NBA Beat: Hall of fame calibre friendship

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#1
http://www.sacbee.com/content/sports/story/10717851p-11636279c.html

NBA beat: This friendship was Hall of Fame-caliber



By Joe Davidson -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PDT Sunday, September 12, 2004


Red Auerbach said he was Magic Johnson before we came to know Magic Johnson.
Bob Pettit, another Hall of Famer, said he was Karl Malone before the Mailman emerged as the prototypical power forward of today.

One of the NBA's forgotten stars - Maurice Stokes - was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame on Friday night, his story laced with incredible ability and sorrow. Fellow Hall member Jack Twyman accepted the honor on Stokes' behalf.


Stokes was on his way to a decorated career with the Rochester, then Cincinnati Royals (who years later became the Sacramento Kings) before his life was altered on an otherwise routine play. A powerfully built 6-foot-7, 232-pound forward, Stokes won NBA Rookie of the Year honors in 1955-56 and was averaging nearly 17 points, 18 rebounds and seven assists per game in his third season when it all ended.

Stokes lost his balance while battling the Minneapolis Lakers' Vern Mikkelsen for a rebound and crashed to the floor, his head slamming onto the hardwood. Three days later on a flight home to Cincinnati, Stokes slumped into the arms of Twyman, then into a coma that lasted months.

Although he regained consciousness and his memory, Stokes' ability to speak was gone, and so was his body. Stokes' brain had swelled, and his motor system - which controls a person's ability to walk, talk and move body parts - was lost. Stokes remained a paraplegic, and he died of a heart attack in 1970.

Stokes' retired jersey No. 12 hangs in the Arco Arena rafters, near Twyman's No. 27, and wouldn't it be fitting for Kings owners Joe and Gavin Maloof to invite Twyman to a game to honor him and his friend this coming season?

Beyond basketball, Stokes and Twyman's friendship transcended race - this was during the turbulent 1950s and '60s, remember - and went far beyond standard loyalty.

Stokes was black, Twyman white. Stokes' family couldn't pay for medical costs, and the Royals wouldn't after changing ownership groups. Twyman sued and received worker's compensation for Stokes.

"He was a guy lying there without a team," Twyman said in a recent Cincinnati Post interview. "There was no insurance, no compensation."

Twyman legally adopted Stokes and cared for him for the rest of his life.

Tragedy was a frequent visitor to the Stokes family. A week after Stokes was hurt, his twin sister died of a heart attack.

For a spell, Stokes could only communicate by moving one eyelid. Through rehabilitation, he was able to move a little more freely.

And Twyman was with him most of the time.

"Maurice lived for 12 years after (his injury), and he was never down," Twyman said. "He never said, Why me?"

After he was hurt, Stokes left the floor and appeared fine. But the severity of the trauma wasn't known until days later, after the Royals had played Detroit in a playoff game, a contest in which Stokes scored 12 points and had 15 rebounds.

It was a dynasty in the making

Twyman said the Royals might have become a dynasty, which could have affected when - or even if - the franchise had kept moving west, from Cincinnati to Kansas City in 1972 and to Sacramento in 1985.


"Had Maurice lived and stayed healthy," Twyman said, "people wouldn't be talking about the Celtics dynasty as they do now. With Oscar Robertson, Jerry Lucas, Wayne Embry and myself - with Maurice - the Cincinnati Royals would have been much more of a factor.

"(Maurice) was Elgin Baylor and Michael Jordan, before those guys came along, only Maurice was three inches taller and 50 pounds heavier. He was the first player to combine strength and quickness those guys had. ... He would have been one of the five best (all-time players)."

Et cetera

Clyde Drexler, one of the great cruisers in league history, also was inducted into the Hall of Fame. He was the driving force for coach Rick Adelman's Portland Trail Blazers, who reached the NBA Finals twice in the early 1990s.Portland will forever be known as the franchise that didn't pick Jordan in the 1984 NBA draft, but the club already had Drexler. It needed a center and took Sam Bowie - and we know how that worked.


* On the Malone front, the NBA's second all-time leading scorer said he will return this season, but where is still anyone's guess. He has been courted by the Los Angeles Lakers, for whom he played last season, Miami Heat, San Antonio Spurs and Minnesota Timberwolves. If he plays for the Lakers alongside Vlade Divac, L.A. will employ two of the league's top big-men passers - skills they'll surely need to offset age.

The Bee's Joe Davidson can be reached at (916) 321-1280 or jdavidson@sacbee.com.
 
#3
I read this yesterday and wish I'd thought to post it. It's amazing that (as I read in another article later) that Jack Twyman was 24 years old when he legally adopted Maurice Stokes in order to better take care of him.

All because of a misdiagnosed concussion and the fact that he was allowed to fly with the team after it happened (at least as I read further into this story). Umm, there are a lot more links tonight than there were yesterday for Maurice Stokes so I wasn't able to quickly find the article which referenced the misdiagnosis and that the plane ride caused his collapse. Sorry, because it was the saddest article of all and explained (at least to me) how he he fell into a coma 3 days after his fall while on the plane trip home.

Some links if you're interested in reading further:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2004/writers/frank_deford/09/01/teammates/

http://espn.go.com/classic/biography/s/Stokes_Maurice.html

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04255/377367.stm

http://sports.yahoo.com/top/news?slug=cnnsi-teammates&prov=cnnsi&type=lgns
 
#4
allrightythen said:
I'm too young to know anything about this, so I thank you for posting it. It seems like a story worth remembering.
Everyone is too young to know anything about this except for Red Auerbach and a 113 year old lady in China named Bong Ho Li. ;)
 
#5
Those stories make me cry. Literally. They make me shudder for the sheer tragedy of the original accident and after effects. But even more so they make me want to cry for joy at the indomitable human spirit, and the depth of human compassion.

Its just nice to have it reaffirmed occasionally that ALL human beings don’t suck.