PORTLAND, Ore. — When the Portland Trail Blazers were in Utah on Feb. 24, there was a special meeting after the game. Danny Berger, a 34-year-old former basketball player at Utah State, reconnected with former NBA player and now Blazers assistant coach Ryan Gomes.
They met years before in Connecticut at a charity golf tournament held by Gomes, but this meeting before the Jazz game carried some added perspective. In tow with Berger was his wife, Taylor, and two kids, 2 1/2-year-old son Logan and 3-month-old daughter Avery.
If it wasn’t for Gomes, Danny Berger likely wouldn’t be here today. No reunion. No marriage. No family. Without Gomes, Berger likely would have died on the basketball court in 2012.
“The more I go on in life, the more I am grateful for him,” Berger said. “I have a family of my own now and a second chance at life. I can’t thank him enough, because ‘thank you’ doesn’t do it justice.”
It was Dec. 4, 2012, and the 6-foot-7 Berger was completing a practice with Utah State in preparation for its game against BYU the next day.
“It was the very end of practice, and we were going through BYU’s plays,” Berger remembered. “I got scored on, and that’s the last thing I remember.”
Berger had gone into sudden cardiac arrest.
Three months earlier, Utah State was among 12 Division I schools that answered an email from Gomes offering to donate an automated external defibrillator (AED). The eight-year NBA veteran had become an AED advocate in 2006, when Stanley Myers, an 18-year-old who played for the same AAU team as Gomes, died while jogging on the Morgan State University campus because of sudden cardiac arrest.
When Myers died, Gomes was in his second NBA season with the Boston Celtics and beginning to form his foundation. He decided he wanted to combat sudden cardiac arrest and vowed to donate an AED to every NBA city. In 2012, after stops with the Minnesota Timberwolves and the LA Clippers, he expanded his reach to colleges, writing to all Division I schools asking if they needed an AED. Twelve schools responded, among them Utah State.
When Berger went down, teammates raced to the AED that had been hanging on the wall for only three months.
There were many who played a part in saving Berger — the teammates who ran to get the AED, the Utah State athletic trainers who used the device and the emergency medical technicians who life-flighted him to Salt Lake City — but Berger says if Gomes hadn’t donated the AED, he wouldn’t be here today.
Gomes refers to Berger as “a save” — one of three he knows of because of his donations — and he still remembers getting the call with the confirmation that Berger was going to survive.
“Like, you know that these things save people’s lives, but until you get that call like I got from Danny, that he’s going to be fine, it really becomes magnified,” Gomes said. “It’s still a very emotional part of this for me.”
At the postgame meet in Utah, Gomes said Berger thanked him and told him how often he thinks about him.
“When I heard him say that, it made me really look back and say, ‘Wow, man. I helped someone still be here today.’ And that was very emotional,” said Gomes, now 42. “It really hits home.”
Gomes remembers returning in 2006 to his hometown of Waterbury, Conn., on a high after playing 61 games for the Celtics as a rookie, averaging 7.6 points and 4.9 rebounds. But he also recalls quickly being grounded by the news of Myers’ sudden death at Morgan State.
“I just remember the pain and how the community was devastated,” Gomes said. “No one knew this was something that could happen to a young, healthy adult. He was just outside, running.”
He was engulfed in emotions. He felt fear — countless times he had worked out to exhaustion, could this happen to him? There was also frustration that there was nothing on campus to help Myers in his time of need. And mostly, Gomes said he felt an urge to make a difference.
“It hit me hard. My career was jumpstarting, and I felt like I was in a position to do something,” Gomes said. “I wanted to be a voice for this. I thought I could take the initiative and push awareness.”
He started reading about sudden cardiac arrest and the value of AEDs. His initial vision was to donate one AED in honor of Myers. Unsure of how to launch such an initiative, he remembered reading about Rachel Moyer, a Pennsylvania mom who was a prominent voice in AED awareness. He called Moyer, and everything took off.
Moyer had lost her son, Greg, in 2000 when he collapsed in the locker room at halftime of his first high school varsity game in Pennsylvania. She said it took paramedics 42 minutes to arrive, and when they did, they didn’t have an AED. A second ambulance with an AED arrived 10 minutes later.
“That night, I really believe if he had to leave us, he left us with something to do: and that was get AEDs everywhere,” Moyer said.
When Moyer met Gomes in 2006, the two collaborated and started dreaming. Gomes wanted to put an AED in every NBA city. Moyer wanted to go even further, placing them in schools, police cars and restaurants.
Moyer had buried her son years prior, but didn’t place a headstone on the grave.
“We made a promise that we wouldn’t put a headstone on Greg’s grave until there was an AED in every school in this country,” said Moyer, who works with the American Heart Association.
Gomes said Moyer has become his “second mom” and she helps with his foundation, Hoops for Heart Health, in identifying places of need and working with Zoll, the company that helps provide the donated AEDs. Moyer said Gomes has donated 110 AEDs over the last 20 years.
After his NBA career ended with Oklahoma City in 2014, Gomes played overseas for two seasons. He entered coaching in 2021, where he was the head coach of Overtime Elite for two seasons while also serving as an assistant coach for the Nets’ G League team in Long Island.
Now in his second second year as a player development coach in Portland, Gomes said he sometimes pays the entirety of the cost, which is around $2,000 per device, although organizations sometimes help with what their budget can afford. This month, he presented an AED to Philadelphia nonprofit Philly Got Game, which hosts games for high school- and college-age leagues, and has plans to donate one in New York City before the March 30 game against the Knicks, as well as two yet-t0-be-determined Portland establishments.
His donations have ranged from YMCAs to Boys & Girls Clubs to schools and restaurants.
“I say they are like car insurance: You want to have it, just in case,” Gomes said.
Today, Berger says every week there will be moments when he stops and thinks about Gomes and how his donation helped save his life.
“Just random moments throughout the day or the week where I’m just like, ‘Man, I’m lucky,’” Berger, 34, said. “There’s like an 8 percent survival rate for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, and I’m one of them. And it was so close to going the other way. So I’m so, so, grateful.”
After sitting out a year, Berger returned to play at Utah State, then transferred to Division II BYU-Hawaii before playing two years professionally in Germany. Throughout, he stayed in contact with the doctor who installed an implantable cardioverter defibrillator in his chest the day of his event. He had majored in business administration, but found himself drawn to the medical field. When the doctor alerted him to an opening at a medical device company in Salt Lake City, Berger jumped at the opportunity.
He is now the territory manager of the company’s cardiac rhythm division.
“I knew after my event that I wanted to get into this space, because it affected me a lot,” Berger said. “So this huge trial in my life has turned into a huge blessing. My career now is an industry that I didn’t even know existed before my event.”
So, it was more than just the normal meet-and-greet after the Portland-Utah game on Feb. 24. It was a thank you, with perspective.
“People have asked me, ‘What do you say to him?’” Berger said when he tells them about Gomes. “And I say, well, I want to thank him, but he doesn’t expect that, and he doesn’t necessarily want that. He’s like, ‘I’m doing it for everybody else.’ But I try to remind him. Because I think sometimes when you are doing the work he does with foundations, it can seem meaningless and not getting the outcomes you want. But I’m a testament that’s not always true.”
Gomes said he feels uncomfortable with the praise because it’s not what motivates him. There are too many areas without the proper equipment, too many lives in jeopardy, so he’s busy looking for the next place to deliver an AED.
“I believe when God gives you something that can change lives, you have to act on it,” Gomes said. “For me, it’s always about helping the next person in life.”
(Top photo of Ryan Gomes, Danny Berger and his family courtesy of Portland Trail Blazers)
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6192138/2025/03/13/ryan-gomes-defibrillator-aed-nba/
