He's let strangers pry and family members preach and coaches tell him to snap out of it. He's answered the reporters' questions about how his best friend died in a car crash while the two of them were speeding their Porsches away from practice. He's heard his parents tell him that, in the aftermath of being the first one to come upon his friend's lifeless body, there's no shame in seeing a therapist. He's listened while coaches cajoled him into smiling. All the while, he's been gracious and accommodating, trying to make those around him comfortable while they dealt with his discomfort.

But enough is enough.

It's noon on a Wednesday. The middle of the day in the middle of the week in the middle of the season, and David Wesley has had it. His Hornets, the team he captains, returned from a 1-5 road trip at 3 a.m. Monday. On Tuesday night, the Hornets were down 19 points to the Bulls -- the worst-team-in-the-NBA Bulls -- before Wesley led them to a triple-OT win in which he played 55 minutes. His feet hurt. His ankles hurt. And in two days it would be one year since the previous captain of the Hornets, Bobby Phills, died in that Porsche. For that, Wesley's heart hurts. But, once this day ends, he will not talk about his grief anymore. He owns it outright and will use it when he needs it, not when someone else asks for it. He has vowed to himself that he is done sharing. He's got nothing left to say.

***

It could be construed as ironic, or maybe even downright inspirational, that the Hornets -- a team the fans of Charlotte have ignored, a team the owners threaten to move, a team the coach called soft less than a month ago -- finished the season with four straight wins and, in the first round of the playoffs, treated the Heat like a rec league team, dispatching them in three games by an average of 22 points. And it could be coincidence that this happened when Wesley, coming off his best year in the pros, burned the Heat by hitting 70% from the three-point arc and locking down on Eddie Jones like a squirrel on the last nut.

Of course, it could be that what Wesley has been through steeled his nerves and transformed him from a mediocre point guard into one of the fiercest shooters in the league with the game on the line. It could be that Wesley thrived as a 6'1" shooting guard this season because playing great was the only way to prove he had recovered, mentally and emotionally, from watching his best friend die.

"I wasn't sure how people would treat me coming back this year," Wesley says. "'Is he okay? Has he moved on?' The only way to answer those questions was to play well."

That's always been the answer for Wesley. Just play well. Wasn't he too short to play in Division I? He was Southwest Conference MVP ('92) at Baylor. Could he last in the NBA as an undrafted free agent? He earned a seven-year, $22 million contract with the Hornets in '97. Would he be able to go from the point to the 2-guard? He averaged a career-high 17.2 points a game this season.

From the time he was a ninth-grader in Longview, Texas -- a 5'5" pip-squeak with an exclamation point for a body playing against guys in their 20s and 30s at McWhorter Park -- he has been the fabled David personified, slaying Goliaths with a basketball. It was his father, Donald, a college star at St. Mary's in San Antonio and playground legend in Longview, who put David up to it. McWhorter is a 75-foot-long chunk of cracked and pitted asphalt, surrounded by a chain-link fence. You can't be sure where the ball is going to bounce when you dribble, so the surest way to score is to abandon fancy moves and shoot from long range, which David did with aplomb. No one expected this small-fry to shoot such sweet jumpers. So the older guys D'd up on David even tighter, forcing him to learn how to work off picks, catch, elevate and shoot all in one fluid motion. Every time down the pockmarked blacktop, Donald would pass it off to David and encourage his son "to shoot the ball. Don't be scared, son. Just shoot it."

Being afraid was never Wesley's problem. You don't take the backroads to the NBA through Longview, or Temple (Texas) Junior College, or Wichita Falls of the CBA if you're scared. "It takes a strong individual to make yourself into what your dreams are," says Wesley's high school coach, Leroy Romines. "But that's what David did."

On the Hornets, he wasn't alone. Bobby Phills signed his own seven-year, $32 million deal with Charlotte the same year Wesley signed his. The duo were cut from the same cloth, gravitating to the same clubs on the road, laughing at the same jokes in the locker room and sharing the same innate sense that, despite their newfound wealth, neither of them had it made. Like Wesley, Phills had been an NBA castoff and CBA journeyman before joining the Hornets. Because of their paths, they always felt like they had to be perfect to prove their worth to everyone who wondered how a couple of scrubs could be paid so much.

The summer after their first season in Charlotte, Phills bought an expensive road bike for a 150-mile race he'd heard about that started in Charlotte and ended in Myrtle Beach, S.C. He mentioned aloud his riding plans to Wesley, knowing a small hint would present a big challenge. Soon Wesley bought a bike. And for their 150-mile ride in the liquid heat of a Carolina summer, the duo trained all of three times. "After about 10 miles, I was dying," says Wesley. "I didn't know how I could go on. But I looked at Bobby, and he looked fine. So I just kept going. The next day we finish, and he tells me he wanted to stop the day before but didn't. He only kept going because I did."

The competitive nature of their relationship seeped into everyday life. On the golf course, at the pool table in Phills' basement, in the casino during off-season jaunts to Vegas. And even when they were driving. When they left the shootaround on Jan. 12, 2000, Wesley and Phills headed off for breakfast. Wesley pulled out of the Charlotte Coliseum lot first, driving his white 996 Porsche Cabriolet at what police estimate was 100 mph. Typically, Phills couldn't stand eating Wesley's dust, and he sped his black 993 Porsche Cabriolet to catch up. In his rearview mirror, Wesley saw Phills approaching ... and then there was nothing but smoke. Phills had spun out, lost control of his car and collided with an oncoming car. He died instantly from internal injuries. (The other driver did not suffer life-threatening injuries.)

For Charlotte sports fans, the accident seemed like piling on. Hornets owner George Shinn had just been involved in a sexual harassment case. Panthers wide receiver Rae Carruth was in jail, accused of murdering his girlfriend. Now, the Hornets captain was killed in what everybody assumed was a race of two overpaid athletes in their fancy sports cars. (Wesley appeared before a judge and was charged with racing and reckless driving; he was found guilty of the latter charge.) Perhaps Wesley should be traded, some thought, if not for his own good, then for the good of the franchise and the town, which needed another troubled player like it needed another strip mall. "There was trade talk," says coach Paul Silas, "but I felt he didn't need to get away from what happened and be on his own, he needed to be around the rest of us who knew Bobby."

Possibly even to the detriment of the team, Silas let Wesley play on and continue to start at point guard without missing a game. He didn't play well. In fact, for the first time in his life, he played as though he were afraid. "You could just see how tentative he was," recalls his father. But Silas understood this was part of Wesley's recovery. While the accident had happened on Tyvola Road, the main street leading from the Coliseum, and the whole team had no choice but to drive by Phills' body shortly afterward, it was Wesley who tried to shake Bobby awake until another driver at the accident scene finally said, "I think he's dead." Silas didn't want to trade Wesley, he wanted to embrace him.

The team offered him access to counselors and priests and therapists. But Wesley turned them down. "I know there is a process to grieving," he says. "But I didn't know what it was, and I wasn't sure I wanted someone to tell me." At first, Wesley refused to talk about the accident. But slowly, the media inquisition became unavoidable. "In a sense, being forced to talk about it with the media helped me deal with it. I couldn't keep it bottled up anymore," says Wesley. "Not that I wanted to do it that way." What he found most therapeutic was playing. "I didn't forget about it when I played," he says. "But that's when I didn't feel guilty if I smiled or if I had a good time."

"David was always quick to smile or laugh," says Silas. "After the accident it was a real chore to snap him out of it. I would practically beg him. 'You have to smile,' I'd say. 'You have to move on.'"

Instead, Wesley did whatever he could to remember Phills, as though he were intentionally inflicting himself with pain. He wore Phills' No.13 armband during games. Over the summer, Wesley would call Phills' still-active cell phone number, just to hear Bobby's message on voice mail. Wesley also took his fiancée to Vegas during the off-season, just as he had done the year before with Phills and his wife. "We all knew summer would be hardest for him," says point guard Baron Davis. "That's when him and Bobby did everything together."

Missing his workout partner, Wesley dragged assistant coach Jerry Eaves off of the golf course and onto the basketball court, making nearly 200 jumpers a day. "We needed to make up games so he'd be challenged while practicing his shot," Eaves says. "Just spotting up, he'd never miss."

Before the preseason started, Silas called Wesley into his office. Wesley was nervous. He thought maybe now he was being traded. It wouldn't be unreasonable. Davis, the team's first-round pick in '99, needed to play more at point guard, Wesley's position. Jamal Mashburn, acquired along with P.J. Brown in a deal that sent Eddie Jones and Anthony Mason to the Heat, was going to play the 2. Wesley was the odd man out. Besides, he thought, his being around was just a reminder of their lost teammate. "I wouldn't have been surprised if I was gone," says Wesley.

Instead, Silas appointed him captain. He also asked Wesley to sacrifice his starting role and be a sparkplug off the bench. "The last player I had asked to do that," says Silas, "was Bobby Phills."

But Wesley never did come off the bench. Silas had spent the off-season designing an offense that ran through Derrick Coleman. But Coleman had a heart ailment that kept him out of training camp and was terribly out of shape when he returned. So Silas moved Mashburn up front and inserted Wesley into the starting 2-guard position.

All through preseason, Wesley was as fearless as he'd ever been at McWhorter Park, leading the team in scoring and shooting 65%. When the season started, Silas had no choice but to keep starting him. That's when Wesley stopped wearing Phills' No.13 armband and started wearing his own. That's when he remembered what his dad had always told him: Don't be afraid. Take the shot.

***

Before the Heat series started, Eaves and Wesley started talking about Phills, as they do nearly every week. They laughed about how frustrated he'd have gotten during the team's many losing streaks. They reminded themselves of the guidance he would have provided the team in the postseason. A year ago against the Sixers in Round 1, the Hornets traveled back to Charlotte between games to sleep at home. That had left them more weary than if they'd slept in a hotel. This year, at Wesley's suggestion, the team stayed in Miami between Games 1 and 2 so they'd be rested and less distracted. "That's the kind of thing Bobby would have done," says Eaves.

Of course, it was obvious to Eaves and everyone else that Wesley had grown comfortable in Phills' old role as team leader back in January. A cruel twist of fate found the Hornets playing on the anniversary of Phills' death against the Bulls, the same team they were supposed to play the day Phills died. The game was in Chicago, which forced Wesley and his teammates to miss a memorial ceremony honoring Phills in Charlotte. Meanwhile, the Bulls PR staff had twice the normal number of media requests they get for a nothing game in midseason. After a year, there were so many reporters who still had questions. So many people who wanted to know how David Wesley felt: Had he recovered? Did he still feel Bobby's absence?

That night against the Bulls, Wesley curled off a screen, caught the ball and elevated for the game-winning three-pointer with 3.5 seconds left. Afterward, he pointed to the sky and smiled.

Enough said.

This article appears in the May 14 issue of ESPN The Magazine.