Jay Williams recalls the fateful day when he 'threw it all away'
— -- After just one season with the Chicago Bulls, a team starved for a new messiah since Michael Jordan's retirement, Jay Williams destroyed his career when he suffered a horrific motorcycle accident. In an instant, the man with perhaps as fast a first step as any point guard in history could no longer do anything for himself, including walk.
In "Life Is Not An Accident," Jay Williams shares his story -- both heartbreaking and uplifting -- of being a young man trying to wrest control of his life from his overinvolved parents, from the pleasures and perils of fame and money, and from the near-fatal mistake that threatened to define him.
After a decade spent recovering from his injuries -- the rehabilitations, the comeback attempts, the professional forays into the seedy underside of sports agenting -- Williams recounts with a rare honesty his hard-fought path to college basketball stardom and the painful lessons he has learned while reconstructing his fractured adulthood.
The following is an excerpt from " Life Is Not an Accident: A Memoir of Reinvention" by Jay Williams.
On the day I almost died, I remember waking from an afternoon nap to the full glory of the sun hanging over the lake like the tip of a sparkler. The master bedroom in my place in Chicago had floor-to-ceiling windows and a wraparound deck with a patio that connected to the living room. You could turn left and see the skyscrapers. Turn to the right and there was Lake Michigan, looking as limitless as an ocean. It was one of three modern-inspired units on the 40th floor of the Park Hyatt on Michigan Avenue. I had been there just about a year, and every time I opened the front door, I would step into the foyer in shock at how my life had drastically changed. It was spectacular.
In places like Los Angeles or Miami, you take days like June 19, 2003, for granted. But in Chicago, where the winters are so cold, dark, and long that the locals call it Chiberia, days like these are treated like precious jewels. While standing in front of the window in my bedroom, I took a deep breath and gazed upon my new city of dreams. I reached out and pressed my hand against the window to feel the warmth of the light and thought to myself, Today is going to be an amazing day.
So many people look at what happened to me later that afternoon through the prism of a ruined NBA career, but that's not how I think about it today, or at least that's not the only way I think about it. The way I see it, it's a reminder of how things can change in a flash. There's a saying that a sense of immortality is a curse carried only by the young, but I disagree. We all do it -- take the future for granted. That's just human nature. Then one day you wake up in your perfect apartment on a perfect day, with your perfect job, leave for a meeting, and never see that perfect apartment again.
The day before, I had flown down to Durham, North Carolina, to talk to some students at a basketball camp at my alma mater, Duke. Afterwards, I played pickup ball with some of the Duke players while Chris Collins, who was still an assistant under Coach Mike Krzyzewski at the time, watched.
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