Initially, Thabo Sefolosha tried to walk it off.



When he landed awkwardly on the floor at the Spectrum Center last January, he thought he’d sprained his knee. He’d had sprained knees before. That would’ve amounted to a minor hurdle. So, he tried to stay in the game against the Charlotte Hornets, but the pain was too great for Utah’s power forward. And when he walked gingerly back to the locker room, he knew something was amiss. He just didn’t know how extreme the damage was.



The awful truth would come a few days later.



“By the end of the night, I knew it was serious,” Sefolosha said. “When I knew I had to get surgery, that’s when I knew it would be a tough six months ahead.”



Since before his birth, Thabo Sefolosha had been a survivor. His mother and father were an interracial couple who had to flee South Africa for Switzerland in the face of apartheid. When he was taken 13th in the 2006 NBA...