Perry Jones fulfilled his lifelong dream of making it to the NBA when the Oklahoma City Thunder drafted him with the 28th pick in 2012, but a year later, he nearly lost his life. Jones recently appeared on the Run Your Race podcast, where he shared the shocking story about his illness.
“My second year, I got sick, almost died,” Jones said. “I went to a dentist, this is like right before Summer League… I got a couple of shots, you know how they give you a couple of shots to numb everything (but) I still feel everything.”
Jones got even more shots but could still feel everything and was told to come back at another time. A couple of days later he got hit with an elbow during practice and it hurt way more than it did normally. He also started noticing that he couldn’t open his mouth as much as he could in the past.
“I’m close to only eating through a straw,” Jones continued. “… A week before we leave, I get hit again… I can’t open my mouth at all. I go back to the dentist. This is like two days before Summer League. Go back to the dentist. They’re like, ‘Hey man, open your mouth,’ I’m like, ‘I can’t that’s why I’m here. Because y’all did something. Something going on. Let me know.'”
Jones then went to a hospital and underwent multiple CAT scans. The results were not good, to say the least.
“I go back to the waiting room,” Jones added. “I’m sitting there for five minutes, a whole team came out the back with a bed. They’re like, ‘We got to get him to surgery right now.’ … Doctors and nurses, with a bed, came from the back of the hospital, came to the waiting room, with a bed, were like, ‘We need to get him into emergency surgery.’ With the IV stuff and everything. I’m just like, ‘What?'”
Jones wanted his mother to be contacted and when he woke up, he heard her getting some terrible news from the doctor.
“I wake up, doctor telling my mom like, I had this virus spreading in my brain,” Jones said. “Then he gave me like at least a week and a half, I probably had a fatal stroke or something. They called it like it was like spreading up from my airway to my throat like to my brain.”
Jones unsurprisingly couldn’t participate in the Summer League because of the illness. Unfortunately, some salt was rubbed into his wounds when it was said during a game that he was out because of toothache.
“I remember sitting in the bed. I’m looking at the TV, I’m watching them play, ‘Yeah, Perry Jones isn’t here because of a toothache.’ I started crying,” Jones stated. “I’m in the hospital bed fighting for my life.”
That would have been a gut punch to anyone. Fortunately, Jones did get back on the court for the start of the 2013-14 season, but he wouldn’t be in the NBA for much longer. He was traded to the Boston Celtics in 2015 and they waived him later that year.
That was that for Jones’ NBA career and he finished with averages of 3.4 points, 1.8 rebounds, 0.4 assists, 0.3 steals, and 0.2 blocks per game. The following years would see him play in the G League and overseas. The 32-year-old is now playing for Spartans Distrito Capital in Venezuela and you wonder if his career would have panned out differently had he not suffered that illness.
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