Life Is Not an Accident (16 page)

A month later, I signed a nonguaranteed contract with the New Jersey Nets; I'd be forced to fight for a spot during training camp. I will never forget walking onto the court in the spring of 2006 and seeing Cliff Robinson, Vince Carter, and the great Jason Kidd. Was I really this close to making it back? Millions of kids bust their ass trying to reach this level, and here I was on the cusp of doing it twice.

As thrilling as it was to be there, my insecurity reared its ugly head once more, and I couldn't help but wonder if my tryout with the Nets had been an act of kindness. Perhaps it was a way for the Jersey-based team to help out one of its own. All I knew was that I had to prove myself worthy of sharing the court with some of the best players in the game . . . and one rookie.

As excited and as grateful as I was for the opportunity, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed when the Nets drafted Marcus Williams out of UConn,
after
telling me they wanted me to work out with the team. Vinnie Viola, one of the minority owners, and I were flying back to New Jersey on his private plane during the NBA draft when the news broke.

“Dejected” is the only word to describe what I felt. It was worse than watching the Bulls draft Kirk Hinrich out of Kansas days after the accident, because at least now I had a real shot. It
didn't seem to be in the cards that I would ever make an NBA team again. My mind started to race.

If you wanted me, and really believed in me, what's with the Plan B? Or was I Plan B all along and too naive to see it?

The latter was probably the right answer, but it was something I didn't want to accept. When a guy who hasn't played in three years signs a nonguaranteed deal with a team that is already carrying 15 guaranteed contacts, he has no legitimate reason to be offended. That's just business.

Still, at the time it was hard for me not to take it personally; part of me felt I deserved special consideration for how hard I had worked. I never wanted pity, but didn't they know what I had been through to get back here? Making matters even worse: Marcus and I had the same agent, Bill Duffy. Even if Duffy's relationship with Nets GM Rod Thorn had helped pave the way for me to make a potential NBA comeback, it just didn't feel right.

There was also my relationship with Vinnie.

Vinnie wasn't just part of the Nets ownership group. He was an encouraging voice cutting through all the noise around me, a spiritual adviser of sorts. He owned a publicly traded company and still somehow managed to find the time to bestow his energetic and upbeat attitude on me. He helped me step back from the tragedy of the accident and focus on the positives in ways I hadn't considered before. We met while I was working out in California, and he put me in contact with one of his personal trainers, Jessie Chionis, who was deeply involved in a different way of training altogether.

While I had become consumed with the apparatus on my left foot, Jessie focused more on the mental equipment I would need. It was a departure from the way I had been doing things since the accident.

It's hard to quiet your body and hone your mind when you're suffering physically and in constant pain. The type of pain from training was a good one, the kind of pain elite athletes welcome because it tells you that you're doing exactly what you need to do to set yourself apart from the competition. I had really missed that feeling. The type of pain I'd experienced since the accident, however, only reminded me of my limitations. What I had lost. This new adventure was about getting it back.

The workouts Jessie had me do were rooted in the martial arts. I'd sit in a squat-like position with my arms folded, hands clasped, elbows pointing in opposite directions, holding still for as long as I could. I'm not talking about a few moments and then a breather, but 40 to 50 minutes each session. The goal was to reacquaint my body with all of the stabilizing muscles it had forgotten how to use, while also teaching my mind to resist the urge to give in, to rest. I had rested these muscles long enough; it was time to reengage them. While I would hold this squat, Jessie would talk to me about finding the strength to push my body beyond what it thought it could do. I had never done anything like this before in all of my training as a player. Here I was, slowly conquering the atrophy that had taken my body and soul hostage, and I was doing so with an unfamiliar weapon: stillness.

Hold the position. Hold the position. Keep your hands together, maintain
balance, hold the position.

The whole thing felt weird, but it was July, and I wanted to prove to the organization that I was committed. I was going to do whatever it took to make the team. I would sit in that squatting position for an entire day if it meant that I'd be guaranteed a roster spot.

As camp unfolded, I realized that while I wasn't the same player I'd once been, I had developed a whole new set of skills that gave me back some of the confidence I had lost along the way. I was a lot better in pick-and-roll situations than Marcus, thanks to adjustments necessitated by my limitations. Before the accident, if I was on the right side of the court and the ball screen came up the middle, I could blow by my defender on the sideline, taking off as soon as I saw the defender's eyes pick up the screener. That slight distraction, a split second—before the screen even materialized—was all the time I needed to explode by him. The new me could see his eyes dart away, but I couldn't react quickly enough; I had to work the defender more into the actual screen, and then look to pass to my teammate rolling to the basket or keep my dribble and make something happen for myself. I had to become a better passer, and I did. I also employed other “old man” tricks, like stepping on Marcus's foot when I drove, and going up for a shot and throwing my forearms into his extended hand for a foul to be called. It helped that Marcus was neither in great shape nor had a good understanding yet of the NBA game.

But my tricks on offense didn't do me much good when it came time to guard him. I wasn't known for my defense to begin with, but even with my new shoe, I wasn't quick enough to stay in front of him. It was humbling to have to change not only my offensive game, but the way I played defense, too. My legs often felt as if they weighed 8,000 pounds. My body was tired, and it showed.

It wasn't all doom and gloom for me during training camp, though. There were a couple of days when I felt like myself despite my limitations. I could accomplish a lot with my modified skill set. I just had to try to get people to see and accept my game
for what it was now and not expect to see the player I used to be. I could no longer be instant offense. I was now a setup man who could reliably get a team in position to run its offense. Although I wasn't nearly as effective as Jason Kidd, for now, at least, I was certainly better than Marcus.

Nonetheless, Marcus had this swagger about him that I couldn't rattle. We both knew that no matter how bad he looked at times, he was going to be given every opportunity to show his stuff. He was their first-round draft pick and wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. So I started watching tape of an old teammate from the Bulls named Rick Brunson. He had bounced around the NBA a little, but he brought this scrappy fighter mentality every single day. He'd had to play that way because I was the lottery pick; I was going to get my chance. He didn't have that luxury. Still, I hated playing Brunson because he was one of the fiercest competitors I've encountered on the court.

Four years later, I'm Rick Brunson. While Marcus turned the ball over and shot poorly, everybody kept telling him not to worry, to take his time. I had to tell the media that I still believed in my ability, and I had to play like it wasn't just wishful thinking.

One of our first preseason games was against the Knicks, and Nate Robinson was on the court. If you ever want to know how
not
fast you are, play against Nate. The kid just destroyed me the entire night, as if I had done something personal to him or his family. The worst part was, he was so nice about killing me, I couldn't even get mad at him. He would blow right by me for a layup and then turn around and try to encourage me. “Come on, Jay. You can do it. Hang in there,” he would say after embarrassing me on live television. I liked it a lot better when M.J. was toying with me.

After the game, I walked into the locker room, my confidence in a coma. Coach Lawrence Frank started to address the team, and I just nodded my head, not knowing if we had won or lost. I was in a daze; I felt like I was done. I didn't talk to the media. I didn't even shower. I just put my suit back on and drove away from the arena as fast as I could.

After that night, I had a few good moments—the night we played the Celtics I made a couple of shots down the stretch that were enough to get my old friend Stuart Scott to talk about me again on
SportsCenter
. For a second, it felt like maybe I was headed in the right direction. But for the most part, I was only playing the fourth quarters of games, a big warning sign in the preseason.

In what turned out to be my last game in an NBA uniform, the play-by-play sheet for the final six minutes told the story:

5:20 | J. Williams—Foul: Personal (2 PF)

3:18 | J. Williams—Foul: Offensive (3 PF)

3:18 | J. Williams—Turnover: Foul (2 TO)

2:40 | J. Williams—Jump Shot: Made (3 PTS)

1:48 | J. Williams—Jump Shot: Missed

1:22 | J. Williams—Jump Shot: Missed

After showering, I walked to the parking lot, got in my car, and cried. I just sat there and let all the humiliation and pain and frustration from my hard work set in. I wept for where I was at
this point in my life. I wept for everything I had lost. And I wept from fear of what lay ahead. For more than three years, I had wondered if I would ever be able to play again. This was the first time I wondered if I even wanted to.

Something changed dramatically for me that night. I felt out of place. I felt like I no longer belonged on the court playing alongside the best. Today, when I look at my Nets jersey, I'm grateful to have had the chance to play again. But the jersey also represents the moment I realized that the person I became after the accident was going to have a very different relationship with the game than the athlete I left behind.

If I tell you I've made my peace with this, don't believe me. I will never be fully at peace, knowing that my fate wasn't for lack of talent, or an erosion of skill caused by age, but rather a direct result of one stupid decision that refused to release its hold on me.

October 22 was roster-cut day, and I knew exactly what was going to happen. I was changing at my locker when Tim Walsh, the athletic trainer on the team, came over and whispered, “Yo, Frank wants to see you.” His look confirmed what I already knew.

I had never been cut before, and I knew that streak was about to end. When I walked into Frank's office, he was doing paperwork, his head down. I sat down silently in the chair opposite the desk. He started the conversation with small talk, trying to delay the inevitable. Finally, after a couple of minutes of me pretending I actually cared about what he was saying, he started to sing my praises. The buildup before the letdown.

“Jay, I commend you for working so hard after all you've been through. You have been so impressive over this training camp, and what you have accomplished is beyond great, but I just think
you need to go somewhere and play for a while. You need to get the reps to get all the way back.”

After that, the only voice I heard was the one in my head.

Maybe my agent should have sold me differently. I used to be like a pit bull
,
but I'm not the same person anymore. I've been too nervous and shaky before the games. Maybe if I stopped overthinking everything and just played
,
things would be different.

Excuses had become a common theme during these self-reflective moments, and now I had run out of them.

My dream of making my NBA comeback was coming to an end, and I had no idea what to do next.

I
n this life, a person is motivated by either inspiration or desperation, and the latter was what drove me to make my next move. I prayed that playing in the preseason for the Nets would warrant a call from another team that wasn't as deep at the point-guard position. But no call came—at least not from the NBA.

After four days of being idle, giving my body and mind a chance to relax, getting back in the gym was my only option. We were starting to get some serious offers from teams in Italy and Russia for significant amounts of money. I was desperate to play and was willing to go anywhere to do it.

My friend Graham had been playing in a recreational league on the Upper East Side in New York City and asked me if I wanted to get a workout in. Being inactive for four days seemed like an eternity, and I thought this would be a good way to get
back into it. Noelle joined me as I went to meet him at a gym on 75th and First for a game that started at 8
P.M.

Playing ball with Graham always lifted my spirits. He was just as competitive as I was, and we always played angry. We were on a tear in the first half, dominating everyone on the court. It felt great to be back in my element.

During the second half, I drove by my man on the baseline and went in for the easy layup. As I landed, my right foot came down directly on someone's foot. I immediately fell to the floor, screaming and writhing in pain. At first I thought I had just rolled my ankle, but when I looked at my foot, it was positioned at a 90-degree angle from my fibula.

“Not fucking again. I can't do this shit. I can't!” I screamed.

Graham and Noelle rushed to me on the court while everyone stood around staring in disbelief at the grotesque injury. The guy whose foot I had landed on was almost in tears and kept apologizing. The guys picked me up and took me outside to a taxi. We rushed to the nearest emergency room, which was New York–Presbyterian Hospital on 68th Street.

When we finally got there, I was immediately taken to the back and put in a private room. When the doctor and the nurses came in, it only took one look for them to realize that I had dislocated my ankle. The doctor explained that he would have to pop it back into place.

He grabbed right below the toes on my foot with his right hand while his left firmly held the back of my ankle, and he rotated my foot until I heard a very loud crack. I screamed as they quickly started to put my ankle into a splinted cast to keep it stable.

We didn't leave the hospital until six the next morning. They told me that I would have to see a specialist as soon as possible to
follow up, and for me, the only option was to return to Duke and see my physician there.

Duke confirmed the diagnosis. I had dislocated my right ankle, and it would take four to six weeks in a walking boot to heal.

I was beside myself. I had come so far and was on the cusp of playing professional ball again. I didn't care whether it was in the NBA or overseas—playing was all that mattered. The thought of having to walk back into the Duke Sports Medicine Center and see the same faces all over again for yet another injury was incomprehensible.

Three weeks of physical therapy every day with Jason was required, and as I made my way into the same clinic I had just left two years earlier, this time with my healthy side broken, I could hardly face him.

I could only imagine what everyone was thinking as I sat down on the therapy table, my right ankle in a boot.

Jason, let it go
,
already.
Enough!
Why do you keep putting yourself through this? Time to let it go.

But I couldn't just let it go. I was obsessed with succeeding, and I was not going to give up. I was only 25 years old, too young to let this be the way my story ended. I never once thought about what I would do if I didn't play basketball, and I wasn't about to start now. Sitting on the therapy table that day, I made up my mind to continue the journey to make it back. I was relentless. This may have been a setback, but it paled in comparison with everything I had been through.

Now I was doing therapy on both of my legs. I did the regular maintenance and strengthening on my left side while Jason attended to my right. Stem treatment and ultrasound were required, along with a great amount of mobilization for those three
weeks. The biggest issue would be the bone bruise caused by the dislocation. Jason told me that it could last up to three or four months, even after I was able to run again. Icing day and night was essential to my recovery, so I purchased a Game Ready machine, which was a cold compression wrap attached to a mechanical device that pushed ice water into the wrap encompassing my ankle.

Two and a half weeks later, I left Durham for Los Angeles to see Omi and Athletes' Performance. After another week of doing stem therapy, I was able to take off the boot and slowly work my way back onto the court. My right side had always been the part of my body I could count on. Now, not only did I have limited lift off my left side, but I could barely jump off my right.

After a long day of rehabbing and working out, I went back to my friends' place to crash. I was staying with two guys and a girl whom I had met through Scooter Braun a couple of years earlier. This was like my little family out in the L.A. area during my years of training. Mike and Mike—not the ESPN guys, but Michael McCurdy and Michael Vukmanovich—both played basketball with Scooter growing up. We would always spend time chatting about hoops, among other things. Their third roommate was taking the steps to become a woman. She and I always had in-depth conversations about our insecurities. We were a cool bunch, and they were always nice enough to let me sleep on their couch from time to time when I needed a place to stay.

That night I received a call from Noelle. When I picked up the phone, I heard the urgency in her voice right away. I heard it in her voice that our run was over.

“I can't marry you, Jason. I can't live like this, and I just want to be happy. I need you to come back to Jersey so we can talk.”

She was serious this time, and I knew it. When we hung up, I was certain we were done. In an effort to ease my pain, I went to meet up with friends at a bar in West Hollywood. I downed four vodka martinis and seven shots of tequila in about an hour. I knew I shouldn't have gotten behind the wheel that night, but I did anyway. While driving on the 10 freeway, I rolled down the windows, hoping the crisp air would keep me focused. I turned the radio on, too, which was not a good move. “Purple Rain” was playing; Noelle had always been obsessed with Prince. As I was driving, all I could think about was her and all the bullshit we had gone through to be together. I started hitting the steering wheel as hard as I could while I was bawling. It was like a scene out of a bad movie, except the cop behind me now, flashing his lights in my rearview mirror, wasn't an actor.

You have to be kidding me! You
have
to be fucking kidding me! There's no way this is happening to me right now.
No
way!

I started to pull off to the left shoulder from the left lane, which is exactly the opposite of what a driver does on the freeway unless he's looking to get killed. After drifting left, I turned on my right blinker and hoped I could work my way through three lanes of traffic without giving away my state of inebriation. I made it and waited for the officer to approach.

“License and registration,” the cop said. “Do you know how fast you were going?”

“Yes, officer, I was probably going around 50 miles per hour or so.”

“Have you been drinking?”

“Well, I had a couple of beers, but I totally feel fine,” I said, as if my saying “I'm fine” would take care of the situation. I could hear the cop requesting backup, and I was thinking,
Really? Backup?

The first cop actually recognized me, which led me to believe my chances of getting out of this mess were pretty good. We were having a decent conversation waiting for his backup, but when the other cop arrived, he didn't give a damn who I was. And truthfully, at that point in my life, I didn't care who I was, either.

I barely knew
where
I was.

“Do you know how fast you were going, Mr. Williams?” the backup asked. Again I said, “Like 50 to 55 miles per hour.”

“Do you mind if we put you through some tests?”

I'm not stupid. Even though I was tipsy at best, I was sober enough to know where this was going, so before I got out of the car, I started talking about my surgeries and my leg.

“Look, here's my scar,” I said, shamelessly pimping my three-year nightmare. “It runs all the way from here all the way down to here, and I have drop foot. I don't have stability in my left ankle, so it's hard to balance. I can barely stand on one foot. Whatever test you put me through, I may not be able to pass, but it's not because I'm intoxicated; it's because I can barely balance.”

Awful, I know. I had just spent the preseason running up and down an NBA court, and now I was selling myself as an invalid.

The funny thing is, they put me through some simple tests and I ended up passing. I remember thinking,
I'm okay.

One of them—I forget who—went back to his car while the other stood by me.

When he made his way back, he said, “All right, Mr. Williams, how fast were you going?”

“Officer, I swear the max may have been 60 to 65 miles per hour.”

“Mr. Williams, I'm going to need you to put your hands behind your back.”

“Why? What do you mean? What happened?”

“You were going 35 miles per hour in the fast lane.”

When you start by saying that you were going 50, bump it up to maybe 65 max, and then are told you were actually doing 35, you are out of options.

Apparently people were passing me, beeping at me, and I was swerving, all while crying to some chart topper from 1984.

After I declined to take a Breathalyzer, they proceeded to cuff me, put me in the back of one of their cars, and drive me 45 minutes to their station in Van Nuys for a blood test. I'm not sure what my blood-alcohol level came to, but I know that I slept the night off in jail.

I got out of a DUI by pleading to a “wet reckless” charge a couple of days later and jumped on a flight back to Jersey to see Noelle. We agreed to meet in a parking lot off Route 18, between our respective childhood homes. She was driving the Range Rover I had given her, and I could feel my heart pounding as I approached her car.

I climbed in the passenger seat, and we found a quiet place to talk.

“I can't do this, Jason,” she said. “I can't marry you.”

Suddenly I couldn't breathe. I hoped that maybe our phone conversation back in L.A. was just another of the many ups and downs we had grown so accustomed to over the years.

“Why not?”

We sat and talked about the love we had. We talked about our first kiss as 16-year-old kids in her parents' basement. But we also talked about the hateful words we'd said to each other. The cheating. My accident may have given us a chance to address those wounds, but they would never fully heal. Not for her, anyway, and in retrospect, not for me, either. I didn't really
know what kind of man I wanted to be when I asked her to marry me. And while I didn't doubt the love we had, she was doing me a favor.

Cut loose by my dad.

Cut loose by the Nets.

Cut loose by Noelle.

M
Y ONLY REMAINING
option was playing in the NBA Development League with the Austin Toros. The team's head coach was Hall of Famer Dennis Johnson, the former Sonics, Suns, and Celtics guard. The man Larry Bird called the greatest teammate he ever played with told me that he wasn't looking for a feel-good story. He was going to challenge me to reach the next level.

When I arrived on December 3, the ball was given to me from the start. My right ankle was still bothering me a little, but I felt good enough to be effective. It felt like time was running out, and if I was going to make a move, it had to be now. Dennis promised me that he would play me at least 35 minutes per night from the jump. This was going to be a major adjustment, considering that with the Bulls I didn't come close to that, averaging about 23 minutes.

When I arrived in Austin, I had to adapt on the fly—I had new teammates I barely knew, I didn't necessarily have a great understanding of the plays, and I was still coming off an injury. I also was quick to understand that all the players down here were just as hungry as I was. No one took a play off, and everyone was willing to do whatever it took to make it. I had a new level of respect for their pride and determination.

After about three practices, it was time for our first game, in Bismarck, North Dakota. It wasn't my lack of speed or even my
atrocious shooting that was the problem. The biggest struggle was that I couldn't guess correctly where guys were going to move while trying to pass them the ball.

My stat line after playing 41 minutes of play in the loss was:
14 points (5-of-16), 9 assists, and 11 turnovers.

My performance was abysmal, but I chalked it up to this being my first game playing 40-plus minutes in three years. And on top of not being in the best shape, my ankle was still sore.

In the D-League, things were on a whole different level than in the NBA. Our travel schedules weren't even second class, to say the least. We played one game in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, that required us to leave Austin on Thursday at 6:00
A.M.
to fly to Chicago, arrive at ten, then catch a connecting flight to Minneapolis at eleven, arriving around 1:00
P.M.
, followed by a four-and-a-half-hour bus ride to Sioux Falls. We rested in South Dakota for a night, played on Friday at 7:00
P.M.,
and promptly boarded a bus after the game for the four-and-a-half-hour bus ride back to Minneapolis, getting in around three in the morning to wait for a 6:15
A.M.
Saturday flight that reached Dallas at 11:30. Our final flight to Austin was delayed, so we didn't get back until 1:30 in the afternoon, with a 7:00
P.M.
home game that night. I'm exhausted just thinking about it. The D-League travel grind was just part of the fight we all had on our hands to get back to the big time.