Staff writer Sam Amick is part of The Bee's coverage team that is blogging extensively from Kings training camp. Here is an excerpt from Friday. To read it in its entirety, go to www.sacbee.com/kingsblog.
The similarities might have caught Kevin Martin's attention, but it was the differences that inspired him.
On Sept. 26, the Kings shooting guard was passing time on the Internet when his browsing came to a halt. Martin had stopped to read a Bee story about Matt Palm, but he quickly fixated on one picture.
It featured Palm in a hospital bed, his skinny frame and light-skinned complexion reminding Martin of himself but everything around Palm so very different. The tubes in his neck that gave him breaths of life but made him appear so close to death. The friends who surrounded him with looks of grave concern, holding his hand and both knees as if they could make him whole again with their sheer will.
Palm, a local 18-year-old who has battled a rare paralyzing affliction called Guillain-Barré syndrome since November 2005, had lost far more than his ability to play point guard for Mira Loma High School. Speech. Walking. Dunking. At 5-foot-10, he could dunk and run the floor well enough that his coach could foresee a mid-major scholarship.
All of it was gone.
But nearly three years later, his recovery that was chronicled in the story was remarkable. Palm, whose speech has returned and who attends American River College, was on his way back. And Martin – already in a reflective state with the recent loss of his grandfather – was touched.
"I clicked on the video (about Palm online), saw that he was talking better and how he's going around in his wheelchair," Martin said after Thursday's practice. "That just touched me. He mentioned how, 'You can't take anything for granted.' And I looked at it like, 'I'm where I want to be in basketball, but it can get taken away just like that.' That story really touched me."
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