EXCLUSIVE: 20 years after his fall, Ronnie Fields reflects

June 02, 2024

Ronnie Fields can’t guarantee he would have been an NBA star.

He is sure he would have been drafted. When Fields was coming out of Farragut Academy in Chicago in 1996, the NBA had already begun drafting players out of high school. Kevin Garnett, Fields’ high school teammate, had been selected the year before. Kobe Bryant and Jermaine O’Neal were drafted out Fields’ class.

Fields was right with them in the national rankings. USA Today’s 1996 first team All-USA was comprised of Fields, Bryant, O’Neal, Tim Thomas and Mike Bibby. The other four on the team played a total of three years in college (Bibby played two years at Arizona and Thomas played one year at Villanova) and combined to play 65 seasons in the NBA and earned more than $700 million in salary alone.

Fields, a high-flying dunking machine, was considering that jump from preps to pros as his senior season was coming to a close. But on Feb. 26, 1996, two days before his 19th birthday and just before the Public League playoffs, Fields lost control of his car on a wet I-88 road and suffered a broken bone in his neck and required surgery to fuse three cervical vertebrae. His basketball career would never be the same.

Ronnie Fields was a high-flying offensive machine in his Farragut Academy days. This picture was from a tournament at Northwestern University in his senior year of high school. ( Jonathan Daniel /Allsport)

He played everywhere from the old Continental Basketball Association to the Venezuela’s league. Twenty years later, Fields sat down to reflect on how everything changed that day and how he’s more than OK with that. He never made it to the NBA, but he still had a long professional career and today shares his life story to help others.

Scott Powers: Twenty years ago, you were involved in a severe car accident. Do you still live with what happened?

Ronnie Fields: I try to learn from every experience that I’ve encountered. I don’t care if it’s my personal life or in the public. I do this sometimes, even with my daughter, every time I drive that way I always say, ‘This is where I had my accident.’ It doesn’t bother me. It’s just a lesson. A lot of people go through stuff, a lot of people don’t know how to get through it.

A lot of people say, ‘How did I handle adversity? How I did handle the car wreck? How I did handle not going to the NBA where I clearly should have been?’ I handled it to the point where it motivated me to look at life bigger than just that. Each and every day I wake up, I always try to figure is there something else I can do, some area I can use my story and my experience to help others, to open up opportunities for as well.

I don’t really have no regrets for the things I was able to learn from mentally. That’s stronger than any one thing I could have experienced. That situation, when people ask me, I’m like, ‘No.’ As much as people say, ‘I’d loved to see you in the NBA, man, you should have been.’ I look at it, yeah, but I look at where my mind is at now. If I played in the NBA, I probably would have been in a lot of trouble not learning. I probably would have learned later, but it may have been too late. Not like I was doing drugs or drinking, none of that, but just being out late, driving fast, you know dating a lot at the time. All that stuff, I would have been doing probably. But that’s why I say you just never know. For me as I get older and with my life, more and more things start to happen in a good way it’s hard to look back and think about the stuff that happened in the past.

Powers: Do you think your career is different if the accident doesn’t occur?

Fields: Yes, a lot different. A lot different because at the time being one of the top players in the country and the way the NBA drafts off potential, without that accident I still would have been drafted in the first round, me and Kobe off potential alone. When I came back, I wasn’t the same person right away for the first two years. No team knows you’re going to be the same after that, along with the other stuff. That’s just a high risk to take. That’s why it’s so different.

Powers: What has it been like to see Kobe Bryant’s career?

Fields: It’s amazing. A lot of these young guys don’t realize, I played like 17, 18 years, how hard it is to stay on top and compete for so many years. That means you got to love it. And the things you add and have to learn, that’s what’s more remarkable to me. Especially that class of guys, like Bibby, who is a good friend of mine, had a long career and did well, Jermaine O’Neal as well. Our class alone — Stephen Jackson, another good friend — we were gritty guys, just think Ron Artest, all those guys in our class. That’s why I say the toughness. Watching Kobe, he’s representing our class and our era when we came up. How many people can say that they had that type of talent? If we put our own team together in high school, me, Bibby, Kobe, Tim Thomas and Jermaine O’Neal and Stephen Jackson. Think about it.

Powers: What do you enjoy about watching Kevin Garnett still play?

Fields: The good thing about big men and Kevin is you don’t really have to chase a lot of people. The fact you can still play, block shots, his energy and his leadership and his passion. He’s changed a lot. He’s even got more passion now than he did before. Like seeing these guys after us, they’re guys not lasting four, five years in the league because of the wherewithal, the work ethic and the hunger they don’t have it like we did. The tone was set from the Jordans, the Isiahs, the Birds. Those guys set the tone for how we looked at it. The kids are getting much stronger, much faster, but lack fundamentals and work ethic and discipline.

Q. Do you have a favorite Garnett story?

A. I remember I used to bug the hell out of him at night because Kevin used to always like to sleep. He liked to get rest. One night we had come in, and I wasn’t sleepy. I was just going to mess with him because he was sleepy. He was over there sleeping, and I kept hitting him in the head with shoes. He started chasing me around the house. He said, ‘You play too much.’ I know he was tired, so I just bugged him.

Kevin Garnett and Ronnie Fields talk during a Boston Celtics practice in this undated photo. (Courtesy of Thatcher Kamin)

This is the thing, when we were doing what we were doing at the time, we weren’t even looking at it like that. We were just out there playing. We didn’t realize the impact that we had even though we were signing autographs and stuff. We were just out there like the Bulls when they were out there. That didn’t ring through until later on until people started reporting it. There wasn’t any social media.

The biggest story was when we first actually met. This is why I say stuff happens in life for a reason. Wolf [Nelson] coached him at Nike Camp. I wasn’t over there. I was over there on the other team, me and Allen Iverson. We were the guards on the other team. Wolf told me about the guy. And then, we ended up being on the same team in the all-star game. They picked the top players in their class from freshmen, sophomore, juniors and seniors to go out to Portland because it was all under Nike. We didn’t know who our roommates were going to be. Guess what? Guess who ended up being my roommate? From there, he was talking and talking, all of this stuff he talking. I’m like, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ I’m half sleep. He’s still talking. ‘What’s Chicago like? What’s this?’ I’m like, ‘What’s with all these questions for?’

The following summer I’m doing a video shoot, and he pull up. I say, ‘What you doing here?’ He say, ‘I’m here to stay. I’m coming to Chicago.’ I didn’t know all the details until later. That was just crazy. We didn’t know the impact we was going to have the day he stepped in this city.

Powers: He’s known for his trash talking. Was he good then?

Fields: No, he was not a trash talker. People are looking at a different imitation of KG. That’s not who he was. You know he learned all that from? Right here, taking him to that place, Marcy Center, where they used to beat the clothes off of you when you used to come in there. There ain’t no fouls. You ain’t getting away with that. Someone will bit your ankle off, anything, ain’t none of that called.

He had the backing of the guys. One thing we ain’t going to let nothing happen to you, so you had the room to talk that smack. That’s when it developed. He’s carried it since. But Kevin ain’t going to fight nothing. Trust me. He ain’t seen nothing like that until he got here, to see these guys. That’s where a lot of my toughness came from, playing out here. No fouls, all right. I got a bloody face, oh, I’m going to still keep playing. That’s just the difference between then and now.

Powers: Why did you start up the Ronnie Fields Warriors, an AAU team?

Fields: What I look at now in terms of what’s going on with kids, nothing personal against some high school coaches, but opportunity how kids are limited to getting seen and getting the chance to play because of their high school. I find myself that a lot of parents and kids I’ve become close with, and a kid that has a real passion to want to learn and get better and see what they can do. That’s what made me start the program. Then with my two nephews, to be able to teach them and show how it was coming up and teach them some of the things they need to.

I have a mixture of kids who could go onto play in college and kids who may not play in college, but actually are getting a chance to play and be a part of something. When I look at my program, yes, I’d love for all of them to go to college and get opportunities, but then you got the ones who are just smart and love to play and want to play where you also try to combine whatever little strengths they have and put them out there where they can help the group and not hurt the group.

My mom was a single mom with me. A lot of this stuff you get to see with these kids and help them out. It opens up a lot of other opportunities and things too, figure out what you can help and what you can do. That was one of the main reasons of doing this, and helping the kids develop their tools as much as they can. Teach them all the little ins and outs, the stuff I learned throughout the years and the stuff I had to go through.

Powers: You have also started a support group for single mothers and their children. What went behind that?

Fields: For me, talking to a lot of these kids, look, I grew up and was able to still continue life without a father in my life. In terms of, men may come and go from your mom’s life, and you still got to sustain your focus whatever was taught to you and whatever your end goal is to be whatever you want. It doesn’t have to be a basketball player. It can be anything, but find a way out and an opportunity that may lead to other kids looking at you.

Take away the excuses. After you get to a certain age of saying, my mom this or my dad wasn’t this and that, that’s what a lot of the kids and people use as they get older. After awhile when someone keeps telling you, that’s wrong, that’s wrong, that’s wrong, when does it get to the point where you’re 16, 17 and you can throw that card out of the window and have no dad? You can actually say, look, I can do something about it. I want to do something about it. Sitting there, talking to parents, a lot of them do want that help. That’s the thing where we come in. It’s getting these kids and these parents to realize we do want to do something.

Information about Ronnie Fields, his club program, his motivational speaking, the documentary Bounce Back and more can be found at www.RonnieFields.com.

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