Having a bad temper can ruin your life in an instant.
Serbian basketball player Boban Jankovic found this out the hard way. In the photo below, he can be seen screaming in a match as he is carried off the court… at 29, Jankovic was veteran of over 300 games, a skilled player known as “Bomber”. He also was a man with a pretty bad temper.
Disagreeing with what he believed to be a bad call during a match on April 28, 1993, Jankovic flew into great anger. Making a theatrical show of it, he did what he often did — slam his head against a gymnasium wall, which tend to not be overly hard, often made of wood or drywall. Alas, his target of the day was the cement block carrying the backboard of the basketballfield… a very bad target, as he cracked a neck vertebrae, destroyed his spinal cord and dropped to the floor immediately, paralyzed from the neck down…
Boban Jankovic was taken to the hospital and immediately operated on. He regained use of his arms but never walked again. He died in 2006, obese, wheelchair-bound and a shadow of his former self. All backboards have since been covered with sponge… that is Mr. Jankovic’s legacy; sponge on the backboards and a permanent reminder for people never to slam their heads against something in careless anger.