By Adam Lucas

On May 22, 2010, Justin Coleman broke his neck.

On May 22, 2011, Justin Coleman was involved in a car accident in which a motorcyclist was killed.

Today is Thanksgiving, and Justin Coleman knows better than anyone exactly how important it is to be thankful.

*

He doesn't remember the actual impact. What Justin Coleman does know is that he was playing in an AAU basketball game in 2010, and he intercepted a pass near midcourt. He went in for what he thought was going to be an uncontested dunk and took a shove in the back that sent him sprawling, face-first, onto the court. He slid headfirst into the wall. He remembers falling, and the next thing he remembers is being on the floor looking up at a lot of very concerned faces asking him questions.

He was mostly unresponsive until someone asked, “Where are you?”

This one, he knew: “The Garner Road YMCA,” he replied.

Eventually, he was transported to the hospital, where x-rays revealed he had three fractured vertebrae: C3, C4 and C5. Later, the first doctor to view the x-rays told Coleman, “My heart dropped because I knew the kid who was the subject of those x-rays was paralyzed, and I didn't want to have to see a kid go through that.”

Except Coleman, for some reason he still doesn't understand, wasn't paralyzed. He never even completely lost feeling. Yes, he had a broken neck. And yes, he had to have surgery the very next morning, resulting in ten screws and two steel plates in his body. But when the surgery was over and the surgeon came into the waiting room to talk to Coleman's parents, the first thing the doctor said was this:

“Someone was looking after this kid.”

Instead of trying to figure out how to walk again—a fairly normal reaction to such an injury—Coleman was able to try to figure out how to play basketball again. He worked out relentlessly. By early November, doctors told him his recovery was remarkable.

But they also told him they couldn't clear him for the basketball season. “Your recovery is amazing,” the doctor told him, “but I don't know if I can clear you to play basketball. I haven't wanted to tell you that because it's been proven that when a patient has a goal they're working toward, their healing time is expedited.”

Coleman has three sisters—one who is currently 16 and a set of twins who are currently nine. When the basketball season began at Broughton High School in Raleigh and their brother was on the bench in street clothes rather than in uniform, the youngest sister, Chelsea, began sobbing in the stands.

Even as a then-five year old, she knew her brother didn't belong on the bench. He belonged on the basketball court.

Days before Christmas, he found out he could go back to basketball. One of his doctors went to a nationwide conference and asked the opinion of multiple physicians. Some said they would never clear a patient with such a traumatic injury. But others said there was no compelling reason to keep a patient away from something so important to him. Coleman was cleared, and spent the rest of the season working to get back into basketball shape, preparing for the summer 2011 AAU season and the 2011-12 Broughton season, which would be his senior year.

He had a goal and had a second chance to play basketball. “So many people whose basketball career is cut short, they say, 'If I only had a second chance,'” Coleman says. “I knew I had that second chance and that it would have a benefit beyond just basketball. I've noticed a change in who I am. Sometimes when bad things happen, it's how you react.”

*

It was May 22, 2011, the one-year anniversary of his neck injury. Coleman was driving his oldest sister to the pool. It was a Sunday. He had school the next day, so he brought his books and planned to study.

Coleman was making a left turn. A car across the intersection from him was also making a left turn. All his life, his mother, Janine, had told him, “Don't ride a motorcycle. You always hear drivers talk about how they didn't see them.”

Justin Coleman didn't see the motorcycle. Thirty-two-year-old Rubin Smith was tucked in behind the opposite car making a left, but then changed lanes at the last second, going straight through the intersection. Coleman turned and wasn't able to avoid the impact. Smith collided with the rear passenger door of Coleman's vehicle.

The crash, Coleman remembers, wasn't extremely loud. He pulled over, opened his door, and looked towards the street to check on the motorcyclist, to make sure everyone was OK. But he knew as soon as he saw what had happened.

“He's dead,” Coleman said immediately. His sister screamed. “No he's not!” she shouted.

But he was.

“Somehow, I just knew on sight,” Coleman says today. “It was the worst day I can imagine. I was in shock.”

This was not a physical challenge, one with a prescribed regimen of rehabilitation. There were no x-rays to look at, no set policy for how to recover from this.

“The one thing I really wanted to do was talk to his family,” Coleman says of Smith's wife and mother. “But the police advised me not to do that until the court case was over.”

Coleman was charged with failure to yield the right of way. When the court case concluded, something entirely unexpected happened: Smith's wife, Tracy, and his mother, Vanessa Gaines, wrapped Coleman in a hug. They told him they forgave him, and that they wanted him to make a positive difference, both for himself and for Rubin Smith.

Even as he retells the story three years later, Coleman shakes his head a little. What strength must it have taken for them to do that? How many people could find that in their heart?

“That accident was the hardest thing I've ever had to deal with,” he says. “It's something you can't fix. It's someone's father, someone's husband, someone's son, and you can't bring them back. It tore me apart. When his family embraced me and told me they wanted me to be successful for them, it was like I had a new beginning. I had carried all that disappointment and guilt for so long. When they forgave me, it was like I could finally admit that I made a mistake. I knew what I had to do. They wanted me to do well for him, and that's what I wanted to do. It's crazy how far I've come from since then.”

He earned admission to the University of North Carolina on his own merits. He tried out for and made the junior varsity basketball team. He's enrolled in the prestigious Kenan-Flagler Business School. After two seasons of JV basketball, he tried out for and made the varsity basketball team, one of just two walk-ons selected this year. He will spend Thanksgiving Day today in the Bahamas. His family made the trip, and his teammates—all of whom affectionately know him as “J. Cole” and who clapped and cheered in the locker room when he was overwhelmed by the moment when he saw the Carolina jersey with his name on the back for the first time—are here, and the predicted high temperature is 76 degrees and sunny.

When he left high school, he had just a few Division II schools interested in him as a basketball player, and now for the rest of his life, he will say, “I played basketball at Carolina,” and yet that will not even be close to the most incredible part of his story.

“I have so many things to be thankful for,” Coleman says. “I'm thankful for God's grace. I know I couldn't have done it on my own. As hard as I've worked, I've had so much good fortune. I've had so much support from so many people. I've had so many good people around me.”