Crime in Sports - #277 - Trick AND Treat!! - The Decentness of Lorenzen Wright

Episode Date: October 26, 2021

This week, we do things a little bit differently, and discuss a man who actually did most things right. He wasn't arrested, every 5 minutes, or considered an awful person. This episode is about what happened to this athlete. Marriage trouble & money problems are there, but is that what caused his demise? The last he is heard from is on a 911 call, full of audible gunshots. It's a true whodunnit, until an unlikely source breaks the whole thing wide open, and reveals a disturbing & brutal plot!! Be a hometown hero, let your father guide all that you do, and end up brutally murdered with Lorenzen Wright!! Check us out, every Tuesday! !We will continue to bring you the biggest idiots in sports history!!  Hosted by James Pietragallo & Jimmie Whisman  Donate at... patreon.com/crimeinsports or with paypal.com using our email: [e-mail]  Get all the CIS & STM merch at crimeinsports.threadless.com  Go to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things CIS & STM!!  Contact us on... twitter.com/crimeinsports [e-mail] facebook.com/Crimeinsports instagram.com/smalltownmurder See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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A first listen is waiting for you when you start your free trial at audible.ca. The Queen of the Courtroom is back. How did I know that? i have crystal ball in my head new cases leave her a long so uh this is not a so this is a period classic judy it's streaming you can say anything it's an all-new season judy justice only on freebie Hello and welcome to Crime and Sports! Yay! Yay! Yay indeed, Jimmy, yay indeed!

My name is James Petrigallo, I'm here with my co-host. I am Jimmy Wissman. Thank you folks so much for joining us today. We are super excited. Today is a, I guess because it's coming out the week of, this is our Halloween episode. Oh, it is. So we are going to do something a little bit different. It's going to be a creepier, we're going to do a horror episode here because what happened was a horror show and it's completely different we've never done an episode like this before where our subject has

never actually been arrested from what all i can tell what it's never happened well there there there is some horrible things oh you'll see once i can tell you who it is you're gonna go oh boy okay i get it now but uh quickly before we get to that just want to first of all thank you for your reviews they do help a lot so whatever app you're listening on give us as many stars as you can it helps i don't know why keep doing that also head over to shut up and give me murder.com. Right. Right now for tickets to live shows. Yes. Live shows coming up.

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everything he's like you know what i'm gonna open up a bodybuilding federation it's the crazy just him just oh god look at all the vascularity it's everything he's ever wanted and it's hilarious and it didn't last long so what the fuck is this at one point you could watch bodybuilding on pay-per-view put it that way so oh gross and then for small town murders we are going to discuss the scott peterson lacey peterson case that we all know of scott peterson we're really going to discuss his story and whether because a lot of people have asked us to do this because they're like what do you think of this because his story is very plausible and super plausible it's a lot of people are you know kind of i don't know like i think he's guilty because he seems like a dick but then at the same time you're like i don't know he didn't the only evidence isn't there

that was me i wouldn't want it that evidence convicted me so yeah we're gonna we'll discuss it we'll go through it and we'll go through the interrogation and everything like that and figure out his story on Smaltz at Murder's Bonus. You'll have access to all of that, patreon.com slash crimeandsports. And, of course, you'll get a shout-out at the end of the show because we love you. And Jimmy will mispronounce your name to show that. Also, PayPal. Use our email address, crimeandsports at gmail.com. Get your shout out there so

that said let's get into this okay with a story completely different for halloween a little trick we'll say here and it's going to be a treat as well we trick or treat we say trick and treat motherfuckers that's what you're getting it's a magic trick indeed. Boom. Take that. Yeah. So we are going to talk about the Lorenzen Wright story today. Now, if you don't know this story, don't Google it right now, please, because it's going to ruin the whole thing for you. But if you do know this story, you know it's one of these stories that dragged on for so long and we finally have a closure on the thing like last month, two months ago it happened. So the whole thing kind of wrapped up.

But other than that, there's still a loose end here that's still wrapping up and it's wild. Oh, I can't wait to talk about this. Yeah, if you do know about it, it's one of those, like I said, it went on for so long you kind of lose track of certain things. And in the end you're like, oh, okay, I guess, I don't know. And you really don't get the whole full story so let's talk about it here let's start out with lorenzen verne ganya right stop it i swear on everything that is holy in this world my children everything there is his middle name is is Vern-Ganya Wright. His family were wrestling fans?

If you don't know who Vern Ganya is, you probably haven't been listening to the show for very long. Vern Ganya, very important. And we could technically do a crime and sports on Vern, but we won't. We are going to do a bonus episode on how Vince McMahon completely focused on really taking him down and driving him fucking crazy. So that's going to be fun to do. But Vern Gagne ran the AWA, which is a wrestling territory, started in Minneapolis and spread out throughout the western United States and Canada. And Vern was the head of this for 35 years.

And then Vince McMahon came in and just ate him alive, took Hulk Hogan, took all of his main talent moved into minneapolis ran shows there got you know just absolutely how did lorenzen wright's family land on that name well vern in the end of his life vern when he was had dementia and alzheimer's and he was in a retirement home or nursing home, he actually body slammed a 94-year-old Holocaust survivor and killed him. What? Not because he was a Holocaust survivor, but just happened to be also. This guy survived the Nazis. The guy who body slammed did that also.

Took him down and killed him. And it was a homicide homicide but they didn't press charges because he didn't know where the fuck he was he was right yeah he was like you know they were like did you kill that guy and he's like waffles they're like i don't know what waffles means i don't think he's all there i want more pudding yeah he's he said he's got he's wearing comfortable underpants i don't know what that means that's we're gonna have to let him go so it's a very if lorenzen right was like a white dude from minneapolis i would go this makes sense yeah his family probably idolized him a southern guy from a black guy from the south this makes literally no sense not because oh how could

they like this guy but because that didn't even go there he lorenzen wright is born in 1975 the awa wasn't on in the south in 1975 it wasn't on television it wasn't on television there was no way to see it down there that is fascinating it's the weirdest fucking thing i've ever seen in my life but you got no connection no way to connect it still his father yeah liked verne ganya that was it evidently no that's what it is his father said he's the he was the one who gave him the name and his father calls him ganya that's his name that his father always calls him is ganya ganya right that's what he he loves verne loves verne ganya to the point of naming his not verne not ganya verne ganya to make sure you know how down with verne ganya this motherfucker is do you understand how crazy this is i know elvis presley wissman my dad is a big

fan obviously i mean at least like a lot of people probably there's probably a lot of people that did that though i bet you're right i'm sure there is in the south especially but i don't know how many like black dudes born in the south are have a middle name of verne ganya it just doesn't make any sense it just doesn't make any fucking sense rhyme reason or anything yeah even greg ganya's middle name isn't verne i don't think this is fucking crazy so it's pretty impressive though it's wild it's the weirdest in this whole 277 episodes and countless bonuses and everything this is the weirdest thing we've ever encountered it is this is the thing that made that blew my mind the most i did so much research into what's the cause of it and it just turns out in a newspaper article in the 90s i found his dad

just going really like vergnagna okay and he's such an obscure person so obscure i mean not in the wrestling business but we're not this isn't in the wrestling business that's my point is dad's not in the wrestling business it doesn't're not. This isn't in the wrestling business. That's my point. Dad's not in the wrestling business. It doesn't make sense. He's a regional guy. In the 70s, that's mad obscure, though. That's like naming some kid today Charles Bronson as a middle name. Nobody fucking knows who that is. No.

The only thing I can think, and this doesn't make a ton of sense, is that, okay, his dad, let's say his dad was 25 when he was born okay that would put him at 1950 his being born when vern when vern gania became a huge national star in the early 50s to mid 50s on dumont television nationally so in that time period from like 55 to 60, he was a household name, Vern Gagne, in the country. Is that right? Absolutely. He was a household name. He did national commercials for things.

Every Saturday night, he was the star of the show on TV. So it was a national show. And then when wrestling kind of lost favor after that, then it went regional and he stayed in Minnesota and everybody probably forgot where the fuck he was. in Minnesota and everybody probably forgot where the fuck he was but apparently everyone except Herb Wright uh Lorenzen's dad who remembered his childhood hero Vern Gagne and named his son after him so anyway he's born November 4th 1975 Lorenzen it's a very strange thing now Lorenzen's parents uh Deborah and Herb are their names by the way we'll talk a lot about, Deborah and Herb, are their names, by the way. We'll talk a lot about Herb because Herb is Lorenzen's everything. He's always with him.

He moves with him places. That's great. He's with him. We'll find out why, too. There's a reason that brings him even closer. His parents get separated when he's young, but both of them are involved in his life a lot. You know, he spends summers with his dad. And, you know, there's no his dad's a basketball player who plays overseas a little bit.

And we'll get into. So, you know, when his dad's there, he spends a lot of time with Lorenzen. He shuttles between his mom's home in Oxford, Mississippi. Yeah. And he goes between there and his dad's house in Memphis. Dad lives in Memphis. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi. Goes back and forth, spends summers in Memphis with his dad, holidays, shit like that, whenever he can.

It's only 80 miles away, so it's not like it's an hour and a half drive. No big deal. Not a trick. So his dad grew up in memphis tennessee is uh there herb um apparently him he at first he wasn't a basketball player he wasn't no no his dad herb wasn't really a ball player but he was like a good athlete a friend of his his best friend larry finch was the best player in the city larry will end up coaching the memphis state basketball team where lorenzen ends up playing so this is all very kind of in the family type of

shit so herb right and finch grew up together and they double dated and shit like they were like real close um tight buddies uh finch went on to end up getting a ton of records at Memphis State as a player, became a hero there. And, you know, he was from Memphis, so a natural choice to be a coach later on. Herb ended up graduating from high school and working construction. That was his lot. But his younger brother, Alvin, I guess, was a good basketball player and was going to graduate from college playing at Memphis State. And so he seemed like he decided maybe I should play basketball, which is weird to just say maybe I should play basketball. Like, maybe I'll pick it up.

How wild is that? And he made the NBA. So he like not the NBA. He played overseas. This guy didn't. Not Lorenzen. We NBA, so he like... Not the NBA. He played overseas, this guy. Lorenzen didn't? Not Lorenzen. We're talking about Herb, not Lorenzen. So Herb just decided out of nowhere that he just...

Maybe that's what I do? He's going to start playing basketball. Because his brother does. Yeah, and he's like, I mean, you know, why not? My friend plays, my brother plays. I mean, I feel like I could just be on a team, which is... Give it a chance. Not a thing.

That's how different basketball was back then, too. If they saw athletic ability, they'd be like, we'll teach them how to shoot and shit, whereas now you have to have it all. So, Hakeem Olajuwon, when he was drafted in the NBA, had only been playing basketball for five years, and he was the number one overall draft pick. And one of the best that ever did it. He's insanely one of the best centers ever. And five years he had been playing.

Agile agile could shoot dunk he was great he was fucking amazing play d he was awesome so uh herb said quite quote it seemed like that to me like basketball might be the way to go so i started playing more and more after work i couldn't hit the side of a barn with my shot pure brick but i did have a 48 inch vertical leap oh that's still i don't know if that's true or not but that's like you know barclays is 44 famously that's how he's sir six four and can average 15 rebounds jordan's is 43 dr jay's is in the low 40s you know these famous dunkers and he's saying fucking shit i'm 48 which is not too bad um now a friend of his

who was a basketball player a basketball player and a coach later said the first time i saw him jump i thought superman was taking off everybody backs up the fact that he could jump like this and he must have because he ends up on basketball team so that's the only way he could pull that off he's only six five to his dad he's not lorenzen lorenzen lorenzen 611 well for basketball all right if you're set elijah one being seven foot tall seven foot one they go okay tall guys talking about only six well it's taller than me i get it it. But, you know, Olajuwon, 7'1", you go, I don't care. We'll make him block shots and shit. Where 6'5", it's like, well, you better be able to play, motherfucker, because we got guys 7 feet tall who can't play. Oh, man.

So the coach of the Shelby State Junior College opened in Memphis in 1972, uh the guy the coach was looking for players okay imagine just they're just looking for players for the college but not a classified ad yeah and a friend of the coaches said well why don't you go around to like local rec centers and like you know local gyms and yeah find the games and look for the best guys see if you can find some guys this guy said he talked to the coach. He said, quote, I told Joe, I know where you can get a guy who can jump out of the gym. It was Herb Wright. He signed him the first time he saw him jump. That's all he had to do was jump, and they were like, you're on the fucking team.

So two years later, he's doing really well, Herb Wright, and he leads the nation's junior colleges in rebounding. So it took two years for that to happen he ended up playing for two seasons at old miss after that too which is a division one school big scc school that's big stuff and then he ended up playing uh signing to play pro basketball in finland oh which is so he ends up going overseas and um this is after Lorenzen's born. All on a whim. All on a whim. So he comes back.

I feel like, eh, maybe I'll play basketball. That's just what I'm going to do. Imagine being that athletic that you're just like, I think maybe I'll do this. And they're like, will you play for us? We'll teach you how to do it. That's how amazing you are. That explains why there's so many podcasts. I guess I'm just going to make a podcast.

Yeah, I guess I'll just do that. You don't have 48-inch vertical leaps, everybody. That's the problem. They don't have podcasts that have the equivalent of that. That's my point. Maybe don't make a podcast. That's my point. Have the leap before you podcast.

Work on it. Work on the game. You go, well, you assholes are doing podcasts. We also were on stage every fucking night for years. For years, right. Yeah. Plenty of time. Multiple times a night.

So it's a practice. Practice is what we're saying. And then work on it. And it's good. Then you can play on the Shelby State team. And maybe you'll be pro in Finland someday. Right. Which is like us.

I feel like we're the type where we're like hey we're really famous in paraguay we can't walk down the street you know that's how i feel we're very famous uh in on a on a one block radius on the night that we have a show at the theater that's on that block huge huge we're insane famous right there which is really a good way to do it because we're people that we want to like us like us and then when we go to yeah then when we go to the airport nobody bothers us it's beautiful that's great nobody cares that they don't bother us nobody gives a shit that's i mean they wouldn't bother us unless we were like stepping on their

shoe or something because i don't know who the fuck we are like that nobody gives a shit including the airline that we're flying oh yeah like that old man who came up what's that line for love that guy yeah a line of people waiting to meet us what's this line for yeah we tell them he just goes looks at us and goes and walks away that was beautiful. And we laughed like banshees for fucking eight minutes because we thought it was the greatest thing in the world. You and everybody outside of the building here thinks the exact same thing.

Yep. What the hell is wrong with these people? So Lorenzen ends up at his dad's house every summer. Herb works for the Memphis Recreation Department during the summer. And Lorenzen would live in Mississippi and then come July and August spend with his father. So the summer of 1983, you know, unusual. Lorenzen spending time with his dad. Yep.

They're working together, shoveling gravel and pouring concrete and building fences around his dad's house and doing some yard work together and shit and playing basketball a lot as well. And Lorenzen's eight years old at this moment in time, but he wants to play basketball too. His dad plays in Finland. He sees pictures of his dad. He knows his dad can play. So he's into it. Pictures of his dad. He knows his dad can play.

So, you know, he's into it. So anyway, the summer's over. Beginning of August, he ends up going driving young Lorenzen back down to his mom's house there. Drives him down to Oxford, Mississippi. Goes back to Memphis. Goes to the rec center. It's August 12th, 1983. And Herb said, quote, I used to work in the gym trying to give something back to the kids in the neighborhood.

It was the right thing to do. So he would have kind of a rec program open until school started. So the kids would have somewhere to go during the day other than jail, which is nice. So the final day of the rec program's 1983 summer schedule is herb's last day working for doing that for this year and then he's got to get prepared to go play overseas again right so that's how that works um his supervisor asked him to keep the gym closed uh that day just knock off a day early but herb said no because the kids knew that was the last day and they were dependent on that being the last day so yeah and dependent on that being the last day. So that's my party day.

Everybody's throwing me a party that day. I'm coming. Yeah, I'm showing up for that. It's an easy day. That's the thing we're doing. It'll be a nice time. Maybe we'll get pizza. Who knows?

We'll see what happens. So he said, I wanted to let the kids in. Well, everything was fine until these three guys started making trouble. And I put them out of the gym so he puts them out of the gym here uh he told him he said get out uh you know telling these guys get the fuck out of here apparently they were uh they got themselves in a game that included lorenzen's sister and aunt and uh they were they were kicking the shit out of these guys the sister and the hand like that team was schooling them yeah and these guys kept getting angry at them and were like starting to throw

elbows and shit so yeah herb said all right you guys got to get out of here this is disheartening when women are kicking the shit out of you at a physical sport yeah you're trying you're throwing elbows at people at my you know my niece and this is my daughter a bitch right daughter and sister it is so yeah get the fuck out of here so the guys told him that's all right we'll be back and he was like yeah whatever you know big fucking deal so um they end up uh they do end up coming back and uh somebody had told herb popped in and told him hey those guys you threw out are outside making a lot of noise and they want to come back in and get to you. So he said, oh, shit, now he was going to go call the cops

and he said he was going to the rec center's back door. He knew there was a phone there in the building and he said the guys were there, though, and they burst through the back door. He said he turned around and took off, Herb there though and they burst through the back door he said he turned around and took off herb did and ran for help he said but as he ran they started firing shots at him oh my god first shot misses herb second shot hits herb uh herbs uh lorenzen says this is later on quote he tried to get up but he couldn't He crawled to the side of a car. He was trying to get up, and the guy pulled up and told him, and a guy pulled up and told him, you've been shot.

And Herb says, I knew I had to be paralyzed because I couldn't feel my legs. So paralyzed from the chest down forever here. Poor Herb. Getting shot in the back? Shot in the back. Coward pussy. Wow. Yep.

Shot a guy who was running the other way so fucking unbelievable yep herb said quote it took me five days to accept that until the moment i woke up i thought hey i'm here i still have my upper body i still have my family let's get into it that was her that's i still got my arms and i got my family so let's do this shit yeah you gotta like herb herb You got to like Herb. Herb's got a great fucking attitude. Yeah. His outlook on life is much cheerier than mine would be after I got shot in the fucking spine.

Yeah. Yeah. And four months later, he's coaching a girls' high school basketball team. Wow. Herb, from his wheelchair. Less than a year later, he's coaching Shelby State Community College women's basketball. And he'll be really good at it, too. He'll end up in the, I think he's in the Memphis Sports Hall of Fame, the father for all the shit he's done.

Or the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame, one of those. Wait a minute, Herb. So Lorenzen said, the next time I saw my dad after the shooting, he was driving the car with the hand controls. He'd come down to pick me up for Christmas. So he was just in his life those shit scare me man oh yeah i had a friend who had a dad had a car like that and he borrowed once in a while on the handlebars on the fucking wheel from the throttle and the brake that's horrifying yeah he liked the big knob thing to turn it he thought that was pretty cool but other

than that the wheel is great that that's pretty rad but the handlebar handlebar gas and brake no this is a car that is terrifying it is not a bicycle it's scary to do you don't you're just not used to it i guess you're used to it if you're in that situation it's better than not having a car but the car has to be modified for that oh yeah they do and those things like a man does that a man installs it how much do you trust that motherfucker yeah probably not yeah that's true they don't roll off the the factory line doesn't have handlebar wheelchair accessible cars that's not a disable accessible it's not a thing it's like a limo those shits are custom yeah not a lot of hearses coming off the line type of thing.

You want a double? Yeah, we can make it for you. I'll get there. So Lorenzen said his dad, he was a hero to him. He said he never stopped being his dad. The next time he saw him, he was just in the groove of his life, just happened to be in a wheelchair now. He was coaching. He's doing this and that.

the groove of his life just happened to be in a wheelchair now he was coaching he's doing this and that he said uh you know lorenzen uh said that it you know it was really really weird but he said nothing changed in my dad's attitude so i didn't change my attitude he was like i guess it's fine dad's acting like it's fine so i guess it's cool he says um quote he didn't let it get him down so i wasn't going to let it get me down. He just told me what happened and that he was going to dedicate himself more to my basketball and teaching me how to play. Seeing him be so strong, I thought I could handle anything. And then Herb says, I let him know that, hey, this can happen to you. It can happen to anybody. You never know what's going to happen down the line, but it's no reason to throw your hands up and quit.

What an attitude. I'm blown away. Yeah, he but it's no reason to throw your hands up and quit. What an attitude. I'm blown away. Yeah, he said, what if I'd thrown my hands up and quit? He might not get to where he's going. True. That's it. Very true. So his senior year, he decides to get serious about basketball.

Okay. And this is, dad wants to train him every day. Wants to make him like you want to. Because Lorenzen's 6'11". I mean, if you're a 6'11 and a good athlete, come from a guy who can jump 48 inches, you have as good a chance as anyone on the face of the earth to make the NBA. You have a real chance of doing that. You're going to go to college. I mean, there's everything.

So he said, if you're serious serious i will work your ass out and make it real so you'll you'll be prepared how many times does lorenzen want to tell him don't tell me to run harder while you sit in a chair yeah you're sitting on your ass sir i'm like little mac right now running while you're on a bicycle this is bullshit the hell out of here don't you dare don't you dare so his senior year he moves from mississippi up to memphis and in his sophomore and junior year they had gone to the state championship twice and everything like that so he's a really good player and um he moves to memphis he has a four inch five inch growth spurt at some point in here, too, where he goes from like 6'6 to 6'11 mid-high school, which is like, whew. So rad.

Unbelievable. That's awesome. Yeah. Hey, I just grew about $30 million. That's pretty cool. That's what it is. Every inch, you're like, another $5 million. Look at that.

I'm a money tree. I'm an actual money tree. Literally. As I'm growing, money is falling off of me. So, yeah, it goes there. His dad is full-time into that. Also, in his senior year of high school, he starts dating a woman named Shira Robinson, who is her dad, Julius, lorenzen's aau coach okay okay now he's dating

the coach's daughter his a yes aau coach now this is the coach is fine with this because lorenzen is a uh really a top-notch kid like nobody has a bad word to say about him he's respectful he's a good student he's uh He's a good kid. I mean, he just looks like a— If you're going to date one of my players, it's the best one for you to date. Date this guy. Like, yeah, he's got his shit together. He's going to be something.

So she, though, this is a different thing. This isn't like this flower that he's trying to protect the father. She's five years older than Lorenzen. So he's 17. She's 22 which the the the chasm between 17 and 22 is the it's the biggest chasm you could get like there's no 35 and 40 there's nothing there you're a little grumpier that's it missing bills has affected her life for four years. He doesn't know anything about what missing a bill feels like. 17 to 20.

High school and 22. Right. Not only is she 22, she has been around more of older people, society. She used to date Isaac Hayes, the singer. What? You know, chef. She dated him. Hot-buttered soul.

She dated that motherfucker. Wow. Just can't get enough. You know, that's what she's singing. That was her boyfriend. That's her boyfriend. So she's worldly, let's say, compared to a 17-year-old who hangs out with his dad every day in a wheelchair. It's just not the same.

You just can't compare those two lives. She's worried about a credit score and he's worried about uh a score on a history test like that's it's entirely different life absolutely but i they hit it off she's also very beautiful as well and uh they hit it right off and click and they're kind of together from then on that's that's his girl from from on. And, yeah, he goes to Booker T. Washington High School in Memphis. And his dad's coaching women's basketball at Shelby State Community College, which, yeah, pretty damn fucking cool. And everybody's doing well. And in Herb's first season as coach, Shelby State went 27-3.

Holy shit. And finished third in the Njcaa national tournament so national junior whatever the fuck yeah whoever the fuck it is either way third in the tourney and uh 27 and three so he's a goddamn good coach and he's coaching lorenzen as well he uh he said this is what herb said quote i decided to make him run six miles a day before he was allowed to work on his game. That's what I had done when I played. So, yeah, you got to have the endurance to even be able to work on your game after running six miles. Six a day.

Yep. If you're 6'11", though, running the floor like that's going to come in handy later. I just rode my bicycle eight miles last weekend, and almost died oh yeah you're still working you're saying you were sore like eight days seven days later so that's that was two days late that was two days ago i hurt this morning like my balls hurt from sitting on a seat eight six miles a day jimmy get right up running holy shit and being that tall too and it takes a toll on you that really does that's the thing it's a lot of pressure there's a big difference between 6 5 and 6 11 when it comes

to that shit because i mean my everything on me is falling apart i can't imagine you know it has been for 15 years so i can't imagine like from like you know my early 20s so i can't imagine uh how 6 11 feels he also said this said, this is Herb, quote, we did this five days a week. On the sixth day, I slept in, and he got up and ran anyway. That showed me... Oh, my God.

That showed me right there that this kid wanted to be the best he could be. He's running 40 fucking miles a week. That's wild. And Lorenzen said, quote, my work ethic, he taught me that. When you're young, you know, you want to do all the things the other kids are doing. That's wild. And this way you won't have to go out and do something crazy. You can buy an old car and fix it up all day or build something in the back of your house. Because that's what he taught him to do was build shit. And they worked on old cars in the driveway.

He's like, that's you can go do that rather than get in trouble. I want that life. Yeah. Piss off his money. Lorenzen credits his dad for his floor savvy, his rebounding prowess, everything. He says, I know for a fact that he gave me the uh the love of rebounding i guess that's why i'd rather have 20 rebounds over 20 points any day sure that's a good that's a that kind of attitude by the way is a on a player is just a it's just a

almost uh like a signifier of character someone who's like i want 20 boards like i'm pulling them down and like it's a different it's like the person who's like i want to be the catcher in baseball this is a different type of uh it's very indicative of the competitive nature of the guy and how much he wants to be a part of this and it's and he's not he's not a like a glamour seeker really either that's the other thing he's not that kind of guy at all he said that uh people would used to harp on his dad and talk shit about his dad saying he was working him too hard all the time but Lorenzen was like no that's what I want to do and I'm happy he's doing it and uh Herb said uh what do you want to do with your life he said he would ask his son

he said do you want to be a video game player or a basketball player? And he said the son would say a basketball player. And he said, well, there you go. Herb said, what the critics didn't understand is that I sat Lorenzen down and explained what needed to be done. I made him understand it was not going to be easy. And he accepted that. So he didn't say, you have to do this. He said, hey, do you want to play this when you're older?

And he said, yes. And he goes, okay, well, here are the steps you have to take. And if you want, I'll take you through them. And if not, then go play video games. But, you know, I played in college. I play in the pros. I know what it takes. So if you want to do it, do it.

The wait is over. So far, you're not losing. The only thing you're losing is my patience. Quickly, I see that. Bing! The queen of the courtroom is back. I didn't do anything. You wouldn't know the truth if it came up and slapped you in the face.

I see he's not intimidated by anything. I can fix that. New cases. She wanted to fight me. Leave her alone. Okay, so, um... This is not a so. New cases she wanted to fight me leave her a Lo, okay, so not this is not a so this is a period Classic Judy. Did you sleep with her? Yes, your honor. You married his cousin His brother. That's not him. Yes, ma'am. I would make a beeline for the door

The Emmy Award winning series returns. How did I know that? I have a crystal ball in my head. It's an all new season. It's streaming. You can say anything. Judy Justice. Only on Freebie. Taylor Swift is soaring high. Her every move captured in the news cycle and devoured by her devoted fans. She's broken billboard records and made Grammys history, not to mention becoming a billionaire in the process. But along the way, Taylor has had to wage war, first by taking on a very powerful, very famous manager, Scooter Braun,

and then by going up against the biggest live events company, Ticketmaster. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wondery's show, Business Wars. We go deep into some of the biggest corporate rivalries of all time. And in our latest season, Taylor Swift will shake up not only the music business, but Hollywood and the NFL. Follow Business Wars wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad- free on the amazon music or wondery app so uh yeah he said he ended up that's what he did he was doing that and uh he'd still do

all the shit with his dad during the summer and his dad said i didn't allow him to get a job in the summer i wanted him to work on his game but i also wanted him to know what hard work is and that was learning too so rather than a job he'd play basketball and pour concrete and do all that shit around his dad's house. So, yeah, he ends up in high school. He has a five inch spurt of growth. And he says he the father says he told the mother, I told her, you buy the pants and I'll buy the shoes because he grew out as well as up. So they were constantly, you know, having to buy. Just out running for clothes.

Yeah. I mean, shit, when you're a teenager, you have to buy all new teenage wardrobes every three months. That's got to be crazy. He is a 1993, 1994 McDonald's All-American, which is the – that's where all the top schools are. It's a high school all-star game. Yeah, they're picking from everywhere in the country. And they said that he loves the hook shot. Lorenzen does.

And they're talking to him about the game. And he says, it's my favorite shot. Learned it from my dad. He says, quote, I've been doing it from day one. It's the first shot my father taught me. And he says, you're going to see it in the first shot my father taught me and he says you're going to see it in the game especially with all these big guys so he's ready to go he ends up signing a letter of intent he can go pretty much anywhere the fuck he wants to by the way right

yeah he's a 611 mcdonald's all-american so he can i mean there's not he doesn't have a limited choice of schools to go to and of everywhere he can go in the whole country, he chooses to sign a letter of intent at Memphis State. All right. Which is now, I just think, the University of Memphis, I believe. But it used to be Memphis State. Penny Hardaway went, right? Exactly, yeah. Penny Hardaway went right before him.

He graduated the year before Lorenzen came. So, yeah. He ends up signing there, though. It it's the home school his dad's place and this makes him a local hero obviously because he was dominating memphis high school at that point and the coach is that coach finch the guy that his dad grew up with as one of his boys so one of his best friends and all that shit so he trusts him with his son which is great too and um yeah his mother was uh she thought that you know she would have preferred that he went somewhere near her but he's still only 80 miles away and lorenzen said quote i wanted to stay near my dad i wanted him to be able to see me play he gives me pointers he stands by me and i'm not ready to leave that

right my mom doesn't know shit about basketball so yeah she's not watching tape with me afterwards i'll see her on the weekends you know i'll go home on the weekends but during the week i need some pointers he said uh i wonder what happens i wonder sometimes what would have happened if that bullet had just missed uh he says this is herb talking i wonder if i'd have uh seen i wonder if i'd have even been in america to see my son develop the way he has he said maybe this happened to keep me from continuing to go back to europe and leaving him behind uh to grow up without me maybe this is where i belonged

or i was really needed all along so he's trying to find a positive of getting shot in the spine he's like have that attitude about fucking anything i would just be the most bitter asshole ever i'd be such a dick i'd be such an asshole no matter what i wouldn't be able to help it i'd even know i'd be like i'm sorry i know i'm an asshole but i'm in this fucking god damn it they shot me in the back i was born able but i could do things to this punk ass kid with a gun 48 inches do you know how fucking tall that is that's ridiculous i could jump that i could jump i could jump over an eight year old yeah that's what i mean that's difficult yeah i could i could jump a chevy malibu now what am i doing nothing so i mean not that they're obviously

you're in a chair you're in a chair but it's for a guy who could jump 48 inches that's a big difference not just able-bodied unbelievably talented bodied yeah no top 0.001 percent of athleticism on the face of the earth that that's that's a different thing you know i mean if you were in a chair it really wouldn't be that much of a switch for you no as. As far as your lifestyle goes. I sit a lot. Yeah. So, I mean, you weren't like, oh, fuck, I was 360 Duncan last week.

So, it's not a big deal. I just walked slightly more than I do now. Yeah. It's fucking tough. And that's a tough, as you know, we know plenty of people in wheelchairs. Oh, my God, yeah. And of people in wheelchairs. Oh, my God. It's very tough, man. That's a tough lifestyle depending on what – it's difficult.

So in college, Larry Finch has been dying for Lorenzen Wright. He was drooling over him this whole senior year in high school. He just – he couldn't wait. He just wanted him to be there. He said he charted every move that he made. He, you know – We call that stalking stalking yeah that's what these coaches do yeah they stalk man uh he just had had them all planned out in his offense the next year they hadn't recruited a real center since the early 80s they said and they wanted a rebounder shot blocker and Wright's the guy for that.

So 94-95 Memphis Tigers. They're 24-10. So they make the tournament. They go first round. They beat Louisville 77-56. They'll blow them out, actually. Second round here, they beat No. 3 seed Purdue. So they play above themselves, get an upset,

and then they lose finally uh 96 91 to arkansas who i believe i think they won it that year if i'm not mistaken yeah if not they won it the year before but i think they won it that year nolan richardson coaching and all that corliss williamson probably yes that's that's the group i'm thinking of here. So number two, Arkansas. They were the number two seed, too. But still, I mean, he's a freshman, so this is great for him. He starts all 34 games, averages 34.4 minutes a game as well. So that's the whole game. I mean, you're barely taking him out. It's a 40-minute game in college. So that's so rare for a freshman, but he's got the body of a man.

The man runs 40 miles a week. This is shit. Lorenzen's not a 6'11 beanpole either. He's a fucking thick guy. He's a he's like an athletic, muscular dude. He's a big guy here. He was playing against Corliss Williamson then because Corliss was the center, too, right? Power forward, maybe.

But in college, he might have been more. He's so big, though big though yeah that would have been a fun fucking game to watch no shit that really would have been fun he shoots 56 from the field that year too which is amazing 14.8 points 10.1 rebounds 2.1 blocks per game great player exactly what they wanted out of him and that's as a freshman so uh yeah it's it's it's pretty goddamn amazing honestly um so lorenzen says about his dad he says quote in a way i'm dedicating my career to him um you know he said he's just everything that he's achieving is all of his all his dad the point guard on the team said he doesn't play like a freshman i'd say he plays more like someone at the end of his sophomore year at the beginning of his junior year confidence and shit like that which is pretty good right led the team in scoring and rebounding so what do you want from the guy as a freshman

as a freshman center and uh lorenzen said i think i have something to prove when i'm out here i get fired up in big games other guys might get scared but me, my intensity overrules my jitteriness. Sounds like a smart guy, too. Over the summer here, he plays for the United States in Japan at the World University Games. He goes over there. They end up winning a gold medal as well over there. he goes over there they end up winning a gold medal as well over there so he and that's a big experience for kid who's you know shuttles back and forth from memphis to mississippi and he's been around in college now but overseas most of these guys i've never been to fucking japan i

don't know anything about that you know james i haven't been uh past 20 miles on a boat uh outside of national waters you know what i mean yeah i've never been on a big cruise line i don't know i'm not going i'm not going on a cruise line i'm not gonna float around some disease pit by the way people have asked us like often they say why don't you guys do a cruise ship other podcasts they do a cruise ship because no that's disgusting that's for your own good as well as ours. We're not doing a cruise ship. We're doing you a favor.

We're doing you a favor. Trust me. If you don't want to be. Keep you off of that floating Denny's. That's disgusting. Oh, yeah. No, thank you. You don't want that.

We'll come to you. How's that sound? We'll come around and you come see us when we get to your city. So, and thank you for doing that. He says about going to japan quote it boosted my confidence a lot it made me think hey i'm playing with the best players in the nation because ray allen was there tim duncan was there you know guy he said guys like that i'm playing with these guys and i'm playing good i'm starting i'm a captain so it made me feel real

good about myself and um yeah and this coach said that that can't help but make you a better player sure uh he also says shit he's a very mature and i think that's because he hangs out with his dad you know fucking working on old cars in the summer lorenzen though he says that you know he's been he's misunderstood a lot he says quote i'm a regular person most people expect me to be crazy and mean until they get to know me. I had a friend a while back who was in an accident and got hurt. I sat and stayed with him for a while. He was surprised. He thought I was too busy being a basketball player.

But he said he's all about that shit, though. He developed, they call it the howl there in Memphis when he was there. When you get a rebound, Herb said, quote, you know, get a rebound and let out a howl there in memphis when he was there um when you get a rebound herb said quote uh you know get a rebound and let out a howl elbows out every rebound is supposed to be mine so it's his way of rather than blocking a shot and screaming he does it when he fucking gets a rebound grabs the ball yeah he's in the fucking paint grabbing shit big guy that's a that's good that's uh intimidation there so april 11th 1995 a son is born oh already oh yeah oh yeah she was she was pregnant there well i mean she is 30 now so that's what i mean she's she's pushing she just got modern maturity magazine in the mail so she's like oh my biological clock is moving

yeah um so the sun is born ridiculous and um as we always do i let you guess the name is is it uh verne gagne hulk hogan randy savage right is his name is lorenzen the ultimate warrior right i think that's his name yeah as a matter of fact that's it he just goes well he's into promoters so it's vince mcmahon that's his name no his name is lorenzen jr of course yeah he gave him vernon he is there are two people walking around the face of this fucking green earth and And Lorenzen Jr., he's older now. He's born in 95. He might have a kid, too.

There might be a third. There could be a third. Oh, God, there is a third. There's got to be a third. Think about that shit. That's wild, isn't it? Vern Gagne Jr. He's got kids named after him.

Now, this kid, born in 95, has to go, who the fuck is Vern Gagne when they tell him his middle name? Because by 2000, Vern was, I mean, AWA closed in like 91. It was over. Like, Vern was out of it, man. They inducted him into the WWE Hall of Fame in like 2007 or some shit. But outside of that, gone. They will have together a total of seven children my shira and uh and lorenzen seven kids uh including a set of twin boys in there all sorts of kids so and shira was born

in the 70s uh long 7 1970 she's before the show shira came out so she's got yeah she's got shira and i have to keep thinking of it that way because it looks like shara her name is s-h-e-r-r-a so it looks like shara yeah but it's her name is shira shira he-man's cousin poor poor shira my mother mother, I remember when I was a kid, I had He-Man, you know, did you have He-Man? Yeah, of course. Okay, I had He-Man and I got a Shira because it's He-Man's, it's part of the world, right? Or I wanted a Shira and my mother said no because she's a slut. My mother said, I'm not buying that little slut. And I was like, huh?

It's Shira's cousin. And she was like, look at her. Her He-Man's cousin, she was cousin and she was like look at her yeah her he-man's cousin what are you talking about now look at this this is no good i was like little slut what are you talking about she did have a pretty good looking skirt on i think i was five but i was like wore a skirt too so what the fuck he-man wore furry underwear that's what he wore so what is the difference he's dressed dressed like some kind of fucking Viking male stripper. And this fucking broad, who cares? Naked chest with like that cross thing on his chest. With no bullet bullet belts across his chest.

And he could put his giant saber into it. Cross suspenders holding up underwear, ma. Yeah, furry underwear and a belt, which also very weird. An underwear and belt? You don't need a belt for underwear. Didn't he have a skirt, too? That was, no, no. They had Prince Adam was the, he was the, he had like a velvet.

He wore like a kilt kind of skirt. Did he wear a kilt? Is that the Thundercat that wore the skirt? I think you're thinking of the Thundercat. It might be the Thundercat. Somebody wore a goddamn skirt. You know what, though? When He-Man's Prince Adam, before he turned into He-Man, he had the velvet, like it was

like a red velvet vest he had. Because, you know, it was like a dinner jacket. Right. Because he's the prince. He's doing society things. Yeah. But that was kind of long, and it kind of hung over his underwear, so it kind of looked like he had either no underwear or a skirt skirt on winnie the pooh in it

telling you man so creepy so after that's why your mom would have that opinion is my point i mean she didn't even but she didn't know and she just looked at the figure and was like she's a little slut and i was like huh what's that i'm five i don't know what that means she's fucking the swamp thing i don't understand that yeah she was fucking uh man o' war and it wasn't working out or not orco oh god so uh they'll end up getting married in 98 they have a dog they have a daughter named Lauren, first of all. L-O-R-E-N, like Lorenzen. Yeah.

But Lauren. They have twin boys, Lamar and Shamar. Okay. The rhyming twin names. Another daughter, Sophia. Another son named Lawson. And then finally, the seventh is a girl named Sierra. We'll talk about all this.

They have a whole brood here going on. 95-96 for Memphis. They're 22-8 that year, so still pretty good. They lose, though, in the first round of the tournament, one of those upsets, number 12 seed, they lose to. Drexel beats them, which, I mean, that's just Drexel. 30 games for Lorenzen. Starts all 30.

35.3 minutes a game, which is a lot. 17.4 points, 10.4 rebounds, two blocks. He's so good. He's pretty goddamn good. And he says to the newspaper in 95 about his dad, he's taught me everything. Not just about basketball, but in life, dad. He's taught me everything, not just about basketball, but in life too. He's my biggest inspiration.

Whenever I'm down or tired, I just look at him and it lifts me up. He's such a big part of my life. He can help me. He helps me in any way he can. If he hadn't gotten shot, he was playing basketball at the time. After getting shot,

he was able to concentrate more on me. So yeah, he said uh not they didn't that wasn't so much about basketball though he said he learned about being a man he said quote he taught me to think before you do something think uh think if you think you'll never go wrong unless you think stupid shit but lorenzen generally doesn't he says he still works on old cars with his dad. They watch game tapes together and tells his dad to critique his game and tell him what to do. And Lorenzen said, it makes me so happy that I've been able to accomplish so much,

but it'll feel a whole lot better when I go to the NBA. That's where I wanted to go and never got to go. That's where he wanted to go and never got to go. So if I make it there, I think that would top everything. And Lorenz and Herb said, that's his dream. That's what we're working for. I'll always be there for him. If he gets to that point, I'll be more happy for him than he could be for himself.

So he says, Herb also says, I study the tapes myself of all of his games, and I tell him things I noticed that he did wrong. Which I love. He's just, that's, but it's what he wants. So, anyway, 1996 NBA draft comes around. Number one draft pick, Jimmy, 96. Was it Sean, the tall, goofy white kid from the 76ers? Twas not.

Wrong year. Was it Stephon 76ers? Twas not. Wrong year. Was it Stephon Marbury? It was not. He was in this draft, though. You are correct. You're honing in on the year. You're getting warmer. Is it the Grizzlies player?

Nope. No? It is Allen Iverson. Oh, my God. Number one overall. Yep. Allen Iverson, Georgetown to Philly. Number one overall.

Who was number two? Was that the grizzlies pick marcus canby going to toronto with the big with the big cartoon dinosaur on the jersey and everything is on the shoulder number three is vancouver okay at the time yeah uh sharif abdul rahim that's a great fucking player he was number number four milwaukee picks stefan marbury there you go which mil Milwaukee, that's... He was traded quickly from there. He was traded for the number five pick for Minnesota, Ray Allen.

They did a swappily-do there, and I think Minnesota was happy with the... Milwaukee was happy with getting Ray Allen. It's a better pick. Marbury was good for a few years, and then... It was not Ray Allen. No, we did his episode. Number six, Antoine Walker. Again, so I mean, this is some heavy hitters in here.

You know what I have of this, James? I bought a bunch of those upper deck cards, and I got that lottery card, and I sent it in, and I have all the first round draft picks cards from this. Oh, you sent it in? That's so efficient. I did it. I know. That's amazing.

That's a dork, right? Wow. I wish I would have done shit like that. I would always do that. cards from this i sent it in that's so efficient i did it i know what a dork right wow i wish i would have done shit like that i did it and i got the 10 top round draft picks sitting in their fucking hat in their business suit all that well then you'd have the number seven pick from the la clippers picks lorenzen right number seven is that right i have this card you have him right after antoine walker number eight k Kerry Kittles to the Nets. Samaki Walker to Dallas. Eric Dampier.

Vitaly Potapenko. It gets a little thinner until you get to number 13, where Kobe Bryant is drafted. Oh, boy, did you guys fuck up. By Charlotte. But that was all prearranged that he wanted to go. Really? Yeah. Teams wanted to draft him, and he and New Jersey wanted to draft him.

And they said that he'll go play in Europe if you draft him. So he said he'll go play in Europe. His dad played in Italy. He speaks Italian. He'll go play over there and make a fortune. And so they just picked Kerry Kittles instead. Instead of drafting him and trading him, they said, okay, fuck it, and picked Kerry Kittles. And then Charlotte had worked out a thing where they picked Kobe,

traded him to LA. I think that was Vladi Divac in that whole deal. Yep. Yep. Stojakovic number 14. Number 15, Steve Nash. So just sitting out there. Yep. Sitting out there. Could have had him. Yep. Steve Nash. Jermaine O'Neal in this draft.

John Wallace. This is Roy Rogers. Very good players. out there could have had him uh yep steve nash jermaine o'neill in this draft john wallace uh this is a roy rogers very good players this is a this is a decent draft this is a lot of starting nba players for a long time and uh yeah he said i'm a hard worker lorenzo after he's drafted i'm not that's lorenzo lorenzo lorenzo it's so easy to go with Lorenzo. Yeah, I made him Italian. I apologize. See, it's Lorenzo Wright. He said, I'm not the type of player who's going to come out and get you 30 points a night, but I'm going to give you 150%. I'm going to run the floor.

I'll do the best I can. Okay. Not too bad. His dad is obviously proud. He said, the two of us are closer than any father and son I know. And, you know, I'm most definitely proud of him. But you have to understand, he's not where I want him to be yet. He's like, he's got to be good yet.

There. Dad quits his job as the Shelby State Community College coach in Memphis to move to L.A. with Lorenzen. Okay. Per Lorenzen's request. He asked him, he says, and Herb says, I wasn't worried about him on the court, but off the court. That's a big adjustment for a young man. It's important to have a support group.

He's done pretty good so far. Yeah. To get first round draft pick money and plunk you in LA and go, here you go. You're asking for your're 20 21 you're asking for a lot of trouble there i would have gone that's a lot of responsibility that's too much yeah he's 21 years old i mean he that's where he's going to go out to bars at first you know like his first legal experiences him out on sunset you had your Wow. Yeah, too young for that. And also not really from that environment as well. Memphis is a city, and the barbecue's fine and everything.

It's a party town, but it's not fucking- It ain't fucking LA. Right. It's different. It's a pond and an ocean we're talking about. Just a different thing. So 96, 97 Clippers here. They're 36 and 46. Yeah, they were about that. Yeah, Brent Barry, Clippers here. They're 36-46.

Yeah, they were about to. Yeah, Brent Barry, Kevin Duckworth. Yeah. Yeah, a guy, a ball outlaw. Yeah. Eric Piotkowski, Pooh Richardson. At the end. And Loy Vaught, Malik Sealy.

This is just Rodney Rogers. That guy's dead, too. Yeah, he is. You're right. Yeah. He was great. Yeah. So, they end up going to the playoffs so that's

how weak that was the west that year really yeah that they go to the playoffs at 36 and 46 they get swept by the jazz in the first round so it doesn't matter but uh lorenzen plays in 77 games starts 51 25.1 minutes a game 7.3 points and uh 6.1 rebounds so i mean not dominating like college but he's 21 so putting up nba numbers too it's not bad he's dominating that bank account though he makes 1 million 480 grand for that year oh boy yeah hey now that's something that's god that's good stuff there uh 97 98 la they're terrible 17 and 65 eating shit wow wow uh i'm impressed they got 17 wins together that is brutal you have to cobble those together man he uh plays in 69 games 30 minutes a game. He averages nine points, nine points,

8.8 rebounds, 1.3 blocks. So he goes up in everything. Yeah. He goes up almost two points. He goes up a couple hole rebounds, two and a half hole rebounds, a little over half a block.

He goes up to, so he's improving 1,000,000, 1,701,720 dollars for this season. So $3 million in the, that's improving. $1,701,720 for this season. $23 million in his life. That's awesome. In two years. He's 22. Awesome.

98-99 LA. This is the strike-shortened 50-game season. 9-41 they come in. Not good. They were on pace for pretty much the same fucking record as last year. Lorenzen plays in 48 games this year only averages 23.6 minutes 6.6 points 7.5 rebounds so not wonderful kind of backslides a little bit but doesn't backslide in salary 1 million nine hundred twenty three thousand dollars for half the season that's

awesome season that's fucking awesome to win nine games to win nine games and not even play well games in the season he got two million dollars so in the off season august 8th 1999 he is involved in a trade here this is because it's not, this is a sign and trade type of, or trade and sign type of thing. This is a they know that the, he's not going to sign the Clippers. He decides he wants to go somewhere else, so they set up a trade there

type of deal. So he's traded technically by the Clippers to the Atlanta Hawks for a first round draft pick which turned out to be Quentin Richardson and a 2002 first round draft pick, which turned out to be Quentin Richardson and a 2002 first round draft pick, which was Chris Wilcox. So he said that he was willing to give L.A. a chance. He said he was about to become a free agent and he said he would give them a fair shot.

He said, quote, a man of my word. I'm going to give the Clippers the first shot. But of course, I'm going to shop around. So the first shot but of course i'm going to shop around so the clippers offer him six years 30 million dollars and uh the his agent says well why don't you trade him then because we're not accepting that so uh that's how he becomes a hawk and he ends up with a 42 million dollar contract jesus kicking some ass um and this is where i lost track of him because i didn't know he played for the hawks the hawks yeah he goes to hawks he's memphis for years which makes more sense his father said that he was happy about it because

fuck the clippers basically also almost 50 million dollars also yeah 12 million more dollars but he he knew who donald sterling was even back then before the rest of the world did only the basketball industry knew who he was back then everybody knew he was a fucking scumbag yeah and he said clippers owner owner donald sterling treats his players like pieces of real estate he doesn't understand feelings so uh he gets the fuck out of there goes to at Atlanta where this team, Lafonso Ellis, Bimbo Coles. Oh, yeah. This is going to be shitty. Alan Henderson, Jim Jackson, Dikembe Mutombo at the end.

There he is. At the end. J.R. Ryder hanging on for dear life, getting arrested all the time. Yeah, he's in a lot of trouble already. Forget the end coming close. It's just a problem. He's just really holding on for dear life as freedom is concerned. And then Jason Terry is on the team actually also,

and they picked him up. Not so bad and a little younger than Lorenzen even. So this year they go 28 and 54 the Hawks so not good Lorenzen not good Lorenzen plays in 75 games starts zero of them not one well Matumbo's the starter so he's not getting a start in front of him I think he'd be hurt or sit down a game or something, but no, only 16.1 minutes a game, which is tough. Six points and 4.1 rebounds per game. But the point is learn from Mutombo because we're paying you enormous amounts of money.

You're going to be him after he leaves. And I feel like maybe that was the plan, is we get him, he learns from Mutombo, Mutombo leaves, he's our guy. He makes $4.4 million dollars this year holy shit that's incredible wow wow i'm i'm whoa that is i'm very happy for him i am thrilled for him that's a shitload of money yeah so uh november of 2000 he and a couple other players including todd day and somebody else i can't remember here but there's a crazy story of a nine-year-old boy in memphis named

travis butler his mother dies in their home she had cancer and she just died and he didn't know what to do and was afraid that they would put him in foster care because his mother was the only one there. And he was so scared of going to foster care. He just pretended like she was alive in the house and lived. He was nine and he just was scared of foster care. So he was going to say he wrote a letter to Todd Day and he said, he said, dear Todd Day of the Milwaukee Bucks. I know you're from Memphis. Can I have some money?

No, that's not what happened. He went to school. He bought groceries. He made himself macaroni and cheese. He just pretended like everything. He home aloneed it with a dead mom. Held it together for three whole days. Held it together until one of the neighbors discovered her body on November 6th.

Because the neighbor just kept seeing the kid coming and going and didn't see her so she was like right what's going on here he's popping in with laundry detergent yeah he's like home alone he's coming home and ripping his grocery bag he's got coupons falling out of his pockets why are you buying all what's going on here these aren't baseball cards so 2000 2001 oh anyway this kid sorry this kid ends up having all of this shit go on and uh they hear about it todd day lorenzen right they start a fund to support this kid and have a whole like uh fund for this kid so he doesn't end up in like in the 90s yeah this is 2000 this happened unbelievable it's uh. Yeah, so Lorenzen, good guy. And that, we'll talk about it, but he is exceedingly generous.

Like, his friends say anyone comes around him with their handout, it's filled. He'll give it to them. Anybody's welcome to be at his house. All of his friends say it's like Disneyland at his house. He's got all sorts of anything, anything you want, anything anybody needs. He's made $10 million. Yeah, and he's a real nice guy. You can chip somebody off $20 or $40 when you've got $10 million.

Yeah, the problem is it's more than that with a lot. As it becomes more and more, he's got a lot more family and cousins and friends, and he starts having to give everybody jobs he's happy to do so one of his friends is a driver one of his friends does this one of his friends does that you know he's got a lot of people on the payroll here and uh you know the problem is you don't play basketball forever right and it's expensive as fuck expensive to support a bunch of people you're not even they're working for but still it's still you're giving them jobs so they have jobs that are pay good money not because you really need that guy to do something for you you'd rather give it to your friend than somebody else that's all so 2000 2001 atlanta goes 25 and 57 they fucking suck yeah this is bad. 71 games played. He starts 46 this year, 28 minutes a game.

This year he averages 12.4 points, 7.5 rebounds. So, okay, but. He's contributing. He's contributing, but you'd like at least a double-double out of the guy if he's going to start at center. You'd like, you know, 15 and 10 or something if he's going to be that kind of guy. He also grows a nice fro this year. Really? He has a good fro this year going on. And his dad, though, didn't like it at all. His dad said, quote, he needs a lawnmower is what he told the paper.

Not even a haircut, a lawnmower. Very funny, yeah. He makes $4,950,000 that year so he can afford all the lawn care products he desires. He is stacking paper. Amazing. June 27, 2001, traded by the Atlanta Hawks, traded with Pau Gasol, by the way, and Brevin Knight to the Vancouver Grizzlies who will be moving to Memphis next year and are looking for ways to connect with the city. If you're coming from Vancouver and your colors are like, you know, fucking teal and shit or whatever they are. Some weird fucking green. Yeah, it's really difficult to figure that out. So they needed something to connect locally and they got Lorenzen Wright, who the local fans know.

And so they get – it's for Sharif Abdur-Rahim and Jamal Tinsley. Okay. Atlanta got them, huh? Yeah, Atlanta got them, and they got Pau Gasol and Brevin Knight and Lorenzen. Lorenzen. So 2001, 2002 in Memphis, a friend of his who is from Memphis and ends up getting a job on the Grizzlies security staff. Lorenzen gets him a job. That's the other thing. He finds his friend's jobs anywhere he can because now he has connections. He's a good dude. He really is. And we'll talk. His crew is loyal to him. They have tattoos and everything. You'll see. Is that right? Oh, yeah. It's not like a NXIVM situation situation it's not like next to their cock or anything it's it's you know and mike bibby's family and friends and his

crew have team dime tattooed all over him because he was number 10 yeah yeah team dime james this is different this is well i can't wait to hear you have to say about this thing this will be good his friend uh dennis neal says quote he was the face of memphis he wasn't as big as penny hardaway was but that made him kind of bigger here because people had an opportunity to see him and touch him and play with him and do all those things jesus christ come on man come on you can't say they have an opportunity to see touch and play with him that sounds like there's this cock oh wow it's rock hard i'm gonna knock it around for a while and see if anything comes out he's a human being let's treat him as such you guys are treating him like a fucking sideshow well he says you can do all those things you

couldn't do with penny because he was in new york or phoenix doing commercials so he was away and like a national star because he had the little penny and all that shit so and and lorenzen wasn't lorenzen was mr memphis still there uh this team by the way at this point has uh nick anderson left over from the magic there this is pushing he's pushing it here this is actual leftovers christ almighty yeah he's in his mid-30s here this is pushing it for a they could they could have called this team the memphis two-day uh two-day lawn lasagna like it's not the whole team is just seven layers of shit yeah the pasta is like really crunchy on the outsides but not like from the oven it's just it's dried out now from the fridge like it had like a part of it wasn't covered and air

got in there and it's really that part you gotta spritz that with water when you put it in the microwave to get that soft big time yeah put some wet paper towel over it. So Nick Anderson, Shane Battier, fucking Michael Dickerson, Pau Gasol, of course, Brevin Knight. Jesus, Elliot Perry. Remember him from the Suns? Stop it. What year is this? Oh, yeah.

2000, shit, 2003? Three? Wow. 2001, 2001, 2002. Sorry. I can't believe he played that long. I can't either. He's a Memphis guy, too. He went to Memphis as well. So, yeah, that. Sorry. I can't believe he played that long. I can't either. He's a Memphis guy, too.

He went to Memphis as well. Really? So, yeah, that's why they got him. Strohmeyer, Swift. Oh, my God. And Jason Williams. White Jason Williams. Okay, yeah.

So, non-murderer. How much did they win, James? Non-murderer Jason Williams. 23 and 59 they went that year. I'm stunned. Which is better than those fucking Clipper teams he was on. Yeah, but I'm shocked they were that good. Yeah, no shit.

He plays in 43 games, starts 33, 29.1 minutes a game, averages 12 points, 9.4 rebounds. All right. We're pushing a double-double now at this moment. That's great. And that's a half a block, so that's not wonderful. But this is wonderful..5 million dollars oh in memphis money that's so much money oh in tennessee that goes a long fucking way we're not even making fun of tennessee we will but we're not in this particular case making fun of tennessee yeah that's just it goes a long way there it's this is in la you know

yeah much better so he lorenzen opens up a sports bar which is always a terrible decision for an athlete bad move one out of 30 of those end up working out most of the time it's just a place for people to rob you blind and not just that it's under an llc yeah and it's opening yourself up to so many lawsuits uh for because of the fucking alcohol license that Yeah, and it's opening yourself up to so many lawsuits because of the fucking alcohol license. That's nuts. Yeah, it's a tough thing. Plus, it's just the bar business is a hard business. Yeah.

You know, you kind of have to. Players think, well, I go to a lot of bars. Right. Every time I'm in there. I don't know about partying. I know about bars. I know what a good bar entails, but you have to work in that industry for a long time. It's not something you just can do.

When your product is liquid, you can't just put notches on the bottle. Things have to be measured right per every drink to make any money. And everything with the atmosphere, the environment, everything has to be perfect here. He would buy Grizzlies tickets for all his families and friends as well because he would get a certain allotment but then he'd have to buy more so he's buying tons of tickets he's buying everybody everything he's buying homes and cars for people no uh not you know mansions but places for people to live uh paying for friends and relatives to go to college he's he's got college funds coming out of his asshole if you want to go to college if you want to go to college. He's got college funds coming out of his asshole. If you want to go to college,

if you want to go to college and you go to Lorenz and, hey, I need to go to college, I don't have any money, you're going to college. He's going to tell you, well, I'll pay for you to go to fucking college. So he tries to help people. He bought shoes for high school teams in the city.

He went around looking for ones that needed new sneakers and bought the whole team fucking shoes. That's shoes awesome he underwrote a youth league a lot of this is write-offs too but it's still a nice way to do these write-offs you could do them a lot of ways and uh yeah he did a lot so he said um um everybody liked him elliot perry said everyone loved him quote pull people in memphis from his teammates in high school to the NBA, and they'll tell you the same thing. Ren was fantastic. This big guy with this humble spirit. So, grace.

Yeah. Let's just say grace right here. You're right with the write-offs bit, too, and you can tell that he cares because anybody can write a $1,500 check and send it to the United Way or whatever the fuck. Exactly. He's going straight to the team and making his dollar go to exactly what he wants it to go to with the Chiefs. That's brilliant.

Kids in Memphis trying to play basketball and go to school and shit. So, yeah, by all accounts, there's nothing really bad you could say about Lorenzen until later on when there's some gray area here but there's no like you know oh and then he beat up that stripper that time in the room and then she accused him and three teammates of fucking gangbanging her against her will none of that shit happens with lorenzen so that's great that's helpful if you don't know when crystal pepsi was discontinued what was in al capone's vault or which famous meteorologist is Lenny Kravitz's second cousin, then you haven't spent enough time on Wikipedia. But that's okay.

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or on Apple Podcasts. So, Grace, 2002-2003 Memphis. They're not much better, 28-54 this year, so pretty shitty. he plays in 70 games starts uh 49 28.3 minutes a game 11.4 points and 7.5 rebounds so seems to have a ceiling of what he's going to accomplish in terms of the league here he's a 12 point you know 10 to 12 point seven to nine rebound guy that's just what he is now uh l john wertheim that author that writes a lot of sports shit he wrote the incredible scorecasting book that i talk about all the time that has all the psychological things in sports he does an article about him, and he said that when he met him,

Wright was eager to introduce him to his whole posse, is what he called him. His friend called him the Michael Jordan of posses. He said he's got a whole team, and there's a picture, like a professional photographer, that looks like the cover of a Bone Thugs album or something it's like just him and his crew it's him in a chair in like a big chair not a throne but like a big giant chair that a seven foot man would have and you know to sit in it'd be a throne for me yeah with a little dog not a tiny dog but a little

dog down by his feet and all like eight of his friends standing around him in like you know album cover poses pretty much like you know hand in a pocket one over here one's got like a you know football jersey on one's got like the whole velour sweatsuit yeah like it looks like an album cover and that's on purpose like you can tell but it's like on a hill like in a grassy thing like it's a trip man it would have been on instagram uh today oh absolutely they had this professionally done they went out to a place and they all stood in the i mean this is definitely done professionally because that's his crew they all have matching tattoos that say the right stuff w r w r i gT. That's their crew.

The Right Stuff crew. They all have the same tat. Wow. The Right Stuff. That's a dumbass tattoo. O-O-O-O-O indeed. Yes. That is awful.

My God. Not cool. They all better be thankful that his last name was not tough. Yeah, no shit. And they fucking, they told this to a Sports Illustrated reporter. Everybody was showing off. It was pretty funny. I think that was what the picture was from, was from this article that he wrote.

So they didn't go to have it professionally done a professional photographer came and said let's take a shot of that crew there oh lorenzen yep uh he said that uh uh raw dog is one of his friends how the uh raw dog is one of his friends how the he's got a friend named raw dog i tried to hold back that is so great i'm an italian guy from new york all my friends had nicknames growing up i don't think i don't know anybody's real name everybody's got and we're talking everything from shit bags to this to that, all these different nicknames.

Raw Dog, though? Yeah. We had one, I knew a guy, one guy, he had 11 children, he was 24 years old, and he said, I said, holy fuck, how the fuck do you have 11 kids when you're 24 years old? And he said, because I like that, unprotected. That was the way he said it. So we called him unprotected. Raw Dog is what you call that guy rado my friends raw dog and bareback over here raw dog unprotected and bareback raw dog unprotected bareback and must have had a

hole in it i don't know they're all here musta torn that's this is my buddy musta torn damn it broke will be right back yeah damn it broke is he's he's parking the car right now he's gonna feed the meter so we got another buddy named whoops whoopsie no and that's uh forget my pill where are you where are you at she said she couldn't afford plan b is on his life i know it's wordy but we like him where's lives in texas where the fuck is that where's she at holy fuck what is how do you even land on raw that's got to be what it is right raw dog yeah there's no other way i mean yeah raw dog no he's a he's an raw foods enthusiast jimmy he's he's very much into seeds and green vegetables yeah that's what it is we caught him

shopping at whole foods so we call him raw dog yeah like what's up broad dog we just called him dog before that and they're like oh he likes it raw he's up raw dog he likes oysters that's what it is banging chicks with no rubber that's what he is bragging about it wow he's the guy where you're like you need a condom he's like hell no like we all know that guy where everyone has every crew of guys has that guy where you're like why why are you doing this stop stop i just want to have whatever you have to drink and watch them be idiots because oh yeah it's got to be stupidity all that warn every woman they talk to so they uh the raw dog was the point guard on the high school team, the Booker T. Washington team.

I wonder if that was on his jersey, Raw Dog. So they had a deal that if one of them blew up, they would look out for the other one. If one of them did their thing, and I think Raw Dog knew he was getting the better end of that deal probably. One of them 6' 611 and the other one's 6-1 going if one of us makes it i'm not saying who it's gonna be but if either of us make it it's gonna take care of the other one right right smart move yeah right so uh he still his driver is uh there that's raw dog is the driver raw dog drives for him now and he's there mainly to make sure that herb gets to the grizzlies games that's his job is take my dad to the

basketball games he's got a cook there to um offset his love of the of a greasy southern diet that he likes he is from mississippi and you know memphis what do you want and then his buddy dennis mcneil is his security guy and um then he has one guy who his in his crew who his job he gets a paycheck for is to wake lorenzen up at 9 15 in the morning what a job wow um that just means you've got to be up at at least 9 14 yeah you're like oh shit it's 912 yo yo ren yo ren get up or i'm sending raw dog in here you know you don't want that it's gonna get messy quick i'm sending them again you better watch out it's gonna get messy fast so man uh wright said he saw it as his duty to elevate as many of his friends and family from memphis as possible he says quote

i want them to share in some of my success so nice that success includes this season earning six million fifty thousand dollars so he's got a lot of success to share is the thing uh something very very terrible here uh his daughter simone at 11 months old dies of sids in 2003 which is fucking terrible we've talked about this on the show before um the scariest thing in the world both of us i remember us discussing i used to check my kids every 15 minutes to make sure they're still breathing them i get down at their level and i said okay let's check yeah move it up and down okay that's good i did that constantly this is the scariest thing i didn't want nights i slept on a baby's rs rug out front of that

fucking oh god it was absolutely my neck was fucked up for quite some time because of that kid yeah and and sid's is just it happens there's no no oh this kid's in danger of sids we we know the symptoms they are is the baby alive no is it supposed to be yes those are the symptoms that's it that's sids it's fucking horrible diagnosed it's fucking horrible scary shit so that's awful uh sierra and that's a i mean good god they must have crushed everybody i mean the whole family there and his wife his wife says, quote, I don't think Lorenzen ever recovered from it. I dug into my spiritual grounding, and Lorenzen didn't have that to dig into. So he always was tough, and he started like a fund for parents who've gone through this and shit. He's a nice guy.

2003, 2004, the team is 50-32. First time ever over 40 wins? Coming around. Memphis, they go all the way to the playoffs where they are swept by the Spurs in the first round. But the Spurs were doing very well back then, so what do you want? Lorenzen, 65

games, 46 started, 25.8 points, 9.4 points per game. I'm sorry, 25.8 minutes per8 points 9.4 points per game 20 i'm sorry 25.8 minutes per game 9.4 points per game 6.8 rebounds so not terrific but 6.6 million dollars fuck that is absolutely terrific that is great now sometime in this era he and shira split up and then end up reconciling and renewing their vows and recommitting themselves. And a lot of that, from what everybody said, was just the whole thing that happened with the daughter dying. It just put a lot of stress on their whole situation. And that happens.

It's so common. That's a lot for people to go through together. And, you know, that I can't imagine that does wonders It's so common. That's a lot for people to go through together. And, you know, that'll... I can't imagine that does wonders for your sex life. I'm sure it makes the home real gloom. Yeah. And then you got Raw Dog over here talking about how great it feels to put your dick in... Yeah.

How great it is to indiscriminately spread a seed throughout the southern region. Throughout western Tennessee. Yeah. Goddamn Raw Dog around all the time. spread his seed throughout the southern region throughout western tennessee yeah god damn raw dog around all the time god damn it shut up raw dog that's enough out of you god damn it gonna ruin my marriage they're ruining the whole fucking thing so they were they end up like i said reconciling renewing their vows? Everything's fine. 2004, 2005, they go 45-37. Another good season, yeah. Look at the Grizzlies make the playoffs again, where they are swept by the Suns immediately.

Bounced right away. He can't be on a team that wins a playoff game, but they can get there. He plays in 80 games this year, starts 77. You're right. He's never felt the won a playoff game playoffs just lose every game that's so brutal right wow so uh starts 77 games this year which is that's a starter 28.6 points and how does he perform 9.6 points 7.7 rebounds he's mad consistent james he's consistent.

That's his game, man. That's just all there is to it. What isn't consistent is his money because it keeps going up and up. $7,150,000 that season. Not too fucking shabby. 2005, 2006, again with Memphis. 49-33 that season. They go.

So, again, pretty well. They go to the playoffs. I'll give you one guess, Jimmy. Is it the Lakers? Swept by the Mavs. There you go. Swept by the Mavs. But they are swept.

And it's not the same team. He just shows up to the playoffs, plays a new team every time. They beat the living shit out of him. Can't win a game. They go back to Memphis. That's it. And if you think about the centers that he's facing in those teams, this is Nowitzki.

He was playing Duncan. His sons didn't have a center. They had Stoudemire playing in the middle back then, which was tough. Playing Duncan with the Spurs. Oh, yeah, yeah. Just getting his ass kicked by some of the best centers that they had getting schooled man and uh he's not that like like nowadays a 611 guy doesn't have to go and bang around down low he can sometimes but if he's got an outside shot he can spread the floor like that and that'll also be helpful but back then you know they were like you don't shoot outside 15 feet you fucking 611 asshole get down there what are you doing you are a king yeah you're

gonna ruin this whole thing right the fuck out of here let's stop it yeah keem with those baseline like 20 foot baseline fadeaways and you're like what my god that's not natural it's amazing just square up at the three and And it's in? What? What the fuck, man? Impressive. So, yeah, they're swept by the Mavs. And this year, 78 games he plays in, 58 games started, 21.7 minutes per game, 5.8 points a game, 5.1 rebounds. Yikes.

That is not good. But he makes $7,700,000, though, for that season. So, God damn. NBA was lucrative as shit for mediocrity. Still is. If you're 6'11", you are going to make money, period. If you can get drafted in the first round as a 6'11 human being, you're going to make some money. On the end of a bench somewhere.

Just some late game size. Your five fouls they can use. He's over $30 million at this point. That's insane. It's wild. August 30, 2006. He's a free agent now, though. He is signed with the Atlanta Hawks as a free agent.

Oh, they bring him back. They bring him back. Everybody likes him. That's the thing about him. I mean, he's the type of guy where they go, what a great guy. So why not? Give him another shot. They go 30-52 this year.

They stink again. He plays 67 games, starts 31. Only 15.4 minutes a game, though. So he's sparsely playing averages you ready for this jimmy 2.6 points 3.2 rebounds a game holy shit useless yeah wow salary 3 million 250 000 though which is that's so awesome it's a cut but it's a lot for that that is not a lot five per point james that's amazing that's incredible isn't it wow i have to think i could average two points a game if you let me play once in a while i have to think i'd

hit one shot right i think that i would get fouled at least twice and i guess yeah but i'm getting three points a game i think that's what shoot 75% from the free throw line. I would hope so, yeah. Yeah. That's all, because they're going to hack me just in terms of trying to take the ball from me because they know I'm not up to snuff. So if I can just cover up, I feel like I'm getting hacked at least once or twice, I can pull this off.

So, yeah, $3,250,000. 2007-2008 season. February 16th, 2008, right at the trade deadline, he is traded by the Hawks with a shitload of other people here. Anthony Johnson, Tyrone Liu, Sheldon Williams, they all get traded and a draft pick to the Sacramento Kings for Mike Bibby. Is that right? Just Mike Bibby.

Yep. All that trash for you, sir. I picture them pulling up in like the Beverly Hillbillies car when they pull up like, here's all the people we didn't want. Turn around and look at the fucking Granny's Rocker.

With a banjo in his hand or something just pulling up. We're here. We're going to trade you this douche crew for this douche crew. You got Mike Bibby and all of his team dime for the right stuff. Oh, my God. That's right. Different crews are crossing each other.

That's amazing. My goodness. So this year total for both teams, he plays in 18 games starts one averages 8.9 minutes per game for a total of 0.8 points and 2.1 rebounds a game what under a point a game for sacramento he played in five games and averaged 0.4 points a game that is incredible that i don't know how 100 useless they didn't use him fucking awful that's just so bad he makes three million two hundred fifty thousand dollars though for that it's just a move just to keep relocating and get three million dollars wow so i mean he is 6'11", though.

They're like, stand there and be 6'11". Can you do that? It's worth $3 million a year at minimum. September 5th, 2008, he signs as a free agent with the Cleveland Cavaliers. Oh. Absolutely. Absolutely. This is the LeBron is on this team.

And, oh, my God, Wally Zerbiak. I forgot all about him. Kevin Love is there. This is a great team. Jesus Christ. Is my God, Wally Zerbiak. I forgot all about him. Kevin Love is there. This is a great team. Jesus Christ. Is Love here yet? Love's not here yet. No?

No. Elgowskis is here. It's that team still. Yeah. Oh, no. It's right before that. Ben Wallace is on this team. Oh, really?

Oh, yeah, yeah. This is that Delonte West. Oh, yeah, yeah. He was still that poor bastard. Jesus Christ. We both said that poor bastard. Jesus Christ. Well, we both said that poor bastard. He has had so much goodwill thrown at him, and he throws it right back at him. He was just arrested again.

Yeah, he was doing better. Mark Cuban was bragging about him. I'm helping him out. Got him in a treatment center, and now he's like living on a canoe or some shit. Yeah, I think it's a kayak, Jimmy. Let's be fair to the guy. It's a kayak. It's not good for him. No no we have to and that's going to be an episode sadly so uh yeah this year they go 66 and 16 okay go all the way to the eastern conference finals where

they lose to the magic in that one remember that weird year the magic made the finals i was like what the fuck tracy mcgrady was there right that was a good team right i guess yeah it was just it was just weird it was like where they just popped up one year that was uh what's his name had a really good year god damn i can't remember now don't look at me 15 years ago anyway 17 games oh dwight howard you're right dwight howard yeah but i was thinking of uh somebody else too though uh dwight howard the fuck the guard god damn it anyway it doesn't matter 17 games he plays for cleveland starts to 7.4 minutes a game he breaks a point at least 1.4 points and 1.5 rebounds per game boy oh boy he makes 1,262,275 dollars for that season out the clock and make at least a million a year that's so great that's gonna be it for Lorenzen for his career

okay he's talks later on about maybe playing overseas Israel's knocked around a little bit bit uh he plays in 778 games 447 started 23.8 minutes per game for a total of eight points per game and 6.4 rebounds per game so not not the career probably that he was hoping for but the bank account he's hoping for america because his career earnings jimmy you ready for this hold on your fucking britches here 60 what 55 million 216 thousand nine hundred ninety five dollars that's that is crazy that's unbelievable that is awesome uh oh my god that's so much money it's a lot of fucking money it really is and that that kind of uh he's done after the 2009 season and so that's you know mid 2009 yeah by february 3rd 2010 he and sheer are divorced oh no so it took this is the most common thing in sports is when the players are done they end up getting divorced because

they've never been home right now they're home people realize oh we don't get along when we have to see each other more than fucking you know a couple months out of the year right you're annoying yo you're annoying this is bullshit i didn't know you did dumb shit like that well what the fuck do you not good so they get divorced and um yeah his friend mike gibson uh said g-i-p-s-o-n gibson he said that you just thought i said it weird right no i i almost asked because that's a yeah it's very specific it's it is the poor bastard gets called mike gibson all day every day yeah no no get get with a sin get get i know i hate like lip lipson but gibson he said that uh lorenzen told me the marriage ended because Gipson. Gip. Gip. I know. I hate it. Like lip. Lipson. Gipson. He said that Lorenzen told me the marriage ended because he didn't trust Shira anymore

and she felt the same about him. But they were still going to try to find a way to raise these kids. That's what he said. And his other friend said, I think what happened to the marriage was that they grew apart. So, I mean, they've been together since he was seven fucking teen years old he met her and then went to chemistry class like that's not fucking normal and then he showed up and they talked to each other and then they both found out that they both slept with other people in the past times that we've all been apart so much and they're like well i don't trust you well i don't trust. Well, we should trust each other because now we're in each other's face.

She's like, you fucked other women in these cities. And he's like, well, you fucked Isaac Hayes. How the fuck do I think every goddamn time I can't watch South Park now? What am I supposed to do here? Yeah. No. Raw dog. Get in here.

Raw dog. I've had enough to hear with your raw dog ways you're out of here stay out of my wife quit raw dog and everyone in my house very few people get away from the wrath of raw dog very few everybody everybody's got at least one uh damp pant leg when raw dogs around. So she Shira, once the marriage breaks up, Shira alleges that she was a victim of domestic violence during the marriage and that during the marriage, Lorenzen was, as she put it, quote, juggling his women. Saying he had a woman in every city and, you know, was living the professional athlete lifestyle, basically. She said, though, it wasn't the violence or even the fucking around that doomed the marriage, though. Because, you know, she can look past all that, apparently.

She said, you have to understand that as an NBA player, you're subjected to a certain amount of theft and violence. Okay. She said, people see you as this bigger than life amount of theft and violence. Okay. She said, people see you as this bigger than life. This is so weird. This is bigger than life person. So you have to be careful who you bring into your surroundings. Lorenzen was kind of carefree in that area. And I was a little different.

I possessed a spirit of disconcernment. So I could discern whether a person was a person who I wanted to be around or not. And when things started to get to the point where I didn't know or i felt uncomfortable i finally left so she says lorenza would hang out with anybody that's her reason why which that seems like a i don't know 30 notches down the infraction line from beating and cheating you know what i'm saying that's like one and two and then that's like reason 46 like i don't like that one friend he hangs out with okay that can be worked out yeah but it's also like a perpetual loop of beating and cheating because if he's just letting people in his in his orbit some of those

are not dudes you know what i mean and they're all true they're just people that are all in there for whatever reason she can't take it that's she's not cut out for the life that he's willing to live and that's that's she's right they don't that's the truth no if no one's happy here and uh so right in court is ordered this is child support and alimony total twenty six thousand dollars a month oh my god that's a lot of fucking money for so long james that is a lot i mean there are six kids involved here and alimony but and her salary and her yeah well this is 2009 so yeah yeah even his oldest is only fucking 14 at this point so he has got 26 g's a month in child support he falls behind pretty much immediately i'm sure after a couple months he falls behind on his payments his he's in financial peril right now oh boy uh he has a

million dollar home in atlanta and another one in suburban memphis both in the process of being foreclosed upon and repossessed as well middle of the housing crisis the middle yeah yeah because who knows what his mortgage system was like yeah so you can't sell it yeah so he's just fucked at that moment in time uh income has stopped gone from seven million to three million to one million to ugots now so it ain't good houses fucking being repossessed he over the next few months months he's basically miserable uh by 2010 in the summer he's living in atlanta with his front gibson there with gibson uh just kind of hanging out there trying to figure out his next move he just doesn't know what to do with himself

his ex-wife is in memphis with the kids obviously and gibson though said that lorenzen still had what he called an intimate relationship with Shira. They still talked and saw each other and got fucking and all that type of shit from what he said. One weekend while he was living in Atlanta, Lorenzen flew home to Memphis to go to his daughter's dance recital and his sister's baby shower. So he was going, then he was going to come back to Atlanta. He called a friend of his, the Dotson guy, and arranged them to hang out. And this is July 19th, 2010. He says, completely unexpected out of the blue, this is Dotson.

He calls me and says, hey, bud, I'm in town. Let's hang out. So he comes over. We're kicking back. We're relaxing, smoking cigars on the patio. And he said, they're just hanging. Later on that evening, Dotson says that Shira called Lorenzen and demanded that he, I guess Lorenzen had his son over there, demanded that he bring the kid home right now. Bring my son home right now.

So Dotson says, quote, and he was like, okay was like okay all right fine i don't want to argue with you uh quote so we drove to the house and when we pull up to the house he said i'm gonna go in i'm gonna go in here and calm her down i'll call you later and we can hang out again okay so that's what he said that night so this is friend dotson drove away and left him at the house with shira and the kids pissed off Shira, presumably to, you know, reconcile the situation. So that night, Shira will later say that that he didn't leave the house Lorenz until about two o'clock in the morning. That he didn't leave the house, Lorenz, until about 2 o'clock in the morning. Okay. And that night, and she said that he left with what she called, quote, a box of drugs.

Which is a, I don't think I've ever heard that. Yeah. Those two things put together. Yeah. It's a box of drugs, man. I picture like a moving box and there's like, it's sticking out of the top, you know, like kilos and shit. Yeah, it's got packing tape on it and it's labeled,'s sticking out of the top you know like kilos and shit it's got packing tape on it and it's labeled uh wren's drugs like when people get fired on a sitcom and they they're in

the elevator with their box with like a plant and some shit yeah like a plant and a stapler and like that kind of shit stick pictures of their kids that's what he's got plant and yeah little kilo of coke there a little something there or it's probably a cigar box that's got weed in it or some whatever else yeah and he also said he had a bunch of she said he had a bunch of money and he said he had to go flip something oh that was what it was here so um has to go flip something is what he says now dotson dotson never hears from his from lorenzen again he doesn't call back that night he only makes one phone call that night as a matter of fact later on that night and that is to 9-1-1 lorenzen calls lorenzen calls germantown tennessee 9-1-1

that's the 9-1-1 that picked up the dispatch of it 9-1 All you hear is 911 dispatch, and you hear him say, God damn, like, what the fuck is going on? Like, God damn, something weird's happening. Followed by somewhere between 9 and 11 gunshots. Oh, my God. Depending on echoes. Now, you don't hear anything else said

from his end of the phone the rest of the call after the first gunshot. You just hear pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, little space, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. I mean, it's a lot of shots. Over this, the dispatcher is repeatedly saying hello, hello, hello, hello over hail of gunfire. You know what I mean? So all this gunfire and the dispatcher then says, all I hear is gunshots. You hear her say like saying to like a like the person working next to her.

I'm just hearing gunshot. Yeah. Like all I'm hearing is information out of this asshole. It's just gunfire. It's gun show. That's a problem. Gunfire. So they basically the call disconnect.

She disconnects from it. And that's that. Yeah. She does not give the phone call to her. Doesn't tell her supervisor about it for a week. This week. And she heard gunfire. Eleven gunshots after a guy said, God damn.

And then didn't answer after eleven gunshots. Wow. After a week they the the local police that 911 center they try to trace the call and they're unsuccessful because to do that you have to like you can either trace it or you can get like the records and find the tower pings and all that kind of shit so that's what they end up doing they pass it off to memphis police eight days later memphis police get this eight days days after this, when they first hear about it. They had no fucking idea.

So later on that night of July 19th, the night that he left, neighbors note that that night, Shira and a male acquaintance unknown to the neighbor ignited a bonfire in the backyard fire pit of her house there. And the neighbor said, quote, I thought it was strange because it was like one of the hottest days of the year. Yeah. This is mid-July in Memphis. No bonfire. It's fucking hot. We know that.

And Phoenix, in all summer, you don't light a fire. There's no. It's hot enough already. Christ. All in the summer, you don't light a fire. It's hot enough already. You want to crawl in the freezer. So that's what she says. Very weird thing. Fires burning in a big bonfire in the backyard. Some strange guy there.

So no one hears from Lorenzen again. No one hears from anything. July 22nd comes around. Three days later, no one has heard from Lorenzen. His mom, Deborah, says, quote, I kept calling him all day and he didn't answer the phone. This is what I told her. Talking about the wife, Shira, where is he? You need to let us know. She's constantly saying about other women and he's probably with some other women.

Like, well, I don't know. He's always fucking around. Who knows where he is? Meanwhile, Deborah Marion, who is his mom, said that she no calls unanswered. Texts go unreturned. She's not having this shit. So on July 22nd, she files a missing persons report with the Memphis Police Department and tells police when she files a report, quote, when you all find him him it's not going to be good that's what she tells him because she has a bad feeling about this and she knows every day that passes yeah it's

worse and worse lorenzen's not disappearing he's not the type of guy who's not going to call his dad or his mom no he's not he's got college to pay for for people he's got a lot going on here so july 28th 2010 is when memphis police finally are able to trace the 911 call where it came from what think about that that's 10 days later terrible so they go to the location dogs everything here i mean it's through a barbed wire fence that's parted tumbleweed shitloads of grass it's near a golf course actually uh there's a there's a golf course there's a cul-de-sac with like big homes nearby and all this shit all this type of shit um the one of the investigators said unless you've been here there's not no telling what's out here all this high grass and all kinds of shit like that.

And in this area, they find Lorenzen. Oh, no. They find him. And he is in the woods. He's been out in the sweltering 100 degree and 100% humidity Memphis heat for 10 days. Wow. What do you think he's like right now? We'll talk about exactly how much is left because it's fucking Halloween gross, man.

Really? Yeah. One of the investigators, or I'm sorry, this is one of just a resident who lived near there, said, quote, that was no robbery. Someone was trying to get rid of that dude. Yeah. And we'll find out why, too. He has a very expensive watch on, like nba player watch on his gold chain on with like you know he's got 30 grand worth of jewelry on him right that no one took from him so that's that ain't a robbery yeah that is that's a fucking hit you know what i mean so um that's that's uh

bad they considered filing a a civil suit against the Germantown police, and they end up doing that, actually, for the delay in the reporting. Because you fucked up. Yeah. So 10 days after it goes by, they talk to Shira again. She says he left home carrying money and a box of drugs. That's all she knows she said that he left her home at 10 30 p.m with the drugs returned a short time later then left again with an unspecified amount of money over a hundred thousand dollars it said though yeah uh and uh left then before he left shira wright said she overheard him on the phone

telling someone that he was going to quote flip something for 110 000 that's what she said um she said that uh you know lorenzen left the home in a car with a person that she did not know could not identify and um you know hours later obviously they get the 911 call and he's missing and uh yeah she tells police also that her ex-husband here, Lorenzen, owned a shotgun that he kept at her home and a handgun he kept inside the family van. And they searched around for them and couldn't find either weapon. Both are gone. Both are gone. When they find him, the decomposition is unbelievable.

Yeah. It's un-fucking-real it is fascinating how fast a body will go away i mean we turned we go back to the earth pretty quick the muscles and that stuff i mean the bones absolutely quite some time but the the the stuff that identifies you as a person goes away so fast you don. You don't have to burn it. No, it goes. It's I mean, we'll talk about it, but it's callous cutoff. It's called. It's an area that they said really only locals would know. And it's kind of a, you know, to know this area to dump it.

They said that he weighed 245 pounds to be 611. When they found him, he weighed 57 pounds. Holy shit. That's how much decomposition. 200 pounds in 10 days. That's unbelievable. There was rain, heat, scavenging animals. Obviously, there's no funeral. There's no open casket, clearly, there.

We're going closed casket on this one, boys. So the mother came to the site when they found him. She came there. The police tape had already been up. She had to be restrained physically from crossing the police line by officers. She said that Deborah said, quote, she said that it's a good thing she wasn't wearing running shoes because, quote, ain't no way she could have caught me. She said, she don't know me.

I'm from Mississippi, baby. I don't know what that means. I guess Mississippians are fast is what she's getting at. She's going to run. What's she going to run to? Is she going to run to the body? Run to the body. She wanted to be the first one there um so obviously

there is immediately they look at you know people around him his friends his wife his ex-wife he just got divorced he owes money on all this type of shit um also he's got a million dollar life insurance policy on him that his wife's wife and kids are the beneficiary of so uh tons of people hundreds of people come to the crime scene hundreds including penny hardaway is there even what the fuck is he gonna do i don't know i don't know what they're doing uh wendy wilson who's a former personal assistant to lorenzen is also there and she told the police to look hard at the ex-wife is what she said. She said that later she claimed to have voice recordings of Shira threatening Lorenzen if she found him with another woman. He said, yeah, there you go.

So they were turned over to the Memphis police is what she said. This is fucking terrible, man. This whole thing is Jesus Christ. She also now Shira's got other terrible, man. This whole thing is Jesus Christ. She also now she has got other stories, too. She now told tells investigators that he apparently took the shotgun and the pistol with him when they left when he left. That's why it's not here. He must have taken the guns with him, which, you know, she also now tells detectives for the first time, and they've been talking to her for a week, that two men had come to her house five weeks earlier in a car with Florida license plates looking for Lorenzen. And they look serious, like serious guys.

Yeah, exactly. Like, what's the guy with the you know in his mouth and shit no no i was thinking florida rap yeah there you go yeah do florida rap god god florida is bad enough for a rapper and a florida rapper is a bad thing no florida rapper sorry no every rap is about how you've made bad decisions in your choice of places to live that should be your only thing you're rapping about that's essentially what ice ice baby is about have you have you read the it's not it's so bad it's so dumb garbage i mean a lot was garbage then but that was like 10 years but the lyrics are literal trash they don't make any fucking sense

wow they don't even paint a picture he just wanted to get to ice ice baby mentioned like guns and cars a couple of times so he sounded like a rapper talked about a drop top mustang and i've got a gun okay great terrific thanks for ruining a song thanks for fucking that up now glad we'll still have to see you 30 years from now excellent christ people never go away so uh one of the people here this is uh an attorney ed mckinney who was representing the town he said it was clear that mrs wright did not provide detectives with critical information when she first spoke with them.

In fact, did not provide that information to them until shortly before or shortly after his body was recovered. As to why she withheld it, we don't know at this time. But from the detective's viewpoint, that certainly complicated the investigation and deprived them of critical information regarding the last moments of Mr. Wright's activities that evening before he left the house which yeah makes sense looks bad she also told police that now she's saying that every time he came home he would go into the attic for a while he'd go up in the attic and disappear as soon as he came home you know like the kid from parenthood right and movie back then uh and that he had been involved in what she called some major criminal activity in the past and had probably just gotten back into it. So that's why he's dead. Oh, well, that's what she says.

Now, evidence here. They find two different shell casings at the scene. So two different caliber weapons, a small caliber and a medium caliber guns are used here. So that's that to me signifies to more than one person. Yeah, definitely. So the police, like we said, search Shira's house. And they said that one of the lawyers said, I assume it's just part of the routine investigation. They're looking for clues.

They're looking for evidence. They're trying to find answers. And that would be one of the logical things to do to search any premises where lorenzen was last known to be sure absolutely wendy wilson the assistant like that we talked about she says she had those audio tapes and she indicated that shira wright was unstable and had made threatening comments about lorenzen in the past she said quote oh basically things like if she caught him with anyone else she'd have him fucked up or whatever so sick isaac hayes on your ass

can't get enough of your love your love gonna murder for your love. Your love. Had enough of your love, baby. Had enough of your love, baby. Scientology. He's got to throw that in there, I assume, nowadays, probably. So, yeah, Wendy, what's her name? Wendy Wilson. Wilson. I was going to say Wendy Williams.

I know that's not right. That woman, I've been thinking the same thing every time you say it. Oh, not her. She said, I went to Memphis police because I was concerned and made a report. Her conversation was all over. But at the same time, it was threatening. So, yeah, they have a funeral for poor Lorenz in here. And it is there are shit loads of people there. And it is there are shit loads of people there. I mean, he knows fucking everybody. He played their college, you know, high school, NBA.

Yeah. Penny Hardaway said after the funeral, quote, he met a lot, a lot because guys who stay here and play here, people who people looked up to him. He said that every other minute I'm thinking about it because of the way he got killed and the fashion he got killed. It just doesn't happen, especially to guys like Lorenzen. I mean, it happens with gangs, but it doesn't happen to different athletes like that. It's just sad. He was a guy that always came back when others didn't. Also, they start talking about debts now and all this different thing.

Shira is putting all sorts of stuff out there. She says, quote, Lorenzen lived two separate lives and one of them caught up to him that night. And it's just I mean, he owed several people money. There was a four point six million dollar deficit in our income. And during that time period, he had to figure it out. Like, what are we going to do to make up that time period, he had to figure it out. Like, what are we going to do to make up that deficit? And I'm not proud of it. The reason why it hurts so much is because he did that for us. He wanted to make sure that his family, that we could maintain the lifestyle he had. So yeah, they're saying he's millions of dollars in debt, all sorts of shit now uh the the owner of the uh grizzlies michael uh heisley he says this is one

of the things that disturbs me most a lot of times in professional sports the athletes come from poverty and then suddenly find themselves with millions of dollars somehow in professional sports with what happened to lorenzen losing most of your money is not the exception. It's the rule. So yeah, there you go. So they're trying to find the killer here. That's a big deal here. Trying to find the killer. Herb says, I look at his face in these pictures and I know that he's in a better place right now. He said he's very frustrated by how the 911 call was handled. And but he says he's confident in the Memphis Police Department that they'll find out who did this. He said, I do know that the police department is giving a diligent effort into trying to find out who did this heinous crime. I know they're working on it, and they're on it 24-7.

They're doing as much as they possibly can do. Hopefully they get a lead soon that will help us catch these people that did this. So there's a reward here. You'd think this would be like a big reward. It's the state of Tennessee puts up $10,000 for the reward. The city of Memphis puts up $5,000. Crime Stoppers puts up $1,000.

And the Memphis Grizzlies, what do you think they put up? $2,500. Five grand. Those cheap fucks. They can't say $25,000. Fuck it. We're the Grizzlies. Who gives a shit?

We make money. It's the NBA. We're on in fucking China right now. What the fuck are we talking about? $5,000. Also, $25,000? Even at that, somebody that knows about a murder probably isn't gonna talk for 25 grand so even if you say we'll put up 25 it's 21 this is 21 i just meant they

didn't they could have added 25 to the mix yeah yeah that's my 40 at least yeah nobody's gonna claim the reward man just put it put up 10 million dollars it won't fucking matter you'll look like you'll look like heroes they left more in jewelry on him than that is. So anybody that, you know what I'm saying? That's what I mean. That's normally not the way that's going to work. That's why that didn't work for like mob hits either. Generally, they're not like, I'm going to get that $2,500 they're offering rather than my entire life of schemes and scams.

I'm going to do that. Now FBI documents come out as well okay fbi documents about some certain things here according to fbi documents in 2008 lorenzen sold a 2008 mercedes-benz and a 2007 cadillac escalade to Cole. No, that doesn't sound like anything. Bobby Cole is a brother-in-law of Dennis McNeil. Cole is known throughout Memphis for his connections to Craig Pettys, who is the kingpin of the city, the drug kingpin of the city. So these people apparently allegedly work for him or whatever. They all had ties to the Mexican cartels.

That's what we're working with here. In 2009, this Pettys, which plead guilty to 19 charges, including murder, serving nine concurrent life sentences in federal prison without the possibility of parole. Oh, wow. So Cole, the Bobby Cole, when he was indicted for drug distribution in 2007, he offered to turn over to DEA vehicles he purchased with drug money. This included the Benz and the Escalade he bought from Lorenz and Wright, which were still registered in Wright's name, by the way. You can't register your own name because you're fucking. That was part of the deal that you own cars that you shouldn't have

to the money to own usually you have like you know your cousin do it or some shit like that not the previous owner leave it in his name yeah you wouldn't trust that unless you knew the guy very well and that's what they're getting into here it's not just a lorenzen you know he knows everybody in memphis and people he know knows who you could get, who has the cash to buy a hot car. Not a hot car. It's not stolen, but like a nice car that you need to get rid of quick for a decent price so he would know where to go. But this is different. This is fucking, that's a different thing.

So to keep it registered in your name, that's continually working here. in your name that's continually working here. So Cole ended up being sentenced to eight years for trafficking millions of dollars worth of cocaine into Memphis and millions of dollars of profit back to Mexico. And yeah, they said they didn't know, obviously, what Wright's knowledge of this guy's business is. But if they're all in Memphis, he knows who he is. Everybody knows who they all are. So Shira Wright, at this point point is reportedly $3 million in debt.

And yeah, her attorney said that Lorenzen was broke at the time of his death. So Shira would have no reason to kill him. It's not like she's getting any money other than the insurance. So investigators questioned Shira initially, obviously. And she's the last person, known person to see him alive. Told him the box of drugs thing and all that. So a couple. This thing goes cold pretty much.

Yeah, it goes cold. Years go by. Years go by. 2015 comes around here even now. By then, she was saying how she said that she wasn't a suspect this is what in 2015 she was saying it was just kind of a person of interest they said that the list was long and wide and they didn't have any real suspects yeah that's what they tell you yeah they're not going to tell you oh no we're concentrating on you so you leave town as

soon as possible so uh the investigation though they look into everybody they find out that shira hasn't had a job in 17 years she's three million dollars in debt wow so they're trying to build you know some kind of she's been raising fucking six kids too that's a lot of kids true so uh because 17 years is since 95 yeah that makes sense because we're in about 2012 when that happens so uh they talk a lot about that fire pit thing that's one thing they're they're talking about here um she said that she was fearful of her life because she didn't want to speak about the guys who came from florida to knock on the door because she thought that she'd be next then yeah it was obviously why wouldn't they get me why aren't't they going to get me at all?

So she said, yeah, the box of drugs thing. They searched her whole house once they found the body, including the backyard fire pit. They found burned pieces of metal and a letter addressed to Lorenzen Wright and She-Ra. That's all they found in the fire pit. So who the fuck knows what they were burning here? The they have theories.

There's theories. There's Mike Ryle, who's the deputy chief of investigative services with the Memphis Police Department. He says that they're like, is this like isorenzo was lorenzo involved in a gang is this something shit like that and he says i'm not going to comment on that right now we just need to withhold some information so we can maintain some integrity about the ongoing investigation uh now buddy chapman former director of memphis police force who once investigated elvis's death hmm he uh he's the executive director of Crime Stoppers now. He says that,

quote, my personal opinion has been all along that he owed a lot of people a lot of money, or he owed a lot of money to the wrong people, and that his murder was a message. If you owe us money, you better pay us. It doesn't matter who you are or how important you are. You need to pay us the entire amount. And he says, I think, quite frankly, the reason we haven't gotten any substantive tips that allowed us to look into anything was because people that killed the Renzen right probably flew in here from God knows where Prague, Mexico City, wherever, and called to meet him to collect the money. He didn't have all the money. They killed him, got on a plane, and left. There's somebody out there that knows everything,

and if that somebody is from Memphis, then $21,000 being offered as a reward, we would have gotten the call if it was a Memphis thing. So Wright's family and friends are like, bullshit. They said that he might have been trying to raise cash, but they said consorting with known drug dealers was unthinkable to him one of his friends said i've never heard anything about drug stuff and i was with him every day i never saw lorenzen with a shady character ever that's wendy wilson the assistant said that so speculation keeps going on nancy grace does a whole segment about it you know screaming and

yelling and then she's like yeah riveting tv i thought it was lorenza a blonde girl no it's not a but never mind okay we was looking for a blonde girl is there not a bed a dead baby we can exploit none not a somebody it's an adult baby bring him to me it's an adult male and we're gonna focus hours of tv on this why bring me a baby corpse it gives me strength dead babies make me hot make me hot she's like third season of stranger things when all those people would like wander into that basement just fall down and turn to bones and like you know add to the monster that's what nancy grace says the babies dead murdered babies fall and murdered like missing blonde girls and shit and they just crumble in front of her and they make her bigger until she's like fuck i hate her no she's the fucking worst a nightmare come to life a human nightmare and that was james that woman was a prosecutor can you imagine getting yelled

at her yelled at by her in a fucking courtroom it's just yeah everything she made that this person is the devil yeah she's like she's like the prosecutor of the jar right yeah the jar right yeah she reminds me of the prosecutor in uh in uh uh the staircase the actual oh yeah that lady who's like his That lady. Very similar. His homosexual desires. Which means he's guilty because if you've ever wanted a penis, it means you killed your wife. Clearly. Jesus Christ. She was a nightmare, that lady. So they held a vigil for him in the one-year anniversary. The mother had a vigil.

2014, Herb sues Shira for money. Apparently for pissing away the entire insurance settlement and not using it for the kids. Where'd it go, Herb? That's what he's suing her for. Lorenzen had taken out a $1 million life insurance benefit, life insurance policy to benefit the six children, but within months of collecting it, according to public

records, the account had $5.05 left in it. Wow. She blew it all. She contends she spent it responsibly. She says she spent $339,000 on a foreclosed home for them to live in. She bought a house that was foreclosed. She placed that in the children's name she said but an accounting uh revelation here showed that she'd spent the rest of the money uh on everything from a 32 000 escalade to 11 750 trip to new york city and and $69,000 in furniture for a home. Wow. So that's a lot.

Yeah. So anyway. I actually bought a used Escalade. That was nice. That's good. Yeah, she can go new, and she bought a foreclosed home, so she's doing it here. So Herb sues, and saying the minor children became entitled.

Oh, he's also suing for the pension plan NBA thing because the kids had a death benefit from the NBA worth approximately $184,000, payable by the NBA player's pension plan here. So yeah, he sues her all sorts of different ways here. They agree to a confidential settlement in a dispute over this whole deal that's how this ends up working and uh yeah so it's a mess so will it ever get solved

we're down we're up to like 2014 well one of the detectives said this is the one of the active detectives quote we don't consider it a cold case it's not even our in our cold case unit he says there there have been leads as recently as this year we're working it now buddy chapman of crime stoppers here with his theories yeah he said he's less optimistic he says you never know what's going to happen somebody might say the wrong thing to somebody and then he said i think it's a very good possibility it'll never be solved so or it won't be solved so shira she starts talking about uh the abuse more that the alleged abuse from lorenzen she said the abuse

stopped in 2008 though okay it stopped and it had nothing to do with nothing as the way she put it nothing to do with nothing she said quote if i decided to leave then he would have decided he was going to kill himself she said and then when it got to the point decided to leave, then he would have decided he was going to kill himself, she said. And then when it got to the point where that didn't work, he would say, well, I'm going to kill the kids and then I'm going to kill you and then I'm going to kill myself. Oh, my God. That's what she's saying. She said, if I wanted Lorenzen dead, I would have just let him kill himself because he tried to so many times. Now, 2015, Shira writes a book.

now 2015 shira writes a book um she writes a book and she's also remarried at this point and running running a ministry called born to number two born to prosper so it's one of those fucking ministries of you know give me all your money and i'll dress nice and then that'll come back on to you because it's the prosperity gospel and that horse shit so all this building and lavishing up my lifestyle is gonna be good for you yep uh she writes a book now publishes a book called mr tell me anything That's the name of it. It is a thinly veiled biography of her marriage to Lorenzen Wright. Like, thinly veiled.

The people's names are different, but she said, and she told her friends and everything else, everything in it's fucking true. It's all true. We'll talk about it in a second here.

But the title character, Mr. Tell Me Anything, is based on Lorenzen, apparently. And it's the tale of a philandering NBA player who moves to Memphis and marries an older woman. Weird. This is from the promo material here. Quote, during her nurturing efforts, or despite her nurturing efforts, corruption and deceit took their stable places in his life. A breaking point is reached.

She makes a life-altering decision. Does it work out for her? Does it work out for her good? That's a terrible. Stop it. Does it work out for her good? For her good. For her good.

I guess that's what it's supposed to be. For her good. For her good. Right. Not for her well. That sounds awful. Yeah. Does it work out good for her?

Does it work out for her comma well? That would be better. Or does it work out for her own good maybe? That just doesn't sound right. It sounds like bad English. I get it's grammatically correct, but it doesn't sound like it. So let's change it. Did all his lies finally catch up to him?

Or would he or she pay the ultimate price? That's what it is. And they said a handful of violent incidents between the two main characters and Mr. Tell me anything are folded in with allegations of infidelity and explicit descriptions of sexual encounters. Explicit descriptions of sexual encounters. Shira told the Memphis Commercial Appeal. It's a media thing there in 2015 that, quote, ninety nine point nine nine percent of the book contained true stories from her relationship with Lorenzen. She described it as social on social media as, quote, my story. And Lorenzen Jr. said that his mother wrote about things that really happened in her life

now in this book they talk about mr can't you know tell me anything has a fucking a different woman in every city there's stories of her coming home and catching him with a woman and chasing some naked woman into the bathroom and pummeling her into fucking mental insolvency. And then, uh, putting her keys between her hands and punching him in the face and slicing fucking key marks all on his face from that. And I'm like,

holy shit. That's what I was. My fucking thing. I was like, God damn. Why is he married? And why is she proud of doing that? Right.

If a man said, yeah, I walked in and caught my wife fucking this woman i took our fucking another man i took him in the bathroom i beat him within an inch of his life then i put keys in between my hands punched my wife in the face made sure to cut her deep so no one will find her pretty no more people be like put that man in the fucking electric chair now what a sick motherfucker this they're like good for you good for you girl show him who's the real boss yeah nobody is okay with this i would hope that's a joke because this is get him sheeho yeah go get a mom mom to preneur whatever the fuck the multi-level mark. Boss, babe. Boss, yeah.

We did a bonus episode and had all these she-e-o, my God. No one would be okay with key punches. Beating the woman in the bathroom, that's understandable, I feel like. That's a thing, that's a heat of the moment thing. Weapons to the face are another issue. Nobody thinks that's okay so according to this was later on in 2015 now according to book scan a data provider for the book industry the book had sold seven copies so when over like a while months it sold seven

copies so nobody wanted that um she was planning on writing another one, actually. And in the second one, Mr. Tell Me Anything gets killed. Oh, weird. So if you could read that, you just find out what happened in this murder, apparently. So anyway, here I'll show you. I'll turn the monitor toward you here. Mr. Tell Me Anything, volume one is the way she puts it. She was going gonna do several

it's got three and a half stars on amazon because at a 47 rating so it had to have had to have fucking sold more than seven copies eventually could be digitals do do they call those copies well we'll we'll get to that in a second here uh falling in love with the same man of her dreams over and over again was not a difficult task for Sharon Roberson. Cherie Robinson. Sharon Roberson. Wow. She had cherished Mr. Can't Tell Me Anything so long that her fragile heart didn't even know how not to love him.

After six years, the couple settles into a troubled marriage. Despite the inherited challenges of parenting and relating to their and relating to their obvious differences. They continue on with the constant chaos of surrounding women, new acquaintances, family and greed. Their efforts would soon appear to be ultimately in vain. Combined with the newfound lies and deception, she finds herself questioning his commitment. Her belief in true love propels her to fight for what she has envisioned from the start. But despite her nurturing efforts, corruption and deceit, blah, blah, blah.

We found that. That was the end that we heard over there. So on Amazon, it is currently out of print is all it says. So you can't even get a digital copy. You can't get shit on there. I'm sure if I went on one of these used book sites, I could find it for a dollar or something. But it's out of fucking print. Nobody cares about it. It's 232 pages, this fucking thing.

Shira Wright said she planned to move to Houston later that year, and she said, you want the closure to get away from the situation. I think I want it. I think I want to know what happened and get closure. So she does this interview with Max or Matt Schleff, a Fox Sports producer, and he asked her straight up. Did you have anything to do with Lorenzen's death? Yeah, period. Now, did you have any part in Lorenzen's murder is what she said. This is wild.

After a pause, she said this. quote i'm a mother i'm a wife i'm an author and the police should find his killer i'm a minister of the lord and i've never been in any type of trouble what then she said again uh then she said again i'm a wife then i'm a at first i'm a wife. Then I'm a mother. Then thirdly, I'm an author. The law enforcement should do what's best to find out who's the killer. And, uh, that is nowhere in there is the word no mentioned. Not even once.

She doesn't say all that and then go. So no, obviously none of that. She just says all that. Like they should find the killer. Wow. Well, I mean, wouldn't you just say no, if you did it you know of course not jesus christ no i'm a mother i'm an author i'm a fucking wife but i'm not a murderer yeah that's what i would say yeah one thing i'm not is a fucking murderer didn't do that not me so he said you understand obviously why i had to ask that she said i do but i'm a wife a mother

and an author uh i let people do what what what they're good at doing and i'm just going to uh do what i'm good at doing um they need to spend time and focus and find out what happened to him we all need to know so i I do what I'm doing. I'm not a cop is what she's saying. I couldn't find the, I'm just, I'm not the one though. I definitely didn't murder him.

So, uh, Deborah, the mom, Lorenz's mom, she 100% thinks it's Shira. Uh, absolutely.

She says she's angry. She said she has spent the last half decade working as an unpaid homicide investigator she has evidence and folders and papers all over her fucking house she keeps binders with notes not laminated news clippings you name it everything had to be moved into a storage facility when she ran out of room in the house for this shit she loves her son don't kill like this whole thing this reminds me of my mother a lot her lawyer-like questioning of her son's friends and acquaintances has fucked up some relationships and she doesn't give a shit she said quote i want to keep my son's name out there because his name came down in memphis trash and as long as i got blood still running warm in my body i'm gonna do

something ain't nobody else gonna tell me when I'm tired of doing something for my child. Nobody. Mm-mm, she says. And six mms. Mm-mm. I'm from Mississippi. You can't piss in my face and tell me it's right. I'm going to taste that salt.

They killed my child. What did she do? I'm from Mississippi, so I taste piss right. I know what piss tastes like can you imagine growing up that woman said wild shit his whole childhood yeah she's a trip man you better eat your dinner i'm from mississippi i'm from mississippi i will whoop you six ways down to the texas coast you're gonna put you in the gulf make you swim home with shrimp in your hands. Now get your ass in there and eat. Like what? I don't know what that means. Don't piss in my face and tell me it's right. No, she said, yeah, tell me it's right. But she said she didn't go that way.

Don't tell me, don't tell me it's right. I'm going to taste that salt. She said, piss salt. They killed my child. Exclamation point. point um she is a party her theory of the case centers on both shira and crime organized crime to be specific uh she said by the way of shira's book deborah said this is the book i want to read quote how i orchestrated getting my ex-husband killed. Jesus Christ. She believes that Memphis gangs were involved, and she has vowed to avenge the killing herself. Herself. This is where my mom would come in.

If you killed me, oh, God, my mother, you'd never get her away from me. She would murder everybody. I'm here to question Raw Dog. Oh, my God. Forget about it. With my grandmother, with the knife in her purse, it's a mess. The whole thing would be bad. She believes they were raw, blah, blah, blah. She has gone so far as to prepare a notebook thick with instructions about her funeral and burial.

That's what she said, in case she gets killed going after the wrong people. She said, quote, I ain't afraid of death, and I ain't playing. That's what she said. I ain't afraid of death and i ain't playing so she's i ain't afraid of death and i ain't playing some of my family members are scared but i'm not no she don't give a fuck don't give a fuck kill my kid i'm coming for your ass uh at one point she shared her revenge fantasy with her psychologist who tried to dissuade her and added that psychologists are duty-bound to report such fantasies to the police if something happens. And she said to the guy, quote, you didn't bury anything you birthed into this world, so you don't know what I feel.

Don't fuck with Debra. Debbie's a badass and I love her. So Debbie and Herb were like the two coolest parents we've ever had. her so debbie and herb were like the two coolest parents we've ever had a yeah isn't it funny that the two we've had someone here with two awesome parents and he's the only guy who's never been arrested 30 fucking times on our entire fucking show the best set of parents we've ever had and not arrested constantly weird right strange how that works so um uh uh the mother talks about uh uh his brother here talks about he's got a little brother lorenzen and he's playing basketball he's only 15 the little brother wow and she talks about the little brother he's already about six foot four and getting bigger and deborah says that

she watches him play when she watches him play. When she watches him play, she thinks about watching Lorenzen. And she says she doesn't want him to play. She says, I tell him, quit playing so hard. You don't need to be getting all those rebounds. You don't need to be getting all those shots. Quit playing so hard. All they're going to do is give you $50 million. Stop it.

Yeah. Well, they said, why? She said, I don't want him to be as good as his brother. I don't need another NBA player. I just need a child that goes to work and takes care of his wife and kids and that's it i don't need another nba player because all money is not good money lorenzen was an nba player a millionaire knew everyone and look what happened he ends up dead and no one knows a thing great point fuck yeah she removes to california she goes to california her new husband's name is tim robertson and uh he

worked as uh for a record label and lived in memphis at one point so again kind of in with music industry type people here november 9th 2017 a gun is found in a lake in walnut mississippi which we have talked about in small town murder we did an episode in walnut mississippi i think that was the cookie monster one if i'm not mistaken which is fucking yeah really crazy episode listen to that so if you haven't listened to small town murder maybe start there yeah so uh oh devin from mississippi this is a bad thing uh memphis police are the ones who find it to walnut mississippi it is on county road 302 about 50 miles east of olive branch uh now it's believed the memphis police spokesman says it's believed that this is the murder weapon now how the fuck

would memphis police know to look in walnut mississippi in a lake in a rural area to find a gun did twenty one thousand dollars to give somebody enough reason to talk not quite but uh there's a guy named jimmy martin jimmy martin is uh shira's cousin uh-oh jimmy martin jimmy spelled like you i.e uh he says that as many as seven people had knowledge of this murder and what happened in this murder they include four family members of Shira Wright's extended family. The way Jimmy Martin tells it, Lorenzen Wright's body was still in the secluded meadow where he'd been shot when Shira came to see him, came to see Jimmy. She said here he said that Shira arrived with a plan and a story. He said that Shearer arrived with a plan and a story. They said that Jimmy Martin, quote, received payment for his part in the plot and helped clean up the crime scene with a metal detector.

Wow. And that the conspirators earlier had tried to kill Lorenzen in Atlanta. This is like the third attempt on his life is what he says he says in atlanta they had attempted to crawl through an open window and they found but they ended up giving up because they found only another guy sleeping on the couch not him they thought he was going to be they got all the way in there they got in there and his boy was sleeping and it wasn't him wow uh she uh she told jimmy martin that she and her lover landscaper billy ray turner who works he's a part-time deacon who landscapes for a church scumbag um yeah uh they had killed

him this is what when she showed up to say hey you got to help me clean up the crime scene with her cousin she's like listen me me and Billy Ray killed him. And now you go with me and Billy Ray Turner to help us clean up the crime scene. Yeah. So apparently he stated that days after the murder of Lorenzen White, he was picked up by Shearer Wright at his home in Batesville, Mississippi. He stated that Shearer Wright borrowed a metal detector from his mother, Edna Robinson, and then they left. Jimmy Martin said that he rode to Memphis, Tennessee with Shira where they picked up Billy Turner and they confessed to Jimmy that they had murdered Lorenzen. And Jimmy said that he assisted Shira and Billy in cleaning up the crime scene and destroying evidence from the murder.

assisted Shira and Billy in cleaning up the crime scene and destroying evidence from the murder. Jimmy said that the metal detector was used to locate a firearm that was accidentally dropped during the murder. They fucking dropped the murder weapon and had no idea where it was and couldn't find it because it's high grass. It's just a high grass area. They fucking dropped it and couldn't find it. So they had to take off. And so they found it with a metal detector. Wow. He also says that he knew where the gun was because, and so they found it with a metal detector. Wow.

He also says that he knew where the gun was because he fucking helped dispose of it. That's why he knew. He said that he accompanied Billy Turner to a lake located on Highway 72 in Walnut, Mississippi, where Billy Turner disposed of a handgun that was used to murder Lorenzen. Among other allegations, there's,'s let's here we go. A woman named Claudia Robinson witnessed a meeting at which Martin Turner and Shearer Wright plotted to kill Lorenzen.

And she witnessed that an initial attempt to kill right in Atlanta failed when they found an unknown man sleeping on the couch of the home. They were targeting Billy Ray and She Shira were in a sexual relationship and conspired to kill Lorenzen for insurance money. Authorities set up electronic surveillance on the suspects after they heard this information and then ended up releasing the info about the gun when they found it, but they found all sorts of plotting and all sorts of

shit talking and everything else in these phone conversations and police overheard shira wright and turner discussing the finding of the gun this is why they did that to yeah they figured yeah you get the yeah you gotta you gotta poke the nest here you know so you get them found the gun especially if it's the then listen to your taps yeah yep. Yeah. Yep. And there's going to be chatting. If it had anything to do with it, they're going to be yapping. Yep. Anybody watch The Wire, they know how that shit works. So they right even flew from her new home in California back to Memphis where she met

Turner and as the officers covertly photographed them. So set them up. officers covertly photographed them so set them up uh they said that this information of finding the gun caused shira great stress in a call uh shira wright stated someone done someone done sent someone somewhere to get something indicating that she knew the police were talking to an informant like they couldn't have just pulled that out of their ass they had to know where the fuck to look you don't just stumble into walnut mississippi and find that well if one thing if the mississippi police found it but not the memphis police down there uh jimmy told them this in 2012 this has been known for years they were just trying to close the trap about basically here he first

turned on her in 2012 by the way jimmy's in prison for murder so we'll talk about that not this murder a different murder he's a bad man of his girlfriend so not a great guy anyway billy turner and shira wright were weren't arrested till five years after that shira wright's team here is looking into all this they said um my god uh this is fucking crazy martin stood trial in 2009 in shelby county for the murder of his girlfriend martha jean bones the jury acquitted him of a first degree murder charge but deadlocked on a lesser charge of second degree murder so one and one the martin was later convicted of second degree murder they tried him again and he is sentenced to 20 years in prison following that so uh yeah he was out on bond for murder when this whole thing

happened by the way when he was cleaning up murder scenes he uh he was a was an aspiring rapper and producer when he met uh some other people here um jesus christ oh yeah when he met that girl uh they had a stormy relationship and then he shot her to death in an apartment so um he said a quote he said from the outset it was an accident martin called 9-1-1 and could be heard crying on the tape but witnesses for the prosecution told a different story. They spoke of explosive arguments and physical encounters, including one in which Martin allegedly chased bounds with a hammer that he threw at her, shattering her car window. Wow. Which is pretty fucking violent.

2017, Billy Ray Turner, Shelby County landscaper and church deacon at Mount Olive No. 1 Missionary Baptist Church in Collierville is indicted on first-degree murder charges. Of Lorenzen Wright. Yep, and held on a $1 million bond. Now,

Debra, Lorenzen's mother, said when I saw him, I knew instantly that Shira used him because that's not what she wanted. You know he had no money. She don't deal with no grass cutter. That's amazing. She don't deal with no grass cutter.

I love this fucking lady. Debra, you're the best. I love Debra. She's the shit. So they went to the same church, I guess. Apparently that's how they met. Witnesses said that she or a mastermind of the plan to have, uh,

two men kill Lorenzen in his home. Obviously that failed anyway. So, um, uh, December 15th, 2017 rights. Ex-wife.

Obviously she or is arrested in California in connection with the murder. Um, seven years later, Jesus Christ. They said they called, uh, Obviously, Shira is arrested in California in connection with the murder. Seven years later, Jesus Christ, they said they called Turner. Oh, yeah. They said that Billy Ray, what an ongoing danger. Oh, okay. Yeah. She they called her an ongoing danger, by the way, and put her bail at $20 million. Oh, she ain't getting out.

No. So, yeah, that's bad shit now. They say that Jimmy Martin is just trying to get out of trouble of his own thing, even though he's sentenced, and that doesn't matter. He's not getting any break on this, and never did, as a matter of fact. They charge her with first-degree murder, same as Billy Ray Turner, and they said that uh it was motivated by money obviously uh now she has a new husband reginald robinson like we talked about here

and uh he had been a sheriff's deputy since 1999 and now he's a witness in the whole thing because she one of the allegations is that shira was sitting around talking about how to kill Lorenzen. And, uh, they said that one of the witnesses says that Ron Reginald Robinson was around when the meeting occurred. So he becomes a witness.

The, uh, the whole thing too. How was a sheriff's deputy and Jimmy Martin had said that the gun was like a type of police gun use a gun police a type of gun police use and he had he's i guess or i suppose so it gave out shell casing so it'd have to be it wouldn't be a revolver like old-timey yeah it'd have to be at least semi-automatic so um they check they're trying to find out if it belonged to him because he was a sheriff's deputy oh shit so they're saying did she take it from him uh-huh did she

swipe it from him is what they think so uh now the other thing they never say who's the second shooter right that's my problem billy ray's a shooter who's the fucking second shooter man yeah there's two guns either jimmy mart the second shooter, allegedly, and he's not saying it because it's easier for him to just. And the police are saying, don't say it, because the only way that they would say it is if she admitted to the whole thing and said, yeah, he was there, too, because I hired him to be there. That'd be the only way. So he's kind of playing chicken with her, maybe on that. I don't know. That'd be the only way. So he's kind of playing chicken with her maybe on that. I don't know. That's just a theory here.

So the kids speak up, by the way, the right kids, they talk out. They say they were with their mother that the night that they were that she was arrested in 2017. Shamar, one of the twins, said the police are pulling us over and we're like, oh, snap. Were we speeding or something? We hear them say like homicide, homicide. We're scared because they had guns pulled. It was like 10 officers with guns pointed at my mom. At this point, I'm like so confused and angry.

Like, why are they arresting my mom? And they said they remain. This is in 2017. They remained convinced that their mother was 100% innocent. Fascinating. Quote, I believe, this is Lamar, the other twin, I believe her 100%. I've seen the hurt in my mom. I've seen the hurt that she's had.

And, like, I know how much harder life is without my father, and I know how much she loved him. So, June 2018, they find Billy Turner's car, and they think that this is the car that left the scene. So they're trying to figure that out here. They said that the guy that gave them the information when he heard shooting, he'd come out and the car that ran ran by him was a Dodge Stratus. And that's the only Dodge Stratus that Billy Ray had. And it looks kind of brown at that time of night it could look kind of brown so they're looking into like you know somebody saw a car drive away and then this guy's got the same type of car they're looking into that shira they're wondering if she's even competent for trial okay the uh yeah now deborah's having none of that

shit the mother no she says books and shit. She's competent as fuck. You're thinking right along the same line. She said, quote, how you write a book and you crazy. It was her line. Exactly. I'm from Mississippi. I'm from Mississippi.

It's all about who she can see in the mirror herself, because if she loved her kids, she would never have killed their daddy. That's right. That's not how we do it, Mississippi. So while she's in custody, the reason why they're having this, while she's in custody, Wright stripped naked, Shira, and used her clothes to stuff the toilet in an attempt to flood her cell, saying that she was, quote, going swimming, y'all. That is pretty crazy. Yeah. Nutty side. it's nuts uh in a report submitted as evidence here right caused a verbal riot cursed guards and refused to comply with orders and was slow to

comply when she did so uh her attorney said that could be attributed to her quote deteriorating mental health possibly yeah or or a woman who uh didn't expect to get caught and now is furious that she's in prison not happy at all with that fucking development and i mean she's in prison pissed off you know she's pissed off and then you know i'm going swimming y'all and they send somebody in to talk to her that they think might be able to get through to her somebody different than the usual people they send in. They had to send away for her, but she was willing to do it. They sent in my grandma.

Unbelievable. Grandma's in there. I wanted to talk. And she says... Ma, how is it you've come to arrive here? Ma, what the hell are you doing? Oh, you killed this nice man. You have so many kids.

They come. They love their father. Ma, why? Why you do this? Why you put on? Put on with the guy with the landscape. You go Isaac Hayes with the bald head and he sings, I can't get enough. I know this song.

It's a nice song. You put sings, I can't get enough. I know this song. It's a nice song. You put, I don't like you. No, no, I go. No, I'm not going to give you food I brought. I was going to give you frittata sandwich, but no, I'm going to poof. And in a poof of sauce and anger, she's gone. And your mom pokes her head around the corner and says, I told you she was a whore. I told you she was a fucking whore.

That's how it works. Whore She-Ra. My daughter says, She-Ra's a slut. I said, my why? And then I look, I said, my she is. Okay. I see now. I see.

It's okay. So July 25th, 2019, out of nowhere, she's saying a medicine, a medicine, a medicine out of nowhere. She just one day says pleading guilty. What? Fuck it. Pleading guilty. Pleads guilty.

She does to facilitation of first degree murder in the shooting death of Lorenzen. And we'll talk about why I think it makes sense to her mathematically, basically here during this, before the sentencing, we get Deborah gets to speak in court as well. She says, quote, Miss Shira,

I want to thank you for giving me my grandchildren. And that's what I want to thank you for. I want you to unlock them so I can get to them so they can see their grandma because Sophia keeps calling. She wants to come make chicken and dumplings, but I want you to call them and say, no, it's okay to talk to grandma. Grandma still loves you. That's all I want is my grandkids. I just hate what happened to my child, but he left nice looking kids here for his grandma they want to see me like i want to see them i'm ready for them to come back to the home with their family because

i miss them um shira asked if she was allowed to reply and her lawyer told her to shut the fuck up and sit there shut up yeah that's the victim's mother shut up uh he said i advised her not to because at this point what difference does it make he said just don't do it it's not going to help any um now uh he said she said with lorenzen i'd be taking i'd be talking to his picture and sometimes his picture could look at me in a certain way like it's really him he was a he was a mama's boy simple as that he would be a mama's boy. Simple as that. He would be a mama's boy if he were here now. She gets, you, ma'am, may fuck off. First of all, she's credited for more than 500 days and served already.

She's been there. If she went to trial, she faced life in prison. Yeah. She is eligible for release in seven years. Why? Eligible for release in 2026, she is eligible for release in seven years. Why? Eligible for release in 2026, she is. Her full sentence runs out in like 2043 or something, but she's going to get out. Oh, that is not fair. A few years.

Yeah, she's got six kids. They're going to let her out. So, yep, she gets to go there. That's pretty fucked up. yep she gets to go there that's pretty uh it's pretty fucked up uh she does an interview saying that um she absolutely did not kill they asked her did you play any part in it now she knows how to answer absolutely not she said uh well you know what the fuck happened she said well i didn't want to go for life and i feel like they were railroading me and she says who did it my cousin jimmy it's all him jimmy martin she said i mean

you could literally put the gun in his hand he was a couple weeks uh he was a couple weeks of him having his murder trial lorenzen was blackmailing him basically because he moved drugs and the whole thing was it benefited him in both ways i mean mean, it's plenty of motives there. Wow. Wow. That's some convoluted shit there. Or you hurt your cousin to kill your ex-husband. That's what happened. Yeah, your cousin and your scumbag boyfriend.

It's much easier to get from A to B there. It's a shorter trip. Yeah. Then, oh, he was so mad at Lorenzen, he killed him. Probably not. Lorenzen writes, blackmailing a guy that murders women? Yeah, I don't know about that. Drug dealers who murder women.

April 15, 2021, Shira sues. She sues here. She's suing the Shelby County Sheriff's Office for $12 million. Wow. She says in her lawsuit against two sergeants and two correctional officers, she claims she suffered cruel and unusual punishment, and she suffered extreme mental anguish and duress, which sounds like prison.

She goes on to say, currently I suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, nightmares, depression, anxiety, along with resulting physical distress. And she's suing for $2 million in compensatory damages, $10 million in punitive damages. Wow. July 8th, 2021,

she says now she wants to toss out her guilty plea. And now she wants to... Pulling it back. Never mind. Change of mind. That's how it works. She said that she asked the judge, Judge Lee Coffey,

who approved her guilty plea to begin with and sentenced her to 30 years in prison to hold an evidentiary hearing. She said everything is not what it seems. And she added how being a victim of abuse, quote, all my life made me take a plea deal. Oh, for Pete's sake. She alleged that her conviction was, quote, unlawfully induced. Now, they went through her attorney, which is that's that's there's no inducing someone who's got a lawyer. That's why you have a lawyer. That's the whole point.

And so they can't fuck you. And involuntarily entered without her understanding the nature and consequences of her plea. You didn't know that if you plead guilty to fucking murdering your ex-husband for profit, that possibly they'd put you in fucking prison for that? Weird. Wow. Yeah. She claimed that her coerced confession was the result of ineffective counsel and her constitutional rights to due process and protection from self-incrimination were violated and seeks to have it set aside august 10th 2021 uh what is this a month later never mind i'm good guilty's fine yeah withdraws her request

continue to serve her sentence as is uh she's not seeking that anymore she's just going to go ahead and serve her sentence her attorney says uh her judge the judge says you're sure now this time he's he says quote you cannot come back tomorrow next week or a year from now or 10 years from now and say judge i changed my mind i want to have this heard i do not believe the defense represented me effectively or efficiently and i want to hear and i want you to hear this and decide whether or not i'll be allowed to withdraw this guilty plea if i I grant the request, Ms. Wright, there will be no trial. Do you understand? Yes, I do.

There you go. So that's that. Billy Ray Turner, on the other hand, by the way, is still awaiting trial. His trial was set earlier, but it kept getting delayed due to COVID. Yeah. And now his trial date is set for January 31st, 2022. Unbelievable. So it's coming up.

Lorenzen Wright Jr. played some college ball. He played for Robert Morris and then for, what is it, Tennessee Martin, University of Tennessee at Martin or something like that also, and did pretty well for himself. And from what I found out, he's got like a professional job now. Looks like I found his LinkedIn. Looks like he's doing pretty goddamn well for himself.

Shira's LinkedIn is still up. Is it really? Yeah, it says she's a minister at Born to Prosper. Rise to Prosper. And an author, yeah, obviously. And a mother. So that, everyone, is the horrific, horrific case of Lorenzen Wright. Both a trick and a treat so that everyone is the horrific horrific case of lorenzen right both a trick

and a treat yeah and uh we gave it to you for halloween a horrible murder and you won't hear about anything grosser than someone losing 200 pounds in decomp in 10 days i think that's pretty gross so uh we win the halloween sweepstakes of grossness like i said that's a story i've been it needs to be told. It's a crazy story. And the guy, I mean, he didn't deserve to get killed, this fucking guy, by any stretch of the imagination. And he did so great in the NBA for it to come to a crashing halt and have nothing and then

be murdered by some, some She-Ra slut. Yeah, slut. She's a slut. It's so sad. a really uh story it really is sad and uh yeah his story just because he wasn't a scumbag doesn't mean his story doesn't get told yeah normally we only tell the stories of the bad tell the story of a decent guy who got a bad situation man so that's lorenzen right we're very sorry about that that said uh if you like that story tell the world give us a review whatever app you're listening on or platform give us however many stars that you're allowed to give and tell us yeah it's not for our ego but it does help the

show a lot head over to shut up and give me murder.com right now tickets available for shows crime and sports has one live show with tickets left and it's in sacramento in like august of 2022 but you can get those before we get there yeah the rest small town murder there's tickets left for brea improv in november there's also tickets left for the first seattle show i know everything else is pretty much sold out there might be a ticket here a ticket there but there's not going to be lots of them. So check all those out. Come and see us at a live show. Also, head over to Patreon dot com slash crime and sports where we are going to talk about some crazy stuff this week.

You're going to get access to all the bonus episodes, the whole back catalog. You're going to have it all. If you like here in the shows, this is kind of weird topics that we couldn't really don't fit into our show specifically but then we get to talk about them there this week we're going to talk about one of the weirdest things ever the world bodybuilding federation which is vince mcmahon's attempt at a literal like the wwe except for bodybuilders. He had tried to have storylines in it. Lou Ferrigno was involved. It was crazy.

Who can bench the most? That's stupid. No, no, it's posing. It's bodybuilding, not weightlifting. It's not weightlifting. It's bodybuilding. It's posing. It's posing.

They'd have pose downs. And they had a pay-per-view. He made a pay-per-view for this shit. It's the story's incredible of how someone can fucking lose shit loads of money with a stupid idea like that. And everyone was so vascular. He was very excited. So check that out.

And then on small town murders bonus episode, which you'll also have access to, we are going to talk about Scott Peterson and, uh, you know, obviously Lacey Peterson, the victim there, but we're going to talk about Scottott peterson yeah and uh you know obviously lacey peterson the victim there but we're going to talk about scott's story and doesn't hold water was it connor connor connor and we've uh there's been so many requests to what the fuck do we think of that because everybody has an opinion on it yeah and it's one of those cases where people you think would have a certain opinion have a different opinion yeah you're like oh this person would totally think he's guilty and they're like i don't know that story sounded pretty good you're like wow really okay like it's so strange yeah so we're gonna get into all that check that out

patreon.com slash crime and sports and i can't wait to see you there and you're gonna get a shout out which we're gonna get to in a minute because we love you damn it and then if you want to follow us on social media we are at crime and sports on twitter and facebook at small town murder on instagram that said damn it jimmy hit me with these like a hell of 11 gunshots that no one ever fucking talks about and doesn't even tell anyone about till eight days later hit me with them now this week's executive producers are dr sheaa Haggy, who started a new practice in this environment. Congrats. And we helped them do that.

So thank you so much, Doc. And I hope you fix people. Jeremiah Gruthers' wife Grundle, or Grundel. I think it's Grundel, right? It can't be Grundel. Yeah, let's go with Grundel. Let's go with Grundel. It's her birthday.

Happy birthday, Grundel. Happy birthday to you be Grundle. Let's go with Grundle. Let's go with Grundle. It's her birthday. Happy birthday, Grundle. Happy birthday to you, Grundle. Jordan and Simon are celebrating their 17th anniversary this year. Look at them. Congrats, Ken. Look at you, you Canadian-English mixture there. Look at you. We'll see you at live shows.

Can't wait. Can't wait. Mary Claire Grigson. Carol Braun loved the Tyson shows. Thank you, Carol. Thank you. Melissa Turner. Rahul Singh. Rahul? i am so uncultured guy from the great british baking company i think that's the great great

great british bake off or whatever the fuck it is with the guy named rahul rahul an indian guy won the was it rahul singh maybe i hope so uh i hope so i I hope so. John Puchler? Puchler. Puchler. It's got to be. And Clay Thorson's wife, Melissa, had a birthday also. Happy birthday, Melissa. I hope you love it.

Happy birthday to Melissa. Make Clay do horrible shit in your benefit. Other producers this week are Amy Ambrose. She grew up mad poor and she got a mortgage. So congrats, you new homeowner. Congrats. Maria Rasper, Justine McNeil, James Marder, Corporal Carl Kirshner, Rabbi Shmuelovich, Peyton Meadows, Jimmy D. Nutz.

I don't know what that's about. Breaker Breaker Happy Hours is out there. So I'm back. Excellent. Arthur's Uncle Peter and Aunt Pearl, James. I'm back. Excellent. Arthur's Uncle Peter and Aunt Pearl, James.

Rachel Anderson, Kristen Bellinger, Dances with Vapes, Smelly Moccasins, Bobby Lee, Marianne Rodriguez, Eric Anen, Doug Jones, Hi Dylan, Maria Coop-Susley, Lauren Sullivan, Terry Glover, Kelsey Kautz, Jennifer Luniewicz, Martins, Susanna Platt, Janice Hill, Emily McGinn. She got a new job, and she used the town's reviews to pick it, and it worked. She loves the place she's at. Hey, sweet. Congratulations, Emily. Emelyn Brumley, Blackjack Mulligan, and Blackjack Lanza.

Jessica Finch. The Blackjacks from the 70s. Very nice. The tag team. Margaret Eaton donates both ways. Jacks from the 70s. Very nice. The tag team. Margaret Eaton donates both ways. Thank you so much, Margaret. Thank you. Matt Villanueva, Joseph Ruffino, William Evans, Nancy Weaver, Madeline Frazee.

That was a Frazee paint fortune, obviously. Vicki Royalston, Nora Othell-Korsgaard, Jacob Rolick, Brendan Schmelzle, what? Matthew Phillips? No way that's Matt. Susanna Foster, Robbie King, Audras with no last name, Kathy Henry, Madeline Shout, shoot, shit, shit. Is that shit?

One of those, probably. Sally Buckingham, Damian Flynn, Wedge Wegman shit? One of those, probably. Sally Buckingham. Hopefully not shit. Damian Flynn. Wedge Wegman. Chase Fowler. Shannon Thrain. Ashton Davila. Patricia Nye. Don White.

Tyler the Dirty Archaeologist. I didn't know there was an A in archaeologist. Clinton McNally. Archaeologist. Two A's. Yeah, archaeologist. That's what it is. Clinton McNally.

Taylor Weir. Sarah with no last name moon girl 1029 charlotte malo krista ramirez scott with no last name tomper one uh jennifer shit that's shit s-c-h-e-y-t-t that's sheet shite sheet casey alexis brian easter connor piper vicky vicky murphy Casey Alexis, Brian Easter, Connor Piper, Vicki Murphy, Michael Hughes, Megan Bracklesburg, Tracy Vandenberg, Stephanie Gonch, Jeff Cole, Demarcus Moreland, Lauren Armstrong, Nicholas Moore, Dakota Clement, Kat Malani, Biscuit the Cat, Judy Farmer, Rebecca Williams, Vicki Askew, Dylan Hayes, Ryan Winter. You're a little off on the Askew. That's a joke. Sorry. All right.

James McNierney, Cordell Norton, Kendra M., Fanny Boisvert, Jimmy's a whore. Got it. All right. Hilary Schroeder, Rochelle Schilling, RJ, Amanda Payton, Zach Stevenson, Caitlin with no last name, the eccentric prick. That's fun. JC, what the fuck, Sinjini? No. Space Lizard Britt, Courtney Groening, Ryan Noble, Emily Dorton, Mary Rowe, Mustafa Anderson II, Emily Dorton, Mary Rowe, Mustafa Anderson II, Random Death Meddler, Andrew Kearney, Dominique Watson, Joseph Simmons, Portia Sandal, Chris Kirby, Melissa Thompson, Zane Royer,

Rachel Mosley, I think so, Michael Klein, Lane Price, Brian Lerwill. Oh, what is this? Carrie Smith, Seven, Seven Roshia. I don't know. Jennifer Hoover, Bella, Bella Deletsky, Gina Quick, Blair Collette, Shelly Jackson, Brandi Bosworth, Sarah Lehman, Isabel, Isabel Devery, Kat with no last name, Josiahos robert graves zachary skaggs theresa roney messenger fraser 22 uh matthew crookston lisa holman ryan rom romane romaine romane romaine romaine amanda with no last name owen mckay phil philippa philippa waldberg uh king king alex 60 you can't go by

king alex come on man what are you fucking lebron uh bobby bushnell irene case you better be a lebron of whatever you do alex irene case curtis or cuttis vesper uh amelie dupree tom grace Tom Grace, Olivia Mitchell, Clyde Pine, Julia McElwreath, Ben Morgan, Becky Schultz, Sean Carleague, Tara with no last name, Zach Jonesy-Hodges, Pauline Brown, Natalie O'Dell, Maria Lewine, Ashley Harris, George with no last name, Claire Oakley. Sawyer Thoreau. Tiffany Wiggins. Jan Pinnell. Carmen P. Allison Smith. Brooke Smith. Zachary Banks. Maggie with no last name.

Marcus Foldo. Oh, boy. Foldo. Dylan Morissette. Stuart Smith. Christina Donadick. Eric with no last name. Mandy McLeod.

Michael Fratter. Fratter fratter what fratter could you fratter can jelly oh boy and all of our patrons you guys are unbelievable thank you so much thank you everybody thank you thank you thank you so much you guys are always there for us and we really do appreciate that thank you from the bottom of our hearts, honestly. Couldn't do it without you guys out there. And, Jimmy, what if they wanted to thank you? How could they possibly do it? Well, you know I'm on the Internet in some places, like Instagram and Twitter and shit like that. I think you're there, too.

Where are you at? I think so. Well, you know what you can do. You can find us both. Just Google the show. There you go. Google the show. It'll say exactly who the hell we are and where you can find us. And keep

doing that. Keep coming back and seeing us. And next week, we'll back to normal with another scumbag. Another asshole who pissed away his entire career. So that said, live from the Crime and Sports Studios, we will see you next week. Bye.

Hey, Prime members, you can listen to Crime and Sports early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad- free with Wondery Plus and Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.