The thing about sports is that the course of a player’s career can change in a heartbeat. On Tuesday, when Toronto guard T.J. Ford was streaking toward a clinching basket in the Raptors’ 100–88 win over the Hawks, I was thinking about whether he’d done enough to make the All-Star team. Moments later, I was wondering if he’d ever play again.

As most have seen by now, Ford never made that basket. Instead, he took a hard hit from Atlanta’s Al Horford that sent him to the floor, where he lay for several minutes before being carted off on a board and taken to the hospital. While he felt good enough a day later to fly back to Toronto, one still has to wonder if playing basketball is the right long-term decision for him.

Ford suffers from a congenital condition called spinal stenosis, which is a narrowing of the spinal column. Because of this, he’s much more vulnerable to suffer effects of hits to the head or neck area than most, which is why the hit from Horford resulted in his being immobilized, instead of going to the line for two free throws.

It was the third time this calendar year that Ford has experienced a “stinger,” or numbing sensation, from contact in a basketball game. The first came during a playoff series against the Nets last year, the second on November 20 in a game against Dallas. Neither was as severe as Tuesday’s injury, but both kept him out of action for several games.

What’s more, Ford has a history of injuries like these. He lost more than a year and needed surgery to fuse two vertebrae after a similar incident in 2004, when a collision with Minnesota’s Mark Madsen left him crumpled on the floor. And an incident at a pickup game when he was at the University of Texas left him in similar straits.

So far, Ford has dodged the bullet in terms of more severe injuries, as he’s come back from each episode without missing a beat. And he says he’ll do the same this time.

“I understand I’m always playing with a risk,” Ford told the Associated Press yesterday. “I don’t think, after talking to the medical doctors and the way that my body feels, that I’m putting my career in jeopardy.

“If I felt that way, I don’t think I would play, because life is more important. I have a son that I definitely want to be able to play with. I don’t think I could live with not being able to do a lot of things with him. If it gets to that point, I think I would definitely give it up.”

Here’s the problem: If and when it gets to “that point,” it’s likely to be too late.

That probably explains why nobody is rushing him back into the lineup. For one thing, Ford says he’s still experiencing pain in his arms and having trouble sleeping. He’ll be out of the lineup for at least a week, while the team performs all the various tests that are required in this type of situation. Nonetheless, both team and player see the show going on.

“You’re always concerned about that type of thing and you monitor it,” the team president of the Raptors, Bryan Colangelo, said. “What’s been told to me by the various experts … is as long as there’s no change in the neurological signs and the imaging remains unchanged, he should be fine and at no greater risk than he was prior to these episodes.”

Of course, being under no greater risk than before is different from being under no greater risk than everyone else in the population. And that leads to a vexing calculation, one involving the always-difficult question of risk and reward. At what point does the risk of severe injury outweigh the rewards of being one of the NBA’s elite point guards?

Here’s the tricky part: There’s no right or wrong answer here. Ford is 24 years old and blessed with ridiculous speed. Combine that with his deadly shooting from mid-range, and he’s been one of the league’s most effective point guards this season.

Were it not for the neck episodes, the story we’d be telling about Ford instead is how a guy who couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn when he entered the league in 2003 has managed to make 43.9% of his long 2-pointers, and 85.4% from the foul line this year.

Per 40 minutes, Ford’s averages of 21.7 points and 10.5 assists speak to the quality of his play. Based on my Player Efficiency Rating (PER, a per-minute rating of a player’s statistical effectiveness), Ford has been the league’s sixth-most effective point guard — trailing only Chris Paul, Chauncey Billups, Steve Nash, Tony Parker, and Baron Davis.

So who are we to tell a 24-year-old man that he can’t do the one thing he does better than nearly anybody in the world, one that will net him $8.275 million this year alone? Ford could pursue many other career paths for the rest of his life, but it’s hard to imagine him trading stocks or editing newspapers anywhere near as well as the way he plays basketball. Who are we to tell him to stop?

On the other hand, how can we not wonder about the decision if he keeps playing? Ford is generously listed at 6 feet and 165 pounds: He constantly meets up with players who outweigh him by 75 pounds or more. Horford, a 6-foot-10-inch, 245-pound center, was one such player, and he only got Ford with his hand. What if it’s a shoulder, or an elbow? What if it’s not Horford, but a behemoth center such as Shaq? Will a hit like that produce another “stinger” — or will that be the hit that has much more serious consequences?

Ford has already made millions in this game. He has a 2-year-old son to think of, as he said, and he’s a sharp guy who certainly seems to be able to make a transition to TV work.

Because of that, it’s easy for us in our armchairs to tell Ford to hang it up. It’s much harder to do that when you’re 24 and fulfilling such a tremendous God-given talent. At the end of the day, one just prays that whenever Ford decides to walk away, he’s still able to do it.

jhollinger@nysun.com