by Bob Hurley
Another good example for this game is Hallice Cooke, who’s been pigeonholed by me and the other coaches as mostly an open shooter and a perimeter defender; now we have to ask Hallice to take more of an all-around role. To handle the ball a little bit more. To distribute. To drive to the basket. Basically, to do some things he hasn’t been asked to do for us—some of the things we always look to Kyle to do.
Jerome Frink, too, has to take on some of the scoring we’ve come to expect out of Kyle—so basically we’ll have three players stepping up and filling the role usually taken on by just this one player.
You might think that these younger players would be a little tentative, a little nervous about being put in this situation against a good team like Long Island Lutheran, a team that won their state championship the year before, but actually it’s just the opposite. They’re pumped, confident. It’s the St. Anthony way, and they’ve been preparing for this moment their entire high school careers. They’re good and ready. All along, they’ve been taught to believe their time is coming—and here it is.
The Long Island Lutheran players can see something is up. They all know Kyle—by reputation, at least. They’ve prepared for Kyle. They know Josh and Tariq. They see these kids dressed in street clothes, sitting in the stands, their entire game plan goes out the door—but at the same time they start to think they don’t need a game plan. With Tim Coleman out and Jimmy Hall gone from the program, we’re down five key players—so if they scouted us earlier in the week, they’ve probably got no idea what to make of us now.
One of the great ironies of this game, I’ll learn later, is that a group of high school coaches from Long Island have come to the gym just for the chance to see Kyle play. They’ve heard about him for years, and this is their chance to see what all the fuss is about, so you can just imagine how disappointed these guys are to see Kyle sitting in the stands in his street clothes. A couple of them stand to leave, once they figure out Kyle and our other starters aren’t playing. They can’t imagine we’ll even give Long Island Lutheran a good game. But one of these coaches, Frank Alagia, who was a terrific ballplayer himself—had a nice career at St. John’s playing for Lou Carnesecca—turns to his fellow coaches and says, “You guys don’t get it. This is St. Anthony basketball. These kids Hurley’s putting in, they expect to win. You should hang around. They’ll give them a good game.”
Sure enough, most of the coaches leave anyway, but Frank calls it just right. Our young guys are psyched. Our bench players are determined to show they deserve more time on the floor. We come out sharp and manage to hold a slim lead the whole game. It’s a battle—not quite back and forth, but there’s not a whole lot of forth. We’re playing well, but we can’t seem to push the lead. At one point in the first half, Long Island Lutheran goes on a bit of a run, but Edon Molic comes off the bench and hits a big three to turn the game back our way. The kid’s one of our best pure shooters, but he doesn’t get a lot of meaningful minutes, so it’s good to see him make a contribution. Tarin Smith, too, starts to light it up. This kid’s been making great strides all season long—a sophomore guard from Monmouth County who figures to play a bigger and bigger role for us. Really, there’s a lot to like about Tarin’s game—and what sticks out is his motivation. He lives in Monmouth County, takes the train up every day, which right off the bat tells me he’s into it. He’s motivated. Plus, he’s an outstanding student—a candidate to play Ivy League ball when the time comes.
I sit back and watch Tarin and the rest of his teammates take the floor with all kinds of swagger—like each one of them, to a man, belongs on this floor and no place else. Like going into battle without five key players is no big thing.
We wind up winning 48–39, our biggest margin of the game, and it’s all because the guys who are with us put the team on their shoulders. Because they find a way to pick up the guys who let us down.
6.
A Dark, Dark Night
EVERY SEASON IS A JOURNEY. EVERY JOURNEY IS A LIFETIME.
—Mike Krzyzewski
NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE HEART OF A CHAMPION.
—Rudy Tomjanovich
Life never goes the way you think.
Doesn’t even come close.
As a kid, I thought I’d play in the NBA. Never occurred to me I wouldn’t even make it off the freshman team at St. Peter’s College, but that’s just what happened. Never thought my sons would go on to play big-time college ball, for two of the top coaches in the country—Bobby for Mike Krzyzewski at Duke and Danny for P. J. Carlesimo at Seton Hall—or that they’d face each other in the Sweet Sixteen round of the NCAA tournament, but that’s just what happened. Never once imagined I’d have an opportunity to coach at a school like St. Anthony, or to grow its basketball program into one of the best in the country, but that’s just what happened too.
And Chris and I certainly never thought that for every happiness and success we enjoyed as a family there might be a real heartbreak waiting just around the corner—but of course, there’s no avoiding heartbreak. We lost our parents eventually. We lost our son Sean. And one night in December 1993, we nearly lost Bobby.
I’ll share this last story here, because it has to do with the “undefeated” theme that runs through this book, and because it’s an important marker in our family and in the St. Anthony community. It’s with us always. And it’s emblematic. Like the seven perfect teams profiled in these pages, Bobby had to have an iron will and a bottomless supply of grit and perseverance to fight his way back after a terrible car accident that almost cost him … everything.
First, a little setup. After a great career at St. Anthony, Bobby kept it going at Duke, where he ended up winning back-to-back NCAA titles. Set all kinds of school records, conference records, NCAA records. I couldn’t have been prouder of him, as his former coach, or more excited for him, as his father. It felt like everything was going his way. After his senior season, the Sacramento Kings selected Bobby in the first round of the NBA draft and signed him to a big contract. My brother Brian went out to California to help Bobby transition from the life of a student-athlete on the East Coast to the life of a professional athlete on the West Coast. Bobby was smart enough to see that my brother would help him to keep his focus, or maybe he just liked having his Uncle Brian around; either way, it worked out.
The transition into the Kings’ lineup was a little less smooth. The Sacramento coach, Garry St. Jean, had a set rotation he used to deploy, with two different units. Typically, it meant Bobby would play either the first and third quarters of the game or the second and fourth quarters. Spud Webb was the other point guard on the team, and he usually played the other quarters. As a fellow coach, I could understand Garry’s thinking, if you had a deep bench and certain guys who worked well together on the floor, but as a dad, I found it frustrating. I kept my mouth shut—not usually one of my strengths—but I couldn’t shake thinking that if you’re playing well, you should keep playing; if you’re struggling, you should sit. It’s tough for a guy to get into the flow of a game if he knows he’s coming right back out; he’ll never find his rhythm. Bobby, to his credit, was a little less frustrated than me; he was just worried about making the most of his minutes, making an impression. He’d always call after his games to let us know how things went; we’d talk about what he could have done better, what he could have done different, what he could work on going forward. Remember, this was back before you could get the NBA league package on satellite, before all these wall-to-wall cable stations, so we couldn’t always follow the Kings, but seventeen games into his rookie season, we’d still managed to get a good handle on how things were going. When Bobby played well, his postgame calls were filled with all kinds of details and analysis; when he struggled, the calls were a whole lot shorter. Either way, he always called as soon as he got home or back to his hotel room.
The Kings had just been in Philadelphia on Friday, December 10, for a game against the 76ers. I’d already seen Bobby play in a game against the
Nets at the Meadowlands, where he handed out nine assists, and in a game against the Knicks at the Garden, where he struggled. That’s how it was for him the first month of the season: he was on and off, hot and cold. He’d play with confidence one game, and then he’d be unsure of himself the next, so I was hoping to catch him on a good night against the 76ers. We’d arranged for a whole busload of people from Jersey City to go down to Philly, and it was tremendous. Bobby played pretty well: four points, six assists. He only played about half the game, as usual, but he ran the floor like a demon and showed everyone he could play at the NBA level. Absolutely, he could play. I left the Spectrum that night thinking it was only a matter of time before Bobby really established himself as an NBA player.
Two days later, Sunday, December 12, the Kings were back in Sacramento for a game against the Los Angeles Clippers. We were all looking forward to the game, Bobby especially. He was going up against his old friend and teammate Terry Dehere, who also went in the first round, after a fine career at Seton Hall. Their plan was to get together for dinner to compare notes and catch up. And we were excited back home because the game was the featured Sunday night game on television, so we could tune in. Still, it was late for us, Chris and I both had to get up for work the next day, but we watched the first half and went to bed, thinking Bobby would check in afterward with his report.
Right around one o’clock in the morning, about an hour or so after the game was due to end, we got a call. My first thought was that it was Bobby, checking in. But it wasn’t Bobby. He’d been in a car accident, we were told. We didn’t really know anything else at that point, only that he’d just left the Arco Arena, so we just figured it was a fender bender, some kind of minor accident in the parking lot, because there hadn’t been a whole lot of time after the game.
Ten minutes later, we got another call—this time from the Sacramento team doctor, Richard Marder. Chris answered the phone, and the first thing Dr. Marder said was, “We think he’s gonna make it.”
Oh, man. To have to hear something like that, from out of nowhere like that … our whole world went dark. From that first call, we weren’t thinking life and death. We just thought maybe the car was a little banged up, maybe Bobby was a little banged up, that’s all. In fact, we both thought this next call would be from Bobby, to tell us what was what.
Chris dropped the phone and fell to her knees; she was in shock. I slipped into some kind of autopilot mode—not really thinking, just doing what needed to get done. I picked up the phone and tried to get some more information, but all this doctor could tell me was to make arrangements to get out to Sacramento as soon as possible.
We were frantic, trying to find a flight.
We were frantic with worry.
Just, frantic.
By this point, one-thirty or so, we started getting a ton of calls. The accident had been on the news, on ESPN, all over. Still, we couldn’t get any real information, only that Bobby had been taken to the University of California–Davis Medical Center, that he’d gone into surgery, and that there had been blood coming from his ear when they found him, probably from a head injury. The details that managed to come our way had us sick with worry, and it didn’t help that the details kept changing—like the fact that the blood coming from his ear was really coming from a cut under his eye, something it would have been good to know sooner rather than later.
Somehow we were able to get on a 5:00 A.M. Northwest Airlines flight to Denver, so we had to hustle a few things together and head to the airport. Before we left, we turned on the television and saw a picture of Bobby’s car, and we knew it was bad. The car was almost unrecognizable.
Danny was home from school on break, and Melissa was home as well. Chris’s mom was still with us too, so we had a full house. Even so, some friends came over to stay with my mother-in-law and the kids while we raced to the airport, still pretty much in the dark about what was going on. The whole flight to Denver, we were in agony because we had no real information, other than that grim prognosis from the doctor on the phone, the horrifying pictures of Bobby’s car on the news, the unreliable details we kept hearing on the news. One of us had been on the phone to the hospital the whole time before we left for the airport, but there was nothing anyone could tell us. Nothing reassuring anyway.
Chris was able to use the phone on the plane to reach Dr. Marder, who told us that there was no brain damage. A part of me heard that and thought, What a relief! But another part thought, Brain damage? It killed me to have to think of my son in such life-and-death, touch-and-go terms.
We managed to get through to the hospital when we switched planes in Denver—but still there was no real news. Bobby was still in surgery, that’s all we knew. By now the story had been all over the news for hours, so people were coming up to us at the airport to show their support, but we were desperate to know what was going on in Sacramento. Either we couldn’t get through to the right person at the hospital, or the right person didn’t want to give us too much information. All we knew was that Bobby was in bad shape.
We were literally flying blind.
To this day I’ve got no idea how we made it through those long, terrible hours of not knowing. Chris doesn’t have any idea either. It’s like our lives had been put on pause, and all we could do was get out to California and race to Bobby’s side. There was nothing to talk about. We just held on to each other and tried not to lose it in front of all those good people.
——
We were met at the airport in Sacramento by Travis Stanley, the Kings’ director of media relations. He was in a very somber mood. Already, I’d been imagining the worst, and then putting it out of my mind, and then imagining it all over again. Before we got to see Bobby in the hospital at Cal-Davis, the doctors and nurses took us into a private room and tried to fill us in, telling us what to expect. Bobby was unconscious, but they didn’t want us to break down in front of him, because he could still be plugged into what was going on in the room. They wanted us to be up and positive and hoped maybe Bobby would pick up on that.
Well, they could have prepared us all morning for this and it still would have been a real shock. Less than three days earlier, we’d seen Bobby play in Philadelphia, and he was 165 pounds, in the best shape of his life, running like a marvel, and here he looked like he’d ballooned to 300 pounds. His entire body was inflated from the trauma, the same way your knee might swell after an injury, because the body attempts to heal itself by sending fluids to the site of a trauma. Bobby was completely swollen, from head to toe. He looked like a stranger.
I knew it was my son, but only because that’s what they told me.
Chris and I sat with Bobby for as long as they let us, one of us on each side of the bed while they continued to work on him, to monitor him. We rested our hands on him and sat and prayed and tried not to cry.
As we sat, we learned that if there hadn’t been a perfect storm of life-saving miracles, Bobby might never have made it this far. What happened was, the guy who ended up hitting Bobby’s car was driving without his lights on. Another driver happened to be on the same dark country road right by the arena just as this reckless driver sped by, and this second guy knew instinctively that a car approaching from the opposite direction would be in serious trouble, so he tried to follow the vehicle without the headlights and maybe get out in front and signal the driver and prevent an accident.
Meanwhile, Bobby was a little dejected after the game, frustrated that he hadn’t played well, and he was heading back to his condo; turned out Terry didn’t have a great game either, and neither one of them felt like going out. Bobby didn’t even have his seat belt on yet, because he was just pulling out of the arena parking lot—turning left onto the county road that ran by the arena—and as he did, this guy came crashing into the driver side. Bobby never saw him coming, never had a chance to react.
The guy was a painter, driving a station wagon filled with paint cans, and the impact sent Bobby through the passenger side door a
nd about fifty feet in the air, into an irrigation ditch on the side of the road.
If Mike, our Good Samaritan, hadn’t set off in the direction of the speeding car, who knows when they would have found Bobby.
And if Mike didn’t happen to have a cell phone—which in 1993 a lot of people still didn’t have—he would have never been able to call 911 and get help on the way. This probably saved Bobby’s life, because the road surrounding the Arco Arena was in the middle of farm country. The arena parking lot had already emptied. It could have been hours before another car spotted the accident scene.
Another Mike, Bobby’s teammate Mike Peplowski, pulled out of the arena a couple moments later, and he of course noticed the damage to Bobby’s car, so he pulled over. This, too, was a lifesaver. Both Mikes started looking for Bobby, and Mike Peplowski got to him first, found Bobby lying with his head in a puddle. It’s a wonder Bobby didn’t drown, which takes us to another miracle: there’d been a drought that year, that part of California, so there was hardly any water in that irrigation ditch.
It worked out that the emergency room resident on duty that night at Cal-Davis was Dr. Russell Sawyer, an expert on trachea surgery. In fact, Dr. Sawyer had just written a chapter for a book on the subject, compiled by the National Thoracic Society, so he was able to take one look at Bobby and make an immediate diagnosis. It also worked out that the hospital’s head of thoracic surgery, Dr. John Benfield, heard a report about Bobby’s accident on the radio, so he immediately called the hospital and got on the phone with Dr. Sawyer. Amazingly, Dr. Benfield was the head of the National Thoracic Society; he was the one who’d actually compiled the book on the subject featuring the chapter by Dr. Sawyer; Dr. Benfield had been traveling, but had cut his trip short, and it was pure luck that he was in town to perform Bobby’s surgery. Another doctor, F. William Blaisdell, head of the hospital’s automobile trauma unit, was also on hand to assist with the surgery, so Bobby had a kind of dream team working on him.