[Onkel Neal]

Man, talk about regret

A Leg Rebuilt, a Life Renewed for Jay Williams

On the night before his first college basketball game — before he started for Duke at Madison Square Garden, before he became a national champion and the occupant of Michael Jordan’s old locker in Chicago — Williams fell asleep in a hotel room. He saw himself spinning in the air, around and around, over and over, until a red fire hydrant came into view.

“So weird,” he thought when he woke up.

Williams forgot about the dream until nearly four years later, until June 2003, on a side street on the North Side of Chicago. He sat atop a red-and-black Yamaha R6, a sport bike that weighed about 400 pounds and boasted a 600-cubic-centimeter engine. He revved the engine once and heard it purr, the gear, he believed, in neutral.

He loved that sound, but he especially loved the way he felt those times when his bike shot forward. “Like how I felt in transition,” Williams said, “like if I caught the ball with a full head of steam and knew I was going to score.” Sometimes, he pushed the bike past 120 miles per hour, faster, faster, faster, until the landscape blurred.

Very good article about a sad situation, thought I would share it.