He hit the ramp divider in that one, too. Why this, again? Still pending against him was a lawsuit started 19 months earlier after Ellis wrecked a loaned BMW - another late-night, high-speed, one-car accident that could have turned fatal. So he gave short, quiet answers - ``I'll be fine'' - that failed to soothe the fear and puzzlement the family had carried 2,500 miles on its sudden trip from Marietta. He had three broken ribs, a collapsed lung and the bruised look of a person recently inside a two-seat Mercedes when thrust at high speed against an Interstate ramp divider.

Tubes ran from Ellis' chest to drain blood. Lucille, Vivien, Stephanie and his twin, Darryl, merely preferred to be near him, so they curled up in chairs and on sofas around his hospital bed. They are as secure as Ellis himself, whose $7.4 million contract with the Seattle SuperSonics ensures that his mother never again will need to sleep on the hard surface of box springs. Money for a hotel suite was not the problem, not now. On the evening after Dale Ellis almost killed himself in a car accident, his family spent the night in his room at Seattle's Harborview Medical Center.

CUTLINE: BRYAN MONROE / SEATTLE TIMES, 1987: DALE AND MONIQUE ELLIS WITH THEIR DAUGHTER, ASHLEY.

Ies ve pro seattle