myself off the medication, for about a week I’d be shaking all day. I was having a lot of problems with that. I was taking morphine the whole time in the hospital and then I got out of the hospital, got surgery on my shoulder, so more morphine. I was taking all these pills for the pain in my shoulder and my ribs and everything. I never experienced anything like that before. It was very difficult.”

For the mind as well as the body. The doubts were as intense as the hurt.

“It’s been almost as difficult as the physical part,” he said. “Initially, I wasn’t thinking about basketball or anything. I just had a lot of problems dealing with flashbacks to the accident. I’d wake up in the middle of the night after having nightmares about being in different accidents. Not the same one; it’d be a different kind of thing. But I’d be flying out of the car. I’d wake up and be sweating and crying and everything.”

The comeback came in stages. When he first started the rehabilitation process, Hurley could walk on a treadmill for only 10 minutes before having to sit down for five minutes to catch his breath. He eventually moved on to jogging, the activity he has always enjoyed, except that a 10-minute mile was the peak performance when rehabilitation began. Now he covers two miles in 12 to 13 minutes.

Going back to Del Paso and El Centro was tough too. The first time was in late January when an uncle drove him to watch a King game. “I got really bad feelings,” he said. “Chills and stuff.” He realized he never wanted to be there again and started taking a different route to Arco Arena, but went back anyway in late April to film a public-service announcement to encourage people to wear seat belts, as he now does.

The next step came June 12, exactly six months after the crash--he was cleared to play basketball.

Hurley started slowly, with some drills supervised by his father. He played six games in the Jersey Shore League, which includes a handful of NBA players such as Rod Strickland, Anthony Mason and Eric Murdock, but this was still largely a training-wheels experience for him. The next challenge came five days ago when he played against King hopefuls and rookies at Arco Arena, still going against a bunch of no-names but a bigger challenge because these players were all fighting to make a pro team.

Hurley struggled, reinforcing the belief that he needs better conditioning and much more strength in his left arm, still at about 50% of the strength of the right side after taking the impact of the crash. The conditioning will come, but the shoulder is a concern to everyone, including Hurley--more so after that game when he lost control of the ball several times while dribbling down the lane with his left hand.

“I still have a question mark in my head whether my shoulder can get back to where it needs to be to compete at this level,” he said. “It’s not playing in summer league in New Jersey, where I can average 25 points and double-figure assists. This is the highest level, and you need to have everything in your arsenal. You can’t go into a gun fight with one gun, you need both of them.”

Still, Hurley, Coach Garry St. Jean and Jerry Reynolds, the Kings’ director of player personnel, say they expect him to be on the opening-night roster the first week of November, not on the injured list. It will be about 11 months after the accident that nearly killed him.

“I’m a big believer in Bobby Hurley,” St. Jean said. “I wouldn’t want to be the guy on the other side of the betting table saying he’s not going to make it back.”

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Putting it behind him starts well.

A few days after the chief surgeon said it would be a medical miracle if Hurley can go from his accident to playing basketball at the highest level again, the patient is in the Kings’ starting lineup Wednesday for the Rocky Mountain Revue. Not only that, he isn’t having any ballhandling problems and even goes to his left more than to his strong side.

Hurley dominates Rex Walters of the New Jersey Nets in the first half, then falls victim to poor conditioning and gets sloppy in the second. There is reason to be encouraged, and the season is still three months away.

“He played well,” Walters says. “I was impressed. You couldn’t tell he had been in such a serious accident.”

Hurley can tell. That’s what makes this so much sweeter.

“It’s taken an inner strength and a lot of determination on my part to be able to accomplish it,” Hurley says. “Maybe even more so for me because basketball’s a team sport and I’m not winning games by myself. I’m part of it. But this whole thing was on my own. I built my body back up, I took care of the mental part of it, I did everything I needed to do to get where I am. I think it’s really a great accomplishment.”

That’s the point. That’s why he won’t be merely another basketball player. Because it’s really a great accomplishment.