RIP Jack Twyman

A great player, but a better friend:

In the last game of the regular season, Stokes went skyward and fell backward over another player. The back of his head slammed the court, knocking him cold.These days, Stokes would have been immobilized and rushed to the hospital. In 1958, he was given smelling salts and sent back in.
Stokes did his duty that night. He played the first game of playoffs three days later. On the flight back from Detroit, the big man started shaking and sweating. He had a seizure and went into a coma.
An ambulance was waiting at the Cincinnati airport. Stokes had suffered post-traumatic encephalopathy. The blow had damaged the part of his brain that controls motor function.
He would never walk again. At first, all he could do was blink.
“How would you like to be one of the premiere athletes in the world on a Saturday,” Twyman recalled. “Then on Sunday, you go into a coma and wake up totally paralyzed, except for the use of (your) eyes and brain? I mean, can you imagine anything worse?”
No, unless you throw in a red-tape nightmare and no idea how to pay for a lifetime of medical bills.
Again, this was 1958. NBA stars didn’t have comprehensive medical coverage, much less entourages and Bentleys.
Stokes had $9,000 in his bank account. He was single, and what family he had was in Pennsylvania and in no financial shape to help.
Twyman applied to become Stokes’ legal guardian. A judge granted the request. That allowed Twyman to handle the bills, apply for workman’s compensation and chop through the paperwork.
Twyman was far more than Stokes’ bookkeeper, however. He eventually had four children, and Stokes was almost as much a part of his life as any of them.Again, this was 1958. That didn’t matter.

The story is amazing.  Stokes died in 1970.  If there's a Heaven, Twyman and Stoles are going to playing some ball together there.