Kingston Flemings has chosen the week before the NBA draft to make his case in a different way. In a letter to NBA GMs in The Players' Tribune, the high first-round pick said he wanted to talk about getting knocked down, not just in basketball but in life.
That matters now because he has spent the past few weeks talking about how great he is as a player, and he did not shy away from that. Flemings said he is the best point guard in this draft. But in the letter, he turned the spotlight away from the usual pre-draft boasting and toward a childhood accident that still frames how he sees himself. “It’s me getting run over by an SUV when I was four years old,” he wrote, after saying, “I want to talk about getting knocked down.”
He said the accident happened while he was playing outside at his aunt’s house with his cousin. The street was a cul-de-sac, and he ran into the back door of a big Nissan Armada as it was moving. The back tire ran over his body at hip level. His uncle scooped him up and handed him to his dad, and his parents saw huge tire treads on his pants. Flemings said the tracks were embedded into his hip and covered pretty much the entire width of his body.
He was taken to a children’s hospital, where doctors worried about internal injuries and bleeding because his belly had gotten really big. He was then transferred to a Level 1 trauma hospital. Flemings said the process took a few hours. The letter does not dwell on the medical end of the story, but it makes the point plainly enough: the player now presenting himself as a high first-round pick is also telling NBA GMs that his first lessons in toughness came long before the draft process.
That is what gives the letter its force. Flemings said his upbringing and the way he was raised by his parents helped him excel on the basketball court, and he used the accident as part of that larger picture. He even wrote that you can only learn so much from people’s successes. In a draft season built on workouts, comparisons and polished edges, he chose something rougher and older. What he leaves hanging is the part readers may want most: how exactly he recovered, and what lasting injuries, if any, he carried with him after the SUV rolled over him.
For now, the move tells the story of a prospect trying to shape how he is seen before draft night. Flemings has made his basketball case. With this letter, he has also made a personal one, and he has left the next question sitting right where NBA GMs can see it.
