Despite his father being seriously injured after getting shot, the failure of his marriage, the death of an infant daughter, and financial troubles, the former Cavaliers player managed to have a positive outlook.
View full sizeLorenzen Wright, who played for the Cavaliers in 2008-09, was a highly paid athlete who also had his share of tragedy in his life.ATLANTA — It was not easy to keep Lorenzen Wright down.
Pete Babcock saw Wright, who was found dead Wednesday in a wooded area in Memphis, Tenn., on some of his lowest days as a professional. In 2008-09, the last year of his career, Wright was a bench player for the Cleveland Cavaliers who played little on the rare occasions he dressed out.
"Even when he was in street clothes on the bench and I happened to be there at the game, he was still upbeat and positive," said Babcock, the former Atlanta Hawks general manager who now scouts for Cleveland.
Wright provided similar memories to many who encountered him in a 13-year NBA career and a life that ended violently after 34 years. Memphis police said this week that Wright was a homicide victim killed by gunshot wound. He was found nine days after he had gone missing.
"The news as to how he died, it's killing us all, to say the least," Hawks spokesman Arthur Triche said.
While highly paid, Wright endured sorrows. When he was 7 years old, his father was shot and paralyzed. A daughter died when she was 11 months old. His marriage failed. He fell into considerable financial trouble. Little, it seemed, could repress him.
"Had soo much fun with my kids," he chirped in a Twitter message in June, according to the Memphis Commercial-Appeal.
Wright, who had a home in metro Atlanta after two stints with the Hawks, was in Memphis to pick up his six children and bring them back to Atlanta, news reports said.
"I saw him on the Sunday before he went missing," Adrian Bond, a friend of Wright's, told the Commercial-Appeal. "He was the same Lorenzen you always knew. He was getting ready to go to Israel to play ball."
What happened is a mystery. Wright was last seen at 2 a.m. July 19, hours before he was to return to Atlanta.
According to reports, a 9-1-1 dispatcher in Germantown, just east of Memphis, received a call from Wright's cell phone early on the 19th. The dispatcher heard a male voice and at least 10 gunshots. Then the phone went dead. The dispatcher called back, but no one answered.
It is unclear why authorities in Germantown and Memphis did not connect the 9-1-1 call with the missing persons report on Wright, or how he met such a violent end.
Wright's life seemed to be running into trouble. He was divorced from his wife, Sherra, in January, the same month that his $1.3 million home in suburban Atlanta was repossessed. In May, a custom-built 17-room home in Eads, Tenn., also was taken back after he and his wife defaulted on their $2.7 million loan.
"Given the fact that his father's [basketball] career was shortened by a shooting, I'm sure for the family it brings back a lot of awful memories," Triche said. "It's never easy to lose a family member, but to lose him in that way, it's tragic, to say the least."
A lottery pick by the Los Angeles Clippers in 1996, he came to Atlanta in 1999 as an up-and-coming star with a seven-year, $42 million contract before he was traded to his hometown team of Memphis after two seasons.
"I called to tell him about the trade," Babcock said. "It's probably as positive as any call I've ever made in that regard."
He came back to Atlanta to provide veteran leadership to a team with young players such as Joe Johnson, Josh Smith and Marvin Williams.
Former Hawks coach Mike Woodson said he called on Wright in "trying to get young players to play professional basketball and trying to groom young players off the floor. In that regard, he was a first-class pro."
In Memphis, Wright's death dominated local television and radio. Besides his basketball exploits, he was remembered for how he came to the aid of a Memphis orphan who had lived with his mother's corpse for a month out of fear he would be put in foster care if his mother's death was found out.
And after the death of his daughter Sierra Simone in 2003, Wright set up a scholarship fund in her name for students from his high school.
"Young people are not supposed to die before their parents," Woodson said.
In the end, Woodson said, "I don't know what has really happened, but I know that he's no longer with us, and that's sad."