“Car Flipped Four to Five Times”: Former Lakers Center Relives Horrifying Accident

There aren’t many things more frightening than waking up in a hospital and not having any idea how you got there. It’s something you see in the movies, but unfortunately, it also happens in real life. Still, it’s better than the alternative, which is not waking up at all.

Former Lakers star, Samaki Walker has been on Byron Scott’s Fast Break the last two weeks, and while he spent most of the time regaling Scott and Jay Wagers with stories of Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal and Phil Jackson, he also discussed the time he got in a scary car accident.

As Walker tells it, he had just finished attending the 2003 Essence Festival, the annual New Orleans-based celebration of African-American culture and music, and was on his way back home to his native Ohio to see friends and family.

“I been out of Columbus, I’m back and forth, since I was at college, so every time I come back home, something new’s going on,” Walker said.

“My a** should be going home and getting some rest with all the partying I had done,” he said. “So I go, I put my bags in, and I’m off to this new spot that my brother and sister-in-law told me about.” After a bit, everyone decided to go somewhere new, and so Walker got into his rental car and called his buddy to find out where to go.

“I remember specifically calling my homeboy — ‘Hey man, where’s this spot again?’ — and he gave me clear-cut directions,” Walker recalled. “Next thing I know I hung up the phone and woke up in the hospital.”

As it turns out, Walker had fallen asleep at the wheel and gotten in a bad wreck. The doctor told him when he woke up, “You were involved in a serious car accident, and the reports say the car flipped four to five times.”

At first, Walker was scared that he was going to be in legal trouble, but thankfully it was just a single-car crash that didn’t involve anyone else. He did get a keepsake to remember the night by, though — a metal plate and seven screws in his arm because, as he put it, “My wrist was folded, like it was in layers.”

Walker’s rental car had been “smashed like a pancake,” but he was able to walk away because the Expedition that he had been driving had just been named the best car in rollovers. Looking back, he was able to laugh about it, saying, “I had to go test it out, I didn’t believe it. Let me go find out. I had to be the one, and I didn’t get paid for it,” he quipped.

Walker could have lost his life, but fate was smiling on him that night. He was even able to continue his career after he got a call from Pat Riley to join the Miami Heat. Stories like this don’t usually have a happy ending, so the fact that he was able to share it at all is something to be thankful for.