There probably weren't too many words or tears or anything else overtly shared by Mike Peplowski and Bobby Hurley when the Sacramento Kings released Peplowski recently to meet the 12-man roster limit.
Thanks to what happened on a dark stretch of highway outside the Kings' arena 11 months ago, they have something in common -- a bond that allows them to communicate whole sentences in a split-second glance and a true perspective on the insignificance of something like having to look for another NBA job.
"There are certain things with human beings that forcibly bond them together, and those are life-and-death situations, witnesses to the death of a friend, combat situations with war veterans," Peplowski said. "There will always be something there between Bobby and I. He and I can look at each other and say almost nothing and know exactly what the other is thinking. Regardless of whether Bob and I like each other or not, we're linked."
That's because it was Peplowski who found Hurley after his four-wheel-drive truck was blindsided by another vehicle, catapulting him from the truck face-down into a drainage ditch. Peplowski, following in his car, scrambled down the ditch to rescue Hurley's broken body.
"Just seeing his face made a big difference to me," said Hurley. "I think he's a big part of why I'm still here. It's something that we really only talked about once, but it will always be there."
Peplowski has watched Hurley recover with miraculous speed from broken ribs, a windpipe severed from one lung, a compression fracture in his back and other injuries to play again in the NBA. Peplowski never doubted that it would happen.
"Bob worked his butt off to get to the NBA in the first place," Peplow-ski said. "He's never been a physical specimen. It took a lot of intestinal fortitude simply to get to this level. That element of Bob, that fire and intensity, was not injured. That was something the accident could not touch. If it had, we would be having a different conversation right now."
The accident appears to have made Hurley a better player, particularly a better shooter. His field-goal percentage was higher in the exhibition season than in the exhibition season last year or the first few months of the '93-94 regular season.
"A lot of people disagree, but he looks a lot better to me," Peplowski said. "His shot looks better. Well, I don't know if it looks better, but it goes in more."
Hurley agreed, attributing it partly to the rigorous shooting drills he went through last summer with his father in New Jersey.
"I think I spent more time on my game than I ever have, especially shooting," he said. "Some people don't have textbook form, but it doesn't matter because they go through so many repetitions. I think after what I went through, I also have more confidence. Before, if I took a couple of shots and missed two or three, I wouldn't want to shoot anymore. I'd feel hesitant. Now it doesn't affect me or my game."
That makes perfect sense to Peplowski.
"What he went through and where he's going and where he's been, he'll know somewhere in the back of his mind, 'I'm tougher than they are,' " Peplowski said. "It's not so much what he proved to others as what he proved to himself."