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The Premonition That Former NBA Player Jay Williams Had About His Career-Ending Motorcycle Crash

Season 6 Episode 607
Aired on 03/15/2015 | CC tv-14
In June 2003, just after his rookie season, Jay Williams violated his contract with the Chicago Bulls by riding a motorcycle that he had recently bought. He crashed the high-speed sport bike into a utility pole in Chicago, severing a main nerve in his foot, fracturing his pelvis, dislocating his knee and causing internal bleeding. He worked in physical therapy to regain use of his leg but was unsuccessful in his attempts to return to basketball as a player. He later reinvented himself as an ESPN commentator.

Now, Jay opens up to Oprah about the vision he had at age 17 that presaged the accident. The night before young Jay was set to play his first game at Madison Square Garden, he had trouble falling asleep. Once he did, though, he dreamed that he was spinning. "Almost to the point where it got me dizzy. And when I finally stopped spinning, I looked up and I saw a red fire hydrant," he says in the video above. "The crazy thing about that is that you fast-forward about five years, 21 years old, and all of a sudden, now I'm actually laying on the ground with my chest on the pavement as if I'm laying on my stomach, my legs on top of each other as if I'm laying on my side up on the curb, staring at a red fire hydrant after I'd just spun around."

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