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It's always better to keep things in perspective. Jeremy Hazell, a 6-foot-5 senior guard for the Seton Hall basketball team, knows that best now.
"I just feel very lucky, very blessed," Hazell said in an exclusive interview with the New York Daily News on Monday, after surviving a gun-shot wound while walking back from a Christmas party early Sunday in east Harlem.
"I didn't know these guys -- never saw them before," Hazell said. "They just tried to rob me. I never knew something like this could happen to me."
After undergoing surgery for a broken scaphoid bone in his left wrist Dec.2, the NBA hopeful could have been lost for his final NCAA season.
On Christmas night, Hazell could have lost his life.
As the 6-foot-5 guard was walking home on E. 104 St. and about to enter into his apartment building in East Harlem early Sunday, he was approached by four men who told him to sit on a bench and that, if he did not, they were going to shoot him.
Hazell said he pushed the robber in the chest and bolted from the scene toward 105th St.
The next thing he heard was the cracking of four gun shots. The next thing he felt was one of the slugs penetrating his side, just below his armpit and then exiting his body.
"I knew I got shot." he told the Daily News on Monday. "I felt it, but I just kept running. It was scary."
Hazell said he did not recognize the men who tried to rob him.
When he got to the corner of E. 105th St. and Park Ave., Hazell managed to flag down a passing FDNY ambulance. He was treated at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital and then released early Sunday.
Police said they are investigating and that no arrests have been made.
Hazell's playing status for the rest of the season is up in the air. The Seton Hall star averaged 24.0 points in three games this season before getting injured in November against Alabama. Hazell's NBA status is anybody's guess at this point, although draftexpress.com has him as a late second-rounder in the 2011 NBA Draft.
But for now, Hazell is counting his blessings.
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