Who is the author of a life’s story? Who gets to decide who you were, after you’re gone?

Patrick Byrne sits on a couch in a room at the Fairmount Hotel in Phoenix in June 2013. He is wearing black athletic shorts and a green long-sleeved shirt pulled up to his left elbow, so as not to interfere with the gauze-covered tube that protrudes from his forearm. He has not eaten for two days, and his thick blond hair is disheveled. The previous afternoon he was put to sleep for the 97th time—he keeps a count—as doctors at the nearby Mayo Clinic tried to fix an arrhythmia, another complication from the cancer that he has vanquished for spells but which never truly leaves. At 50, he remains vital. He speaks quickly, his eyes lighting up. He stands to act out stories, his 6' 5" frame still thin and nimble, though after a few minutes he sinks back on the couch, winded.

Byrne cannot tell the stories fast enough now. He wants people to know who Brian was, how special he was.

In the years after the events of Tahiti, Byrne declined nearly all interviews. He hated how the TV shows gave credence to Dabord’s account of what happened, the one he gave to his then-girlfriend, Erica Weise, before committing suicide. It remains the only first-person account. It goes like this: On July 7 Dele and Dabord got in a fight, and Dele accidentally punched Serena in the face. Her head thumped against a steel davit and she died instantly. Saldo, the captain, said they needed to report the death, but Dele became agitated and killed Saldo by hitting him on the head with a wrench. At that point Kevin says he had no choice: Out of self-defense, he shot his brother. Then, scared, he dumped the three bodies overboard and sailed back to Tahiti before fleeing, sure that no one would believe his story.

Byrne does not like to talk about the events on the boat—though he is certain Dabord's version is not true—and hates how others have tried to profit off his friend’s death. He wonders why Dele’s bank account suddenly dried up after he died. When talking about his friend, though, he becomes animated.

“I’ve been waiting 10 years for someone to ask about his life, not his death,” Byrne says, and over two days the tales pour out. About singular moments, adventures shared, unbreakable connections. You can feel the love. Byrne feels his own mortality now, and he cannot tell the stories fast enough. He wants people to know who Brian was, how special he was.

At the same time, Byrne needs something to hold on to. That’s why, along with Hosseini, he commissioned a piece of art made with Dele’s final pairs of hightops. It hangs on the wall in his house an hour outside Salt Lake City: two basketball shoes nailed to a canvas above red ink, scrawled like blood. The quote is from one of Brian and Byrne’s favorite writers, Hunter S. Thompson: “Too weird to live, too rare to die.”

Patricia Phillips is harder to track down. Two years after Dele’s death, she went to Tahiti to claim the boat, which she sold. Speaking from Chapel Hill, N.C., where she now lives, she alternates between anger and grief. She has not spoken publicly since 2002, and has her own version of the story. She says not to trust Porter, Paul White, Hosseini, Serena’s parents, the FBI or Byrne. She believes Dabord was trying to assume his brother’s identity but believes that there’s no way he could have sailed the Hukuna Matata back by himself, that someone else must have been involved. “I had two sons,” she says. “I’m still a mother to both of them. The only way I can maintain any modicum of sanity and understanding is to stick with the truth as I know it.”

Patricia is the only remaining member of the nuclear family. In August 2008, Eugene Williams died in Las Vegas of pancreatic cancer at 64. His newswire obituary focused on his “five-octave voice” and his musical background—his own father had been a performing pianist. The only mention of his progeny came in the second-to-last sentence: “Williams was preceded in death by his sons, Kevin Williams and Brian Williams.”

Chris Ballard/Sports Illustrated Louis Bounan The deputy prosecutor of the Williams case in Tahiti, he was unable to shed much light on events of a decade before.

Dabord still has one defender. White, his childhood friend, says he became Dabord’s attorney during the proceedings of 2002. White, whose office is in Los Angeles, says he is writing a book about what happened. That he’s traveled to Tahiti. That people don’t understand the whole situation. He talks about how Dabord always dreamed of going off the grid and how “he almost did it.” He grants that Dabord had problems, that he clearly “never filled the void inside him,” but he stands by his friend. “Just because you may seem like a loser,” White says, “it doesn’t mean you are a murderer.”

Murderer? Theoretically, the French authorities in Tahiti, who conducted the primary investigation, could weigh in on that. Only when a reporter attempted to retrieve the public court records on the case and to interview the deputy prosecutor, Louis Bounan, it led to a strange scene. After arriving at the Palais de Justice in the capital city of Pape’ete, a two-story building accessible via a staircase manned by two armed guards with heavy smoking habits, the reporter handed over the required paperwork. The secretary said that Monsieur Bounan was gone “through August.” It was early July. The reporter pointed out that he’d spoken to Bounan on the phone just an hour earlier. When pressed further, the secretary made a call and announced that, as it turned out, Bounan was at his desk. Bounan asked the reporter to leave the paperwork. A subsequent attempt to interview Bounan was moderately successful. Despite likely knowing English, he spoke only in French for 25 minutes. He said the case was a long time ago, that he barely remembered it. That it was sad but that it was an American. That the investigating judge on the case could no longer be reached. Then Bounan promised that all of the court records would be sent, via email, within “deux semaines” (two weeks) if not sooner. Three months later, they had yet to arrive, and Bounan had not responded to multiple follow-up emails.

Many on the island have forgotten. Others prefer not to speak about what happened.

As for Kevin Porter, Brian’s friend and assistant, he has his own project. Earlier this June he called Byrne with a pitch, the first time Byrne had heard from him in years. Porter said he was shopping a screenplay about Dele and that he had momentum. Hollywood was hot for it. He just needed one thing: money. Maybe Byrne would like to put in some cash? Byrne saw red. He told Porter never to call him again.

Porter lives in suburban Atlanta these days, where he is a partner in an online cosmetics company and a manager at a nonprofit that teaches life skills to adults with mental and learning disabilities. He says he had many rough days at first, grieving for his friend, and still does occasionally. The timing of it all was tragic, he says. He believes Brian was ready to come back to the NBA before he died. (Byrne also believes this.) Porter confirms that he has written a screenplay, with a friend, and that it’s about Brian’s life on and off the court, as well as the tragedy.

Porter bristles when Brian’s money is brought up. “Honestly, I didn’t get one red cent from it, and that’s O.K.,” he says. “Obviously Patricia had not thought about me.” He says he hasn’t talked to her since Brian’s death.