Brown feels blessed to still be able to play ball

OAKLAND — Dee Brown admits he was scared. Full, he said, of "a little panic, a little afraid." Yet the Jazz's rookie reserve point guard considers himself blessed, happy "to be able to walk again tomorrow."

"I'm just blessed enough to be able to move and talk to y'all right now and turn my head a little bit," Brown said Friday, two days after spraining his neck in a chilling collision with teammate Mehmet Okur in the first quarter of Utah's NBA Western Conference semifinal series Game 2 against the Golden State Warriors.

"I'm blessed to be here," added Brown, who sat out Friday night's 125-105 blowout Game 3 loss to the Warriors here and remains listed as being out "day-to-day." "I ain't gonna lie to y'all. I'm blessed ... to have an opportunity to play again."

Brown was trying to take a charge from Golden State's Matt Barnes, and crashed backward into the 260-plus-pound Okur, who fell on top of the much-smaller guard.

"That was a lot of weight falling upon me ... I thought I was done, man," Brown said. "He crushed in on me, and I heard it pop ... And when I started walking off, I really didn't feel, really, my upper body that much."

After Brown was taken by ambulance to a hospital, his body stiffened — and his fears intensified.

Save for the time he accidentally flew out of a golf cart while at the University of Illinois — someone else was driving, hit a tree stump and threw him off the back of the vehicle, resulting in him getting strapped to a stretcher and taken to a hospital for precautionary reasons — Brown had never experienced such a fright.

By Friday morning, however, he was able to bounce around a bit — albeit still quite gingerly — and dribble a basketball.

Brown even was able to laugh.

"Memo's a funny dude," he said of Okur, his teammate from Turkey. "When he found out I was OK, he started making jokes, like, 'Who did this to you?' "

Humor aside, Brown wanted to thank "all the people who helped me," including "great trainers" and "great doctors." He also had a special thank you for Denise Smith, the mother of current Jazz teammate and ex-Illini teammate Deron Williams.

"It was a scary time for me," Brown said, "considering how much I love basketball, and how easy basketball can be taken away.