Ex-Wyoming star overcomes broken neck
Injured after falling asleep while driving last year, Adams now seeks shot at NBA
LAS VEGAS, Nev. — Josh Adams, a former University of Wyoming basketball star and NBA hopeful, is often asked about the pink scar that curls over his right eyebrow.
Shortly after Adams, 23, began practicing with the Dallas Mavericks’ summer league team here, he was approached by a new teammate, Carrick Felix. “We were just sitting in the locker room and Carrick was like, ‘Man, I got to ask you, what happened?’ ” Adams said. “And as I’m running through the story more and more people are coming in listening and were like, ‘Wait, what? You broke your neck?’ ”
Adams fell asleep at the wheel while driving down a winding road one early morning in August outside Denver. By the time his Jeep Grand Cherokee drifted onto the rumble strip and woke him, it was too late for Adams to stop the car from going airborne, hitting a ditch and crashing into a service road.
The wreck left Adams with two broken vertebrae, a crushed sternum and a slash on his face that required 34 stitches and left him with the arcing scar.
“I just wake up every day and thank God that I am even able to walk, let alone play basketball at a high level,” Adams said.
Adams set Wyoming’s single-season scoring record with 740 points. His 24.7 points per game during the 2015-16 season led the Mountain West Conference and ranked third in the country. Though he stands only 5 feet 9 inches, his 45-inch vertical leap caught the attention of the Denver Nuggets, who brought Adams onto their 2016 summer league squad.
He had hoped that showcasing his skills in Las Vegas in 2016 would earn him an NBA contract, but he left without an offer and turned to his backup plan, signing a two-year contract with Avtodor Saratov in Russia. The car crash occurred one week before he was to go to Russia.
After Adams’ Grand Cherokee came to a halt, he pushed open the passenger door and assessed the damage. He said his first thought when he saw the scrunched and totaled vehicle was, “My mom is going to kill me.” He felt blood
trickling out of the gash in his face. When another driver who saw the crash pulled over and called 911, Adams said he finally began to feel the severity of his injuries. Pain shot through his chest.
He woke up in the Sky Ridge Medical Center in Lone Tree, Colo., where he spent four days. Doctors performed surgery on Adams’ spine, fusing the C5 and C6 vertebrae together, and stitched up his face.
“It was terrible,” Adams said. “The worst part was actually my chest. I dislocated my sternum. I still have a big bump on my chest. But any time I would move, or cough or take a deep breath, all the bones in my chest would crunch around. That was the most excruciating part.”
Getting back on the basketball court was a slow process. In October 2016, physical therapists cleared Adams to return to stationary dribbling, and he began working with a private basketball trainer, Nick Graham. Graham was accustomed to helping athletes work through torn knee ligaments and broken ankles. At first, the workouts lasted 40 minutes and Adams was restricted to standing in one place dribbling one or two balls. Two weeks later, he was cleared to begin dribbling while moving, but still wasn’t allowed to jump or shoot.
“I’ve never seen anybody heal like that,” Graham said. “He was just blessed. I’m religious so it was divine intervention or whatever you want to call it.”
Before the end of the year, Adams was back to running the court and hanging off the rim.
Adams played in Russia for five months of the 2016-17 season after finishing his rehabilitation. He averaged 12.1 points, 4.2 assists in 27.4 minutes over 13 games in the VTB United League, a first-tier league in Russia featuring 13 teams from five Eastern European countries. Upon his return to Denver, Adams was contacted by Dallas to play for its summer league team.
On July 9, Adams scored 9 points and had one steal in 16 minutes. He wants a roster spot for the regular season, of course, but when one didn’t materialize he signed a contract with Anadolu Efes, a wellregarded Turkish club.