‘I heard my whole neck crack’: Jamar Howard on his injury, recovery and what comes next

When Mission Prep fell to Culver City in the CIF State Division 3 semifinals, it not only marked the end of the Royals’ season, but also the conclusion of Jamar Howard’s celebrated high school career.

And it couldn’t have been a much more painful finish, as Howard’s last-second shot missed the basket while he careened into the wall in a scary play that left him slumped on the floor with a broken bone in his neck as the Centaurs and their fans celebrated the victory.

Now, Howard, who’s goes by J.J., is looking to put that moment behind him as he rehabs from injury and focuses on the possibilities that lie ahead in his college basketball career.

It won’t be easy.

“I remember getting the ball at half court with six seconds left. I see this one guy take a charge, so I euro-step him and then ... my leg got kind of caught,” Howard said, looking back at the fateful play on March 4, 2023. “And then this other guy comes from the side and ... I maneuver around him, but he grabs my side area, and I thought, ‘There’s my foul, and I’m gonna shoot it.’”

But as Howard put the ball up, he slammed into the baseline wall.

“I heard my whole neck crack,” he said. “I landed and it felt like everything slowed down. I felt like I said, ‘Oh, shoot’ in my head. I looked up for a second and then all of a sudden everything went dark.”

Howard was taken to the hospital after the game. He was diagnosed with a C6 vertebrae fracture, in the spine near the base of the neck. An injury to this area can result in loss of function and feeling in the lower part of the body, including all extremities.

The senior, who’s heading to the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley on a basketball scholarship, will be in a neck brace for six to eight weeks. And he could face long-term complications.

“Anything that goes through your joint, (you experience arthritis later in life),” Howard’s mother Jessica Smith said.

Fortunately, though, he’s projected to make a full recovery.

Despite the challenge, Howard remains upbeat and is determined not to let the injury stop him from reaching his goals.

Family says Culver City gym was unsafe

When the Royals walked into the Culver City gym on the day of the game, one of the first things the team noticed was how close the baseline wall was to the court.

“Legally, it has to be 3 feet,” Howard’s grandfather Daryl Smith told The Tribune. “If this play happened at our gym, he wouldn’t even be hurt. He’d have a scraped elbow maybe.

“The game should never have been played there.”

The wall where Howard hit his head was not even three shoe lengths away from the out-of-bounds line. For a relentless, athletic driver like Howard, there simply was not enough room for him to make a safe landing going full speed toward the rim.

Some have questioned whether Mission Prep should’ve been in that gym to start with.

The Royals were the 11 seed in the Division 3 CIF State Boys Basketball Championship.

They knocked off No. 8 seed AGBU in Los Angeles and No. 3 seed Mission Bay in San Diego. Particularly in the Mission Bay matchup, the Royals appeared to be the better team from the start and maintained control the vast majority of the game before ultimately winning 67-57.

In the state tournament, however, the Royals ended up ranked nine spots below the Centaurs.

“How in the world were we even ranked 11 and they were ranked 2?” Jessica Smith said. “If you look at the facts, they lost five league games. We lost two. We both played Bishop Montgomery. They lost by 35. We lost by 14. How is that the difference in ranking?”

Even within the game itself, there were a confluence of factors leading to the final play.

Midway through the second quarter, Howard had a routine breakaway finish. He took off with both feet, but as he soared in the air for a dunk, a Culver City defender walked underneath him, causing him to miss the layup and tumble into the wall. The referee made no call on the play.

“My point in all of these things are, when there’s an action, there’s a reaction. It changes the outcome from everything after,” Jessica Smith said. “So in the first play of the game, (Jamar gets hit in the head). ... In a gym of that size, the referees need to understand the environment and the scenario that they’re in.”

Mission Prep star focuses on recovery

Howard has a long road ahead in his recovery, but through the hardship, he’s able to spin the situation in a positive light.

“Honestly, I feel like it’s really good for me as well. I have a broken pinkie that I haven’t been able to heal for two years. ... I have bad knee pain, bad shin splints,” Howard said. “My whole body just needs to recover, so I feel these two months are going to be a lot of recovery stuff.”

While playing one of his favorite games, the “2K” basketball video game, he has implemented a routine where every time he misses a shot, he does 100 calf raises.

“I’m probably gonna get bouncier just because I’m doing that kind of stuff, which if I’m actually healthy I feel like I would be a little bit more lazy and not really respect what I have,” Howard said. “This kind of opened my eyes to like, if it was a little bit worse, I couldn’t even be moving.”

Howard isn’t going to have as much time to do on-court work before he leaves for the collegiate ranks, and he’s got a lot to work on — his catch-and-shoot 3-point shot, his ball-handling, getting up to speed with the college game.

But injuries are not unfamiliar territory.

He broke his arm in fifth grade and now has a plate and six screws there. Before his sophomore season, Howard had to get surgery that kept him out for a year because of a growth issue that began to slowly tear the tendons in his wrist.

Even in regards to basketball, playing from behind has been the story of his life.

“For Three-Ball (a local travel basketball team), I wasn’t starting. Then I have to prove it for this West Coast Elite team this year where I was basically the eighth man. ... And then I proved my way into being a starter on ESPN,” Howard said. “I have the chip on my shoulder to always prove something because I’m from San Luis Obispo, which not a lot of people know of.”

Howard might not have the jump start in his college career like his peers will, but he does have an advantage compared to others who would be in this position: He’s been here before.

He knows to take advantage of this time before he takes off to school in a few months.

When he had surgery on his wrist in his sophomore year, Howard continued to play basketball with only his right arm to improve his dexterity. Now with a broken neck, he wants to work on his peripheral vision to improve his passing.

Howard’s also been watching a lot of film to better understand the mental aspect of the game.

Still, one play he keeps returning to is the end of the Culver City game.

“I’ve probably watched the ending of that game like eight times, just slow motion, fast,” Howard said. “ I see (Roman Benedetti) in the corner there. I’m pretty sure he was open. So I’m like, what if I hit him? But then I look, I look at, like, what my angles were to hit him (and) I probably couldn’t have done that with me falling. And then I’m like, what if I stopped and pulled up and would that really have been the best option?”

Howard continued to describe the endless possibilities for that final possession, but he never pointed fingers at anyone but himself.

“I’d look at my fall, and (the video) just kind of cuts out and I’m like I wish we had that on tape because I just wanna see (whether) maybe I could improve how I fall,” Howard said.

What’s ahead for Jamar Howard

Now, Howard is in the last stretch of his senior year at Mission Prep.

He’s not going to be at school for a large portion of the final weeks with his graduating class like the other students in his grade. He’ll be nursing a neck injury while doing calf raises and playing “2K.”

When asked how he got his positive mindset, Howard responded, “my household, my family.”

“If they weren’t so positive, I wouldn’t be positive. ... Even if you still get hurt, there’s always something that it’s meant to be,” he said.

“I feel like this neck injury, it’s something in life that’s meant to be.”