When death comes knocking, and a fading athlete must contemplate mortality, how does he measure the real value of his time on Earth?
In the heart-wrenching, inspiring, infuriating case of James Ray, basketball does not begin to tell the score.
If you remember Ray at all, it’s probably as a footnote to Nuggets history. Denver drafted him out of Jacksonville University with a first-round choice in 1980. He scored an unremarkable 334 points in three seasons and was sent packing.
Many folks considered Ray an NBA bust.
When he left sports, however, is when Ray began to make a difference far larger than the shadow cast by his 6-foot-8 frame on the court.
Now 49 years old, Ray awakes every morning with the same tortured breathing, pulls himself from bed, and dragging the oxygen tank that’s his constant companion, this man in failing health heads off to the office, where he counsels troubled teenagers in Florida.
A rare, mysterious lung disease is slowly killing Ray.
“It’s definitely a life-threatening situation. If he doesn’t get a lung transplant, James will die. That’s what the doctor tells us,” said P.J. Ray, wife of the former ballplayer.
Long a hoops nomad, roaming from Italy to Turkey, Ray finally found his true calling after unlacing his sneakers and returning home. Basketball was only the prelude to getting down to his most meaningful work.
The big man dedicated himself to being a Ray of hope.
For the past dozen years, the former Nuggets forward has provided guidance to juvenile offenders at Gateway Community Services in Jacksonville.
He’s an enthusiastic coach of life skills, winning over kids more with heart than fame, whether Ray is investing his time in the Boys & Girls Clubs or the Police Athletic League.
“Helping kids, that’s his thing,” P.J. Ray said.
Sarcoidosis, slowly shutting down Ray’s lungs with inflammation and scarring, is hard to pronounce and even harder to watch rob everything you remember loving in a man.
In these faith-testing nights, as an athlete who once dunked ferociously now sleeps fitfully, sometimes his wife stares at Ray through the darkness, anxiously counting each breath exhaled as a small blessing.
“It’s hard to watch him leave the house, rolling his oxygen tank behind him to the truck,” P.J. Ray said. “He really needs to be concentrating on getting healthy, but cannot afford to stop working. We have to maintain his insurance and try to keep our heads above water with employment, so we can even be considered for a transplant.”
If you keep score in dollars and cents, the American dream does not always come true, even if you were a young hotshot in the NBA almost 30 years ago.
Watching a league flush with so much cash in 2007 that you could stack Benjamins to the rafters of every arena, we sometimes forget that most former players never raked in anywhere near the endorsement money of LeBron James.
While retired players from Julius Erving to David Thompson have generously dug in their pockets and started a fund to defray the medical expenses of Ray, three weeks into the campaign the total amount raised was not quite $50,000, less than the taxes taken from a single paycheck of current NBA superstars.
The requirement for oxygen treatment 24/7 makes it extremely difficult for him to talk on the telephone, but in a recent letter to fellow players, Ray made it clear he knows the gravity of his illness.
“Words cannot express what I have encountered with my diagnosis of the need to have a lung transplant, but that’s what God has decided for me to go through, and I do mean go through,” Ray wrote.
If these are his final days, then Ray is spending them bravely, as he tries to give another shot to troubled kids who need it most.
If Ray dies tomorrow or this summer or next year, why the world will miss him really has little to do with dusty scrapbooks of sports memories.
Not until putting away the basketball did he grow bigger than the game.
The man became a Ray of light.
“Ray of Light” donations
To assist former Nuggets player James Ray in his fight against a life-threatening lung disease, the National Basketball Retired Players Association has established a “Ray of Light” fund and is taking donations by check or credit card through June 1. Checks can be made payable to Legends of Basketball and should include “Ray of Light” on the memo line.
Mail to:
Legends of Basketball
475 Park Ave. South, 6th Floor
New York, NY 10016
Donations charged to a credit card can be processed by calling: 212-251-0368
Staff writer Mark Kiszla can be reached at 303-954-1053 or mkiszla@denverpost.com.
