Stokes: The Brief Career of the NBA’s First Black Superstar
by Ty Chapman (Author), John Coy (Author), Lonnie Ollivierre (Illustrator)
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Booktalk: In a 1958 game against the Minneapolis Lakers, Stokes, went down hard and hit his head, losing consciousness. At the time, there was no concussion protocol, and Stokes went back into the game. A few days later, he went into a coma and woke up unable to move his body from the neck down. Players did not have any sort of financial support in situations like this, and Stokes’s teammate Jack Twyman worked with other players and Milton Kutsher to put on a benefit game during the summer at Kutsher’s hotel in the Catskills. This game became an annual tradition, and Stokes was eventually able to travel and watch the game.
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