Rodney Rogers paralyzed

[555666]

The Raleigh News & Observer has an update on the condition of Rodney Rogers, who played 12 seasons in the NBA and won the 2000 Sixth Man Award:

Rodney Rogers, a former Durham high school sports star with a legendary physique, could do just about anything on a basketball court or football field.

Friends and family members are wondering now whether he'll ever walk again after an accident last week involving an all-terrain vehicle. The N.C. Highway Patrol said Rogers was four-wheeling in the woods in rural Vance County north of Raleigh when he fell off the vehicle.

Dave Odom, Rogers' coach when Rogers was an All-America basketball player at Wake Forest University, said Wednesday that his former star is paralyzed from the shoulders down. Rogers, 37, was recently transferred from Duke Hospital to the Shepherd Center in Atlanta. The center's mission is to help people who have experienced a catastrophic injury.

"Say a prayer for Rodney and his family,'' Odom said.

The injury has felled, at least for the moment, a man who is more than a famous former athlete. Rogers is an ambassador for Durham. He worked with his own hands to repair his hometown's streets. He used his fame to polish its reputation. He provided computers for its poor children, and at the time of the accident he was a volunteer girls' basketball coach at Rogers-Herr Middle School.

"He is a Durham boy through and through," said Rogers' agent, James "Butch" Williams, a Durham lawyer.

...

Williams, Rogers' agent and lawyer for 15 years, said the former power forward enjoyed the woods, off-road sports and trucks.

"He is an outdoorsman, plain and simple," Williams said. "He hunts, motorcycles, rides horses. He loves big trucks."

That love of big trucks led to his present job as a heavy equipment operator for the city of Durham's Public Works Department. Rogers "is financially set," Williams said, but he wanted demanding daily work.

That's a shame, paralyzed from shoulders down. I wouldn't be able to live like that... Them ATV's aren't anything to mess with, I broke my shoulder f-cking with one of those.

 

[.GR]

Wow, that really sucks.

 

[Pugz]

Wow, that really sucks.

Really sad.

 

[The Young One]

Sad stuff. I remember he had a nice jumpshot.

 

[PiStoL31PeTe]

Damn... that rly sucks to bad that happened to a good guy like him.