Laying semiconscious on a curb next to his crumpled motorcycle and an unforgiving light post, Jay Williams saw at least part of his life flash before his eyes after his horrifying accident June 19.

It was the part of Williams' life that inspires him to overcome the severe injuries he suffered that evening.

"The first thing I was thinking about was not whether I would live or die, but that I wanted to play basketball again,'' Williams said. "I didn't want to throw it all away.''

It took Williams 3-1/2 months to feel comfortable enough to discuss the incident. He conducted several phone interviews Monday from the house he's renting in Raleigh, N.C., while rehabbing at Duke's medical facilities.

Williams, 22, remembers the crash.

"I put the bike into second gear and I revved the gas a little, and all of a sudden my back wheel flipped or something and I lost control,'' he said. "I started heading toward a pole and I tried to turn at the last second, but I hit the pole with the left side of my body.

"I remember being on the ground, on the curb. It's weird how the body sets up a natural anesthesia because I couldn't feel anything. Then I blanked out, and I woke up and guys were putting me in an ambulance. Then I blanked out, and I woke up in a hospital. That's when I realized how serious it was. Then it got to the point where I didn't want to die.''

Jay Williams is hoping to begin his basketball comeback next year in training camp.

Will he be coming back with the Bulls? Or could he belong to the Charlotte Bobcats by then?

Early next summer - perhaps before Williams has a chance to prove his health - the Bulls must settle on eight players to protect in the upcoming expansion draft.

One possible list of eight would include Tyson Chandler, Eddy Curry, Jamal Crawford, Marcus Fizer, Kirk Hinrich, Donyell Marshall, Jalen Rose and Scottie Pippen. In this scenario, Williams, Eddie Robinson, Roger Mason Jr. and possibly some others would be unprotected.

If that turns out to be the case, Williams would be a tempting selection for Charlotte, which begins play next season.

Should Williams fully recover from his June 19 motorcycle accident, the Bobcats would have a talented guard who played college basketball nearby at Duke. If Williams did not pan out, his contract could expire in 2005.

"There are going to be tough choices for every team," Paxson said. "Since we have so many young guys, we're going to have it more difficult than some. Contracts will be involved. We've talked about it already and I have a preliminary list in mind."

There are other strategies for the Bulls to employ. One is leaving Rose unprotected, gambling that Charlotte would not select a player owed $47 million over the final three years of his contract. Or the Bulls could leave Pippen, who will be 39 by next season, off the list.

Bulls guard Jay Williams will make his first public comments Monday since sustaining serious injuries in a June 19 motorcycle accident. The injuries to his left knee and pelvis have required several surgeries and will knock the second-year guard out for the entire 2003-04 season, which begins Tuesday when players with three years or less experience report to training camp. Veterans report for annual media day festivities on Thursday. Williams' camp is optimistic he will return at some point, perhaps for the 2004-05 season. Bulls management isn't sure, which is one reason why it drafted rookie guard Kirk Hinrich in June. Williams is rehabilitating in Durham, N.C.

Scottie Pippen introduced himself to his new Bulls teammates by organizing a golf outing in Highland Park on Wednesday.

Most of the Bulls players, plus general manager John Paxson and scouts B.J. Armstrong and Pete Myers, were in attendance.

"Yeah, it was definitely fun," Tyson Chandler said. "It's good to do something like that and get out with the team, especially since half of us didn't know how to golf. I'm sure a couple of us will go out and practice now that we've seen how bad we are."

"Tyson, myself, Lonny (Baxter) and Eddy (Curry) were in a group," said Jamal Crawford. "We're all pretty bad. Just about everybody was there, about nine or 10 guys. It was fun."

Pippen made an appearance at the Berto Center on Thursday afternoon while a dozen Bulls were scrimmaging on the court, including veterans Jalen Rose and Donyell Marshall.

Pippen only stayed for about a half-hour while his wife Larsa waited outside in the car. Some of Pippen's new teammates are hoping the 16-year veteran will join in pick-up games today.

"Scottie's a nice guy," Crawford said. "He's all about the team and he's ready to win and get us to the playoffs."

Bulls guard Jay Williams continues to make progress in his recovery from a devastating motorcycle accident, and he is expected to return to Chicago for a news conference in the next few weeks.

Williams likely will declare his goal of playing during the 2004-05 season, though doubt remains as to whether he will return to the level he played at before the June 19 accident.

''He's doing real good right now,'' said Kevin Bradbury, who is Williams' longtime friend and business associate. ''He's excited and happy.''

Williams, who turned 22 on Wednesday, suffered multiple injuries in the accident in West Lake View. He has undergone at least two surgeries, including one on his fractured pelvis and one on his left knee.

It was feared Williams' career was in jeopardy after just one NBA season because of extensive nerve damage. Former Duke teammate Carlos Boozer said Williams couldn't feel his left leg several days after the accident.

The Bulls acknowledge Williams will not play during the upcoming season, which opens with training camp on Sept. 30. When Bulls operations chief John Paxson drafted Kansas guard Kirk Hinrich on June 26, it was considered a sign the Bulls did not expect Williams to return at all, though Paxson said that wasn't the case.

Williams' mother, Althea, said drafting a former college rival like Hinrich generated even more determination in Williams to return.

''We'll just stay open to the possibility of Jay returning after this season, and we'll go from there,'' Bulls coach Bill Cartwright said Friday. ''We know it's going to be a long road for him. It's a tough injury.

One year ago, in a motel room near the Mexican border, Miles Dabord wept as he told his girlfriend a fantastic, almost biblical tale of brother-on-brother anger that ended in self-defense and murder on the high seas.

Dabord said he had to kill his younger brother, former Denver Nuggets center and forward Bison Dele, after weeks of fighting aboard a catamaran in the Pacific Ocean got out of hand.

Two weeks later, Dabord himself was dead and the truth about what happened on board the Hukuna Matata seemed lost with him.

But while all the details of the deaths of Dele, his girlfriend and the catamaran captain will likely never be known, the FBI has, for the first time, released some conclusions about how two exceptionally talented brothers ended up dead on different sides of the world.

"From his cellphone to the Lincoln Navigator that he drove, everything Miles had belonged" to Dele, said FBI Special Agent Elizabeth Castaneda, who has spent the last year investigating the case surrounding the two starcrossed brothers.

"He was, in our opinion, going to assume his brother's identity."

Patricia Phillips, the mother of the two siblings, has endured a year of anguish and confusion that began the day 33-year-old Bison Dele, the child she knew as Brian Williams, was reported missing in the South Pacific in August after a sailing trip that began in late June 2002.

During two days of interviews with The Denver Post, Phillips said that today she feels a little closer to knowing what happened between her sons in the Pacific. She knows for certain only that she has cremated one, and the other has never been found.

But she has some opinions about most of the earlier law enforcement and media reports as well as Dabord's Mexican border confession: