It has been 41 days and nights since The Big Fall. Still, the flashback is vivid for everyone in Charlotte Bobcats Arena who was at Charlotte’s NBA season opener. Especially for Gerald Wallace.

It was Wallace who took the spill that night, a split-second after taking a hit from Indiana’s Danny Granger at precisely the wrong moment. The result was a mid-air collision, one that came as Wallace soared in on a breakaway for what appeared to be an inevitable dunk.

Instead, the only slam came from Wallace’s hard and fast fall to the floor, where he remained aching all over as coaches, doctors and trainers gathered around him to help. Some in the building feared he had a concussion.

The injuries proved to be not that serious – not in the physical sense, anyway. But the experience took a toll on Charlotte’s high-flying small forward, one that is only now beginning to disappear.

Now Wallace’s body and psyche are on the mend and he is making progress. His game is returning to its familiar dramatic shape, spiced by blink-of-the-eye steals, hard drives and, yes, the occasional tumble to the court or into the nearby seats. His adoption of a new, if common, workout routine – stretching, for the first time in a basketball career that goes back 18 years to his early childhood days – and a change in mental approach are aiding the recovery.

“I feel a lot better now,” Wallace said. “The bruises that I have now are more like normal bruises. There’s nothing hurting real bad now. I just don’t want to get hit on top of a bruise. It could have been 10 times worse than it turned out to be. I’m just glad, knock on wood, that it wasn’t something that ended my season or ended my career.”

Wallace, 6-7 and 220 pounds, is still not all the way back to his career-best form of last season, his fifth in the league. He averaged 15.2 points, 7.5 rebounds, 2.5 steals (first in the NBA) and 2.07 blocked shots while shooting 53.8 percent from the field.

But he is gaining on it. In his last 11 games, Wallace is averaging 10.7 points, up from 9.8 in his previous nine appearances. Overall he has scored in double figures in 11 of his 20 games played.

Even more important, for a player who thrives on high energy, he has in recent games begun to look more like himself. It is, both Wallace and Bobcats General Manager & Head Coach Bernie Bickerstaff believe, the only way he can play at a high level.

“That’s the only way he can play,” Bickerstaff said. “He’s a kamikaze type of guy and that’s the way he has to play to be effective. That’s him. If he didn’t play that way he’d just be an average guy because he’s got to use his athleticism.”

Perhaps it is because of that athleticism that Wallace never got into a stretching routine, despite the obvious benefits. He is doing it now, three or four times a day, at the urging of Bobcats trainer Joe Sharpe.

“I was surprised that this is his sixth year in the league and he’s gone five of them without stretching,” Sharpe said. “A lot of guys can go on just their natural talent in high school but it’s harder to do that as you go to a higher level… I think he’s starting to realize that it will really help him. It makes you feel a little looser out on the court. Hopefully you can be a little more explosive on the court or jump a little higher.

“He’s getting started. We’ve seen some studies that show that the (stretching) exercises will reduce the chance of injuries. As far as the falls and the way he plays, it will help him recover quickly. He comes in now after games and stretches.”

Wallace said he noticed results immediately after following Sharpe’s advice.

“I felt a difference from the first day,” he said. “A big difference, actually. It was just something that I needed that I hadn’t done…In the past, I’d just get going on my own. My thing was trying to get that first drop of sweat. Once I got that I was good to go… Now I’m doing the stretching every day, three or four times a day. I’ve got my wife at home helping me stretch. Joe gave me some stretching exercises to do.

“Joe was telling me that because of that fall that I took, my body is so sore and bruised right now that loosening up the muscles and doing a lot of stretching will help the soreness go away…Hopefully it will improve my on-court performance and make my stamina a lot better.”

The mental part of his recovery was more complicated. The Big Fall put a scare in him, one that reappeared in the subsequent, less serious falls he has taken since. It was something Bickerstaff noticed right away.

“Since the first fall it’s just been recently that he started to get up (as high as he had before),” Bickerstaff said after a game two weeks ago. “Then he got up in the air again and they took him down. So I think he’s a little apprehensive about it. Normally Gerald finishes around the basket but he’s up over the basket putting it in. In one game he missed some layups, point blank, because he was going horizontal with his jump instead of vertical.

“When you’re up in the air like that and you fall (as Wallace did on November 1), it’s got to be on your mind. That’s just a fear you have to get over, I think.”

Wallace agreed.

“Mentally, that’s been a big part (of the recovery) for me,” Wallace said. “I think that one injury, coming down…The one thing about it was if I could have caught myself, if I had been aware of it, then it probably wouldn’t have been a big factor. “But it scared me so much because when I got hit, it was basically a shot to me because I was up in the air. Any time you take a fall like that, obviously it’s all mental because you’re afraid to go back and attack the rim when anyone is close to you. That was a big thing, trying to get over that. The big thing was to stop thinking about it and just going out and playing and putting my faith in God…

“In the past…I’m not going to say I never cared for my body but I just never thought about getting hurt,” he added. “I would just attack the rim, run, jump, dive, whatever. I never had a problem with it.”

Now, with three-fourths of the season still to play, Wallace believes he is putting The Big Fall behind him while hoping that one of that nature won’t strike again.

“I think I’m moving a lot better out on the court now,” he said. “I’m running the floor a lot better. I’m taking hits a lot better. And I’m not feeling as sore.”

Leonard Laye covered the NBA, ABA and college basketball for more than three decades for the Charlotte Observer and the old Charlotte News until his retirement from writing sports fulltime. He will write a regular column throughout the season for BobcatsBasketball.com for his second straight year.