The night of his accident had been the kind Bobby Hurley, most rookies in fact, face more often than not in the NBA.
Hurley, the first point guard and seventh pick overall in last June's draft, was scoreless with seven assists in 19 minutes Sunday in a loss to the Clippers. But the long-suffering Sacramento fans, not seeing their team win as many as 30 games in any of the last seven seasons, remained supportive of Hurley. He was averaging just 7.1 points and 6.1 assists, hardly the stuff of six-year, $16 million contracts.But Hurley had embraced Sacramento, unlike other players. First-round pick Billy Owens was traded after he said he would never play there. Others had greeted Mitch Richmond after his trade there with "Welcome to hell."
But Hurley had said last spring he would love to play in Sacramento, opening still another love affair with fans who watched him play and knew him best.
"He is Everyman," his father and high school coach, Bob Sr., once said. "All the kids relate to him because he looks like them."
Hurley himself said enthusiastically about playing in the NBA, "Coming where I came from, it's hard to believe where I am."
Hurley dressed quickly Sunday and headed to his townhouse complex a few miles northwest of Arco Arena amid the rice fields north of Sacramento, upset about the loss but philosophical.
Just before Hurley reached the stop sign at Del Paso and El Centro roads, Mike Batham was traveling south and had to swerve to avoid a car coming at him seeming to hug the center line. The car, a 1980 station wagon, allegedly didn't have its headlights on. They apparently were burned out, and its driver, Dan Wieland, apparently had turned his brights off when another car had blinked its brights.
Hurley, 22, stopped his Toyota 4 Runner pickup truck, looked and then made a left onto El Centro and never saw the streak coming at him out of the night.
Slightly built, barely 6 feet and 165 pounds, Hurley constantly overcame the odds. He was raised in a middle-class section of Jersey City, N.J., but took the bus to the low-income projects to play basketball.
"You had to go there to get better," Hurley once explained.
And he led his father's team to four state championships, went on to Duke, where he was the point guard on successive NCAA champions and became the NCAA career leader in assists. Then he went to the NBA, with doubts trailing him like a faithful friend.
"Every level he has gone to," Bob Sr. said in response to questions about Hurley as an NBA point guard, "he has adjusted to. he has been an amazingly successful player."
And Bob Sr. believes his son will be again.
Bobby Hurley was due out of intensive care this weekend after an auto accident the previous Sunday that could have killed him. The trachea tube was severed from the main airway to his left lung. Had he not been helped as quickly as he was, he could have suffocated in his own blood. He also had multiple rib fractures, two collapsed lungs, a serious knee injury, and wrist and back fractures.
That is what happens when you're hit broadside on the driver's side by a station wagon traveling about 60 mph when you're not wearing a seat belt and get hurled through the passenger side window like a projectile 100 feet into a ditch, face down in a puddle of water.
Because Hurley was traveling home to his townhouse complex where many players live, teammate Mike Peplowski was one of the first to reach him.
Peplowski found Batham and corrections officer Linda Okray with first-aid experience tending to Hurley when he arrived. Batham saw the accident and immediately phoned for help on his car phone. Okray kept Hurley still after Batham rolled Hurley out of the puddle to keep him from drowning.
Through hazy eyes, Hurley was crying when he saw Peplowski.
"Pep," said Hurley, "am I going to be all right?"
Remarkably, Hurley seems as though he will. By not landing on the road, he didn't suffer any serious head or spinal injuries. His doctors said that because he was in such good condition as an athlete he was able to endure the stress of the accident.
"We feel very good about his return to normal health," said Bob Sr., who, with the rest of the family, had watched TNT all night for bulletins before flying to his side. "With everything I know about him, he'll be playing a week earlier than everyone projects. He's goal-oriented, and it's evident he can be back and will be."
That's not likely to be at least until next season, but that's wonderful news to Hurley and his family and for the hard-luck Kings. First-round pick Ricky Berry committed suicide four years ago, top 1989 pick Pervis Ellison was injured, Bill Robinzine committed suicide when the franchise was in Kansas City, and Maurice Stokes was crippled when he was a rookie star in Cincinnati.
"I'm not a doctor," said Kings personnal director Jerry Reynolds, "but I left the hospital (Thursday) knowing he was going to be OK. He's going to be normal, and he'll probably play basketball again."