" The wall appeared after two months. Jazz center Mehmet Okur had faced and overcome seemingly overwhelming obstacles before.

But nothing like this.

His mind wandered and drifted. His atrophied body was gradually betraying him. Just two months after a damaged, broken Okur was carried off the court April 17 during Game 1 of a first-round playoff series against Denver, one of the NBA's unheralded Iron Men was slowly turning into blubber as he recovered from a ruptured left Achilles tendon.

All the 6-foot-11, 265-pound Okur could do was watch television. There was no running, no jumping, no shooting. After playing 604 regular-season games during the first eight years of his career — averaging 75.5 per season, only missing 52, and hitting the full 82-contest mark twice — Okur's brain began to explore dark thoughts that it had never coveted before.

Retirement still sat on the precipice. But worry, concern and a flirtation with frailty stood tall in the center of his head."