Crime in Sports - #387 - Frozen Toes & Industrial Hose - Luther Wright

Episode Date: December 19, 2023

This week, we talk about a gentle giant, with a real liking of crack, and living in the streets. A first round NBA draft pick, who was in the streets, less than 10 years later. He went from a promising prospect, to screaming, bare chested during Utah winter, bashing in car windows, and swinging a prosthetic leg over his head. It only gets worse from there!Be so large that you don't have work very hard to do well at basketball, have a very public meltdown, and lose your toes, because you care more about crack, than your own health with Luther 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/smalltownmurderSee 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. Each week on the Mr. Ballin Podcast, now available wherever you get your podcasts, you'll hear strange, dark, and mysterious stories about inexplicable encounters, shocking disappearances, true crime cases, and everything in between. So go listen to Mr. Ballin Podcast, strange, dark, and mysterious stories on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Crime and Sports. Yay! Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed.

My name is James Petrigallo. I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wisman. Thank you for joining us on another crazy edition of Crime and Sports. And you know that we want to do this. You know that we love this show. It's the only thing we love doing. Yes, because if you could see me right now you can hear me i i don't sound right obviously i'm very very ill but i have a sinus on my face it's blown up too i look like i've been beaten up by fucking muhammad ali like i look like it

looks like it looks like you're smuggling right now it looks like you're smuggling the gobstopper that willie wonka said don't eat you're like i don't haveopper that Willy Wonka said don't eat. You're like, I don't have it. I'm not eating it. I don't know what you're talking about. That's what's going on. I look as bad as I feel. It's unbelievable.

Jimmy's like, we can't do this. And I'm like, we're going to fucking do this, goddammit. He's like, let's do it. All right, let's give it a run. I appreciate Jimmy trying to shield me, though. That was very nice, here. So we have a wild episode, though. We couldn't we could not do it.

God damn it. So very quickly, just want to say shut up and give me murder.com is where you get all the stuff, merchandise, everything like that. Tickets for Small Town Murder live shows are going on sale this week. Or if you're listening to this when it comes out regularly last week, they'd be out. So find those and come hang out with us. Come see us in the show you definitely want patreon patreon.com slash crime and sports all your bonus material anybody five dollars a month or above you get hundreds of back bonus episodes new ones every

other week one crime and sports one small-time murder this week little different because it's christmas when these come out what is it it's coming out christmas weekend so we're only doing one because we have families and children and and we'd like to see them. So, you know, people coming from out of town and stuff like that. So we got a lot going on. But we're going to do this, and it's going to be very fun. We're going to talk about The Garden, that documentary on Max right now. It's like a seven-part thing of these people who live in the woods, and it's like half commune half um survivalist

militia part fucking i don't know what the fuck it is man but these diet plan part diet plan but it's all the politics of these hippies arguing with each other it's a crazy goddamn thing and it's one of those is this a cult what's happening and so we'll talk people hear about it and come from miles around yeah they don't it's And people hear about it and come from miles around for it. And they come from miles around. Yeah. It's weird stuff. And people come and they go. And people come for a 10-day trial. And we'll talk all about it.

That's patreon.com slash crimeandsports is where you get all of that. And you'll get a shout-out at the end of the show. You bet. For doing that. Jimmy will mispronounce your name. He wants it. Right. Sure. But what do you want from the guy?

He's trying his best here. That would be great. That said, let's do this. Let's get right into this here with our guy. This guy, very little sports on this one. Okay. Very little sports because you'll see why. But this is one of the strangest stories ever told here.

I don't know how much crime there is. There's a ton of crime, but actual arrests are few and far between because it's weird. Okay, Luther A. Wright Jr., of course. Luther Wright. Luther Wright. I don't know if you remember him. He only played half a season. He played, nope, jazz.

Magic? Jazz. Oh, jazz. Played for less than a season in the NBA, this guy, and was supposed to be a big deal. First round draft pick. He's 7'2". I'm positive i had his his card oh probably yeah 94 i believe it would have been yeah um known as big lou very creative big lou um here he's born september 22nd 1971 in jersey city new jersey which is right across from new york city it's where you look across it, kind of downtown there. Seven foot two, 270 pounds, just a gigantic mass of humanity.

And for what he gets into later, you're like, this is the weirdest. If you saw this person on the street, you'd be like, are you fucking kidding me? What's happening right now? It's crazy. I don't want to spoil it, but holy shit. He's a McDonald's high school All-American. He's, you know, all that kind of shit.

He does a lot here. We'll talk about it. His mother, his mother's name is May, as in May West. And his father is Luther Sr., obviously, because he's got to be a junior, this guy. They got divorced. His parents got divorced around 81 when he was about 10 years old. Oh. And, yeah, it doesn't seem like he had the most stable upbringing, judging on kind of what happened to him repeatedly, too. In Jersey City in the 80s?

Yeah, 70s and 80s. Yeah, shit could go awry there pretty bad. Oh, boy. He's got a brother named Reggie. He's got a sister named Michelle. Both of them are younger than him. Okay. None of them are as big either, which is...

Really? Yeah. It'd be weird to have, like, two normal kids and then a 7'2 kid as, like, the kid who's bigger than all the other kids when he's in, like, the second grade. That'd be weird. And Reggie's pissed. Yeah. Jesus, how come I didn't get this? He's very into music, as we'll find out.

Is that right? Super into music. He likes to DJ. He likes to hear shit. In his book, he talks about the music he likes, and he was saying how he just, first time, like in the 80s, when he was in college or whatever, first time he heard certain things, he was like, wow. One of them was CeCe Penniston, Finally.

Remember that song? He said, Finally, it's happened to me me right in front of my face yeah that's the one right in front of my face yeah it's right there who who who has should happen right in front of their face and they still deny it still missing it well that's why you write a song about it because that's a pretty, you should do that because it's rare that that happens. That song opened his eyes to a whole new world.

That and this is even better. Of course, obviously, I'm going to close with the better one here. That's an opener. The other one was the club mix of Black Betty. Blew his mind. Spider tracks or whatever it was? Black Betty, that shit in a club mix of black betty blew his mind the spider spider tracks that shit in a club mix yeah they did a club mix of that in the 80s black betty and he was like oh man blew his brain that you could do that mixing the things together he was like oh fuck man djing is where it's at wow loved it so he teaches himself how to play instruments when

he's a kid basically any instrument he can find around somewhere he'll self-learning teach himself how to play drums guitar bass anything like he's just really into music yeah but it's weird that you don't see a lot of seven foot two rock stars is the problem no i mean uh wayman tisdale was laughed at for it that's what i mean like sebastian bach is was like that's the tallest rock star anybody's ever seen he's six four but it was like holy look at this fucking giant it's too much you got to be like five foot four like ronnie deo to be a well you're already on a stage that's the problem seven four seven yeah that's that's so intimidating it's intimidating that's what i mean that's every time like when we were doing comedy at first the first few years like you talk to your friends about are you doing

comedy that's cool and they go anybody ever heckle you and it's like bro i'm six four on a stage i'm like eight foot fucking seven no one's no they don't they shut the fuck and i'm loud no one they shut the fuck up pretty much no i remember even david spade who's not a big guy when he's on stage he's in charge, man. People's feet or head are at your feet. So you're like, listen, motherfuckers. That's where you praise, motherfucker. Yeah.

But he's into that. He sang in church gospel groups and all that kind of shit. Okay. He also speaks very softly, I guess because he's a giant guy. Gentle giant. very softly because he's a i guess because he's a giant guy and this is gentle giant we talk about this a lot a lot when we talk about giant guys is that when you're a kid and you're that much bigger than everybody else everybody tells you to be gentle and take it easy on the kids that are smaller than you that's why a lot of times those kids don't have that killer insta you get

like a dwight howard who's you know obviously has all the talent in the world but doesn't really he's not exactly iverson when it comes to drive, you know what I mean? But then the small guy, they teach you, you got to get everything you can. You scrap for it. You fucking take it. So it's a different attitude.

Yeah, that's a great point. It's a different attitude that they teach big guys. Be calm, be cool, don't... Yeah, Dwight Howard comes on the court with a big smile. Yes. And then Allen Iverson comes on the court with swagger and snarl. Because you got to.

Because otherwise he's going to get fucking killed out there. He's six foot one. Whereas you're seven feet tall. Interesting. Yeah. Everybody will tell you, be nice. Even when you're playing ball with kids your own age at that time, they tell you, fucking be nice.

Don't block everybody's shot every time. You feel like you have to be nice. So he gets arrested as a kid here for shoplifting. Luther. And apparently somebody put him up to it, he said. Somebody, an older kid, told him to do it. Like, hey, go in there and get that for me. So pretty much he said if anybody older than him asked him to do something, he would do it as a kid.

He just didn't know. Well, that's respect for your elders. Yeah, he didn't know any better. Even if they're two years older. He loved Benny Hill. Oh. That's what he loved. I think he just loves a catchy tune.

He loves a catchy tune. Black Betty, finally, Benny Hill. Maybe this guy just, he is, he's into a tune. He just loves a catchy beat. I just can't get enough of that. That's it. He's like, oh, if I mix, what if I mix Benny Hill and Black Betty together? Oh, my God.

What if I have Black Benny? Oh, Black Benny. And then it's a different song completely. Finally, Black Benny. With sax in the background. Mix them all together. Yeah. Let's do it.

Finally, it's Black Benny. Oh, man. So his grandmother says, this is from his book. He wrote a book in 2010 he he he said a bunch of stuff and someone else wrote it down and then wrote a book we'll say i don't think okay he didn't sit at a typewriter doing this no no there's somebody else he told and then they put it into a story form fantastic he said my grandmother had these rules and they applied to everyone we had to eat at a certain time You couldn't watch TV when you wanted and you couldn't watch what you wanted to watch.

Her rules are, everyone's miserable here. Everyone does what I say. You hungry? Well, not now. We're going to eat another time. Yeah, you're not. Waiting for Benny Hill to go? Come on.

Well, tough shit. It's not TV time now. He said, I'd want to watch benny hill but she wasn't having it really she would have us watching some western or dallas or one of her soap operas or the six million dollar man and wonder woman well those aren't too bad she for the 70s she liked like hour-long dramas and he's like i want to see people run around smacking each other on the head while funny music plays what the hell are we doing um yeah she said that i'd be he said i'd be in the middle of watching popeye or woody woodpecker and here she'd come boy turn to channel seven my soaps are on

which is fucking hilarious shit he said i'd have to turn to all my children or one life to live or general hospital i got real acquainted with the luke and laura saga of the early 80s yeah which i had to do too because i had this fight really with my aunt not my grandmother oh okay my aunt was nine years older than her still is she's nine years older than me so i got she is yeah now we're never the same age she's still alive i made it sound like she wasn't with us anymore. Lisa's very much with us. You've met her before.

Very nice. She, when I was a little, little kid, she convinced my grandparents to get the minimal cable so she could get MTV, right? Okay. And there was a, it's like 3 o'clock in the afternoon. Tom and Jerry was on. And I wanted to watch Tom and Jerry because I was 3. I was 3 years old. Because that's what you do she was into luke and laura and fucking general hospital so we'd fight like fucking maniacs over the tv because i wanted tom and jerry and my grandfather

would come in and yell at us both and then she'd get to watch general hospital uh there was a fucking tivo we could both be happy or more than one TV would have been happy also. My grandparents were cheap. They had the one TV. Kids don't know how good they have it with how fucking affordable TVs are now. Oh, man. You can buy a brand new TV for $100. It's crazy. Look at prices from like, look at a catalog from like 1982.

Look at a finger hut. The prices, the TVs cost the same as they do now. Not adjusted for inflation. No. The same fucking amount. A TV's $500. It was $500 back then, except it was 19 inches. Yeah.

Weighed fucking 60 pounds. No shit. It was heavy and shitty. And for inflation, that shit was like four grand for a crappy TV. That's a paycheck. Yeah. That's incredible how much that is. A TV used to be like

the biggest purchase in the world before cheap flat screens we sound like we're 100 now but this is i'm talking in the 90s this was even literally 25 years ago it was like the biggest like you get it oh shit we got a new tv it was wild you'd be wanting a while what a football game's gonna look awesome on this it's 27 inch fucking zenith and you're like, yeah, I can't wait. My parents got one of those projector big screens that had the three bulbs in it, and one of the bulbs went out, and we couldn't afford to repair the TV, so we were watching TV with a blue and a red, I think. It's a fucked-up color.

Whatever the fucking primary colors are. Blue, red, yellow, I think it was. Yeah, there you go. Blue, red, yellow, yeah. Yeah, because my aunt had one of those. One of them went bad, and then you're watching a fucking orange and green or orange and blue, whatever it was. Yeah, there you go. Blue, red, yellow. Yeah, because my aunt had one of those. One of them went back. And then you're watching a fucking orange and green or orange and blue, whatever it was. It looks like there's too much light in the room, too. Can't see shit.

I remember having, all growing up until I was like 12, probably, I had like 13-inch black and white TV in my room. That's what I had. That was my fucking, and I'd play Nintendo on it and shit. Yeah. You're playing fucking Street Fighter on it and shit. Yeah. Yeah. You're playing fucking Street Fighter on black and white TV, and you're like, I don't even know what these characters are supposed to be. I don't even know who they are, but man, this is fun.

You can't tell their region, their ethnicity, nothing. It's just a black and a white guy. That's all I guess. Let's fight it. He's the black one. He's the white one. And we couldn't fix the TV because that TV cost $1,800 to back then he hadn't even paid it off that's what i mean back then which we'll miss it a bulb already now it'd be like a seven thousand dollar tv now you're a bulb down

you're still fucking paying it off i don't know what to do i gotta watch this oh my god um so he said one show i did appreciate my grandmother making us watch was roots at first i was like oh come on to myself. Of course, because his grandmother beat the shit out of him. Uh, but as I watched the mini series, it changed the way I looked at a lot of things.

Roots definitely added something to my life. Roots is very interesting. That's why when it first aired too, it was a fucking huge phenomenon. It's a big deal. Yeah. Now he is abused as a child. Pretty bad.

How so? In every way possible um really um yes his father beats the living shit out of him um parents are pretty emotionally abusive at least his dad is the neighborhood kids bully him even though because he's huge they bully him for being huge which is really weird but well he also has like safety in numbers he also has like shit clothes and he's a big guy with like clothes that don't fit him right and stuff like that. So that's why he's getting made fun of and getting treated like Dookie pretty much. I don't mean like shit. I mean like the character Dookie from The Wire.

And Dookie was bigger than everybody else. This is the tale of Dookie, honestly. This is like if Dookie was 7'2", this would be his tale because at some point he's going to be outdoors now and it's wild. Poor Dookie. Poor Dookie. Yeah, also he is sexually molested as well by multiple people. What? Yeah, that affects him as well.

And, well, I'll let him talk about it here. Quote, this is from his book, My parents were a happy couple during the early parts of my growing up. A lot of laughter and partying went on in my home, and they always seemed to be going somewhere together. That's nice. A good relationship. My dad was a gospel singer. That explains the music and being into it.

He had one of those old style booming gospel voices, and he would get booked to sing a lot at events and do church concerts on the weekends. My mom would be right there by his side. Okay, so they had stuff, but they're not in the house a lot. That's the problem, so they need babysitters. Yeah, leaving the kids with people.

Yep. He said they had different relatives babysit me while they went out. One of my relatives, I'll call him Paul, so not his real name, was about 16 when he first babysat me. I was four or five. I was excited to have him babysit me because Paul was cool and I felt like a big man hanging out with my older relative. That was before I was left alone with him. Yeah.

That first night, before he put me to bed, everything changed. Paul said we were going to play this game. I like to play games. Oh, shit. Not these games. Not these. But the game, quote unquote, he wanted me to play this game. I like to play games. Shit. Not these games. Not these. But the game, quote unquote, he wanted me to play was not fun. It involved his touching me and his making me touch him and do things to him that back then I had no idea what I was doing.

I just knew it was wrong. Oh, my God. I started crying. He told me to shut up and that if I told anyone, he would kill me. I believed him. That's what they do i believed him that's what they do yeah that's that's a molester all right this sounds paul was my babysitter for a few years oh dear jesus so he was just left alone with this fucking sick fuck for years um i used to be happy

to see my parents go out and have fun but now i knew that meant paul would be coming over to watch me and my stomach would drop yeah i used to talk to myself and tell myself that it wasn't so bad that it was okay i mean it had to be okay because it kept happening uh i thought maybe this was normal this is the menendez thing right you know the menendez brothers if you don't know that eric when he was a child was going around asking his other relatives, is it normal for your dad to massage your penis? Is that normal? Does your dad do that to you?

They were like, what the fuck are you talking about? No. Horrible conversation, buddy. And then later on, the prosecution tried to say that they didn't get molested. It's like, how many eight-year-olds go around asking, is it normal for your dad to massage your penis? I've never asked that.

That's not kids don't generally know what massage your penis. Exactly. Christ. Fucking ridiculous. So, oh my, that's horrible. So he said, I thought maybe this was normal when I used to stay at my grandmother's in the projects before we actually moved there. I had another relative, an older male who played the same game with me.

I wonder if, I wonder if Paul got that from this one. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe they've been around each other a long time. Molestation can roll downhill and snowball. It sure does. And that's the thing here. So, yeah, he was rougher and took it a little further than Paul.

God damn it. Jesus. He used to hurt me and beat me. Jesus. This is fucking harrowing um again he told me not to tell or else i'd really love to know how and why it is so prevalent in uh lower income neighborhoods and families do you know i'm sure it has something to do with nobody gives a fuck it's probably it's just proximity yeah it's just proximity the more people live in your house the more chances are your house it's just you and emily and your kids there there's no one there to

molest them you know i also know that if you had like 12 cousins there the odds go way up yeah but even in i know it happens in well-to-do families as well but it's not near as like it's not near as prevalent as it is in in low-income housing and and neighborhoods and yeah it's so fucked how many people that are underprivileged are just fucking violated so frequently when you're a kid and you don't have shit you don't think about things the same way you don't you think that you're supposed to a certain amount of hardship is normal for you whereas i don't know i feel like a a rich kid is much more likely to be to complain about anything you know his also a rich dad or a rich uncle probably don't they got too much they're too

busy earning money yeah they don't have time to touch kids that's that's another fuck and that's we're saying that as a basic shit obviously rich people rich kids get molested as well yeah but it is more likely the more people that are in your house the more likely your kid is to get molested it's just odds it's just numbers raising yeah it's just math numbers game, you know? That's all there is to it. Playing numbers games with your own asshole. With your own butthole, man. Come on. It's a numbers game, brother. I get it.

It's a profit deal. He said again. It's a profit deal. I get it. And again, I must thank my cousin Ian, by the way because he is not about nine eight nine years older than me and one time a few years ago we were hanging out and he said he does research for crime and sports now he said you know because you're watching something and somebody got molested and he goes all time growing up he goes i was with you all the time around you never even thought

of molesting you i go thank you very much thank you it. I was never even fond of it. I didn't even know it was a thing. He said, thought never crossed my mind to fucking molest you. I never knew I could destroy your life. And I was like, I appreciate that. He was nice to me. We played wiffle ball and shit like video games. You should probably thank me more often, you know? Never touched me.

It was awesome. And that's what I used to have the joke in stand up where I'd be like, you know, everybody wants to confront their accusers. How about thanking the people who didn't molest you? Remember that uncle that took you camping and you came home with your butthole intact? Doesn't get a fucking thank you? He could have fucking ruined your life right then.

Could have destroyed everything. Every time you smelled stink bait, you think about your loose butthole. You know. Every time you smell power bait, there it is. What is that, the pink one? Oh, no. Oh, no.

Jesus. Not the yellow with the sparkles in it. Fuck. Oh, the flashbacks. Oh, man. He said, I never told a soul what was going on. I wish I could have told my mother. I really do.

I could talk to my moms about about almost anything but this one thing i just couldn't tell by the time i had the courage to tell i thought telling her would say something more about me i mean i allowed it to go on for so long for so many years without saying anything maybe she would think that i like it oh god or maybe she would think that it was my fault this is a horrible thing for a kid to think here by the way now he's got an internal struggle that's going on how would you like to be the molester guy obviously neither of us want to be a molester but you molested this kid and threatened him i'm going to beat you and then he grows up to be seven foot two 270 pounds he could rip your arms off and beat you with him you're like holy shit i molested the wrong kid. You got to make good on those threats that you made 25 years ago.

Yeah, that's a lot. He said, maybe I was sending them a signal telling them that they could do that to me at four. That's what happens. You're damaging a kid's psyche when you do this to them because this is what they think. At first, I didn't want to tell because I was scared. But then I didn't want to tell because I was afraid I might be looked at as being gay. Being the late 70s in jersey city i knew that i wasn't gay but i didn't want to i didn't want that to even be out there like that and i didn't think anyone would believe me i was known as a liar growing up i wonder i don't know why but that was because i was lying

for my mother all the time she would tell me to tell my father lies about what i needed clothes school supplies whatever so she could get more money from him this is after jesus christ after they got a divorce when they how many ways can he be manipulated that's what i mean adults are just manipulating this kid left and right it's sad and then he's going to go to the nba which is the ultimate manipulation he's gonna be manipulated by every college sport the ncaa is like that's a that's an uncle with a fucking with an itchy trigger finger an itchy diddle finger that's the ncaa right there totally it's the best form of non-sexual molestation possible holy shit he said when separated, my mother would send me to my father, when I wasn't staying

with him, in old, bummy clothes or beat-down sneakers, knowing he would give me money to buy new clothes or shoes. The funny thing was, he knew her tricks. One time, he pulled me aside and said, tell your mother if she needs something, she can just ask. Tell her to stop with the games. Atta boy, he seems through it.

Yeah, that's what the father said. He said to stop with the games. Atta boy. He's through it. Yeah. That's what the father said. He said he was no dummy. He also hated when we would only call when we needed something. He told me you could call and say hello sometime. I got the message and I started calling him just to say hello. Hey, pops, I just wanted to hear your voice, I would say. And we would end up talking for two hours.

That was cool. That's nice. My heart. That's nice. I would give anything for my kids to do they call me and say dad will you uber eats me something yeah i'm hungry and i'm too lazy to make ramen why don't you call me and tell me you love me once in a while god damn it too lazy for hot pockets order me shit oh man he said but i still couldn't talk to him about what was happening with me jesus many things i couldn't tell him ever the other side of my pops was scary he wasn't a

talker he was no nonsense he was a screamer when i got in trouble it wasn't about no timeouts i would get whoopings or screamed on glass would shatter when he yelled he had a voice he's a singer usually the screaming came with whooping um they went hand in hand i had to figure out i never had to figure out if i was going to get a beating i would wonder what he was going to beat me with a belt a switch or something worse yeah and had he not done those things to him, like in corporal punishment, just vicious beatings like that, perhaps if he exhibited that behavior elsewhere in life, Junior would know that seniors are no-nonsense, take-no-shit guy. And when this does happen to him, he could have come to see—I got a feeling Paul would have had a bloody fucking face if Junior told Dad what was happening. It sounds like Dad would put some ass weapons on people for this. It doesn't sound like Dad takes a lot of shit, so he probably should have told Dad.

But because he got hit, he's afraid that if he tells Dad, he's going to think he's lying. And he doesn't want Dad to think that he was asking for it, which is sad. That's very sad. It's even worse. Because a four-year-old obviously can't ask for shit when it comes to no sexual that's crazy they don't know what that is that's insane he said one day i thought he was going to beat me to death i was in the sixth grade at public school 24 in jersey city i got suspended probably for fighting but my father had enough of my

getting in trouble he worked at the bus company cleaning buses. He brought home one of the hoses he used to rinse down the buses. Oh, my God. That wasn't your average garden hose. This was one of those thick, dark green industrial hoses. They're so heavy. They're so heavy. When my dad got home, he had something for me, that hose. He beat me everywhere with it, including over my head.

Every time he hit me, I saw stars. I almost blacked out twice. I had lumps all over my head. He didn't cut the metal tip off of him. That's horrible, dude. He's beating his son with an industrial hose. 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. Thank you. So follow Business Wars wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app.

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 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... 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 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. This is a tough childhood, man. He said he wasn't the affectionate type. I think I got maybe two hugs from my pops my whole life. Maybe it was more, I don't remember, but at least I have one of those hugs on film. After our first win over St. Anthony at home at the Dunn Sports Center in Elizabeth,

my pops gave me a big bear hug. I still have the footage. This guy is excited because he's got a hug with his dad on camera. And he probably, I could just picture him watching it over and over like, there we go. He's hugging me. Wow. I know he did the best he knew how to do, but he was the last person I was going to talk to about being molested by my family members.

My mother, I didn't tell for a different reason. I didn't want to burden her because I could see she was already going through some stuff. I was trying to protect her. She had so much other drama going on in her life at the time and I didn't want to add to it. I figured I could handle it. Things started going south with her and my dad around the time

I was being regularly molested. Then there's more. A female family member molested the time I was being regularly molested. Then there's more. A female family member molested me when I was nine. Get out of here. And this happens sometimes too. I've noticed this. When kids are way bigger than normal, sometimes they end up getting molested

because I don't know if the molester thinks that it's like, OK, because they're the same size as someone their age, which their brain isn't developed, obviously. And you can't. Right. But that seems to happen a lot to these big athlete guys. Even if he's a big nine year old, you can't equate a nine year old with a 25 year old. Fuck no. No. But that that seems to happen a lot with you.

You'll hear this a lot from like big giant football players and stuff like that that yeah they were big and like older they could fit it older women would come on to them and molest them at young ages because they i don't know so yeah female family member molested me when i was nine she was in high school see what i mean and she also used to babysit me when she did. She would bathe me and we started playing doctor. Again, I knew it was wrong. I knew it felt funny to be doing these things, but it was better than what my male cousins were doing to me. She's like, Jesus is great compared to that. She wasn't rough the way they were.

She wasn't hitting or beating me the way they were. It didn't feel as bad. Yeah, it was being nice. Yeah. Two years from then then the kid would have been fucking doing backflips and go holy shit this fucking chick touched me even though it's still inappropriate it was i can super see this as a nine-year-old if he's a big nine-year-old he probably looks like he's 15 and if she's 15 she can equate that he said like he looks like

the guys that i go to high school when he was nine he had he wore size nine shoes when he was 10 he wore size 10 shoes for sure that's that's bigger than your shoes now you know as an adult yeah i got i grew to a big giant eight yeah so he said it was still wrong it was still molestation it was still rape and i could see and i still couldn't tell anybody so it was something i kept inside until nearly 20 years later when i met when i met my wife and was able to let it all go until then my only savior was basketball on the courts i wasn't being molested or teased i wasn't weird or freak i wasn't too big my feet weren't too big my clothes weren't out of style and i wasn't out of place same uniform as everybody else and can

play so that's a lot of kids find this in sports they do because it's not even they're not even equal at that point i'm better than them at this point yeah yeah so his family moves around a lot in jersey city before he's 12 always they're from projects to projects you know maybe they can get a three bedroom or two bedroom he said he said it was always in bad neighborhoods he said sure it was dangerous but it that's what it was it's just what it was always in bad neighborhoods. He said, sure, it was dangerous, but that's what it was. It's just what it was back then. He said, in addition to that, I had trouble on the streets. After moving from my parents' home cross town to my grandmother's apartment in the projects, I became a target.

There were bullies and clowns in school and the hooligans and thugs in the neighborhood. I used to get robbed coming home from school. I had a little crew i would walk home with but the numbers would thin out a couple blocks from my home because people you know came to their houses i would find myself walking alone by the time i made it to my block a perfect target the first time these thugs looking for money roughed me up the next time they knew they they knew i didn't have any money so they took my shoes jesus yeah i don't have another pair of those no he's boy gee that's horrible he said i went through some shit growing up living in jersey

shitty jersey shitty well you know what i'll leave that in there fine and i went through most of it by myself looking back i wish i had said something to somebody. I wish I would have told because I know my mother would have left me, not left me alone with him or anyone else. So, yeah. He said I was six foot eight in eighth grade. Wow. That's insane, man. What? Yeah, he said people would chase him through the neighborhood.

I was like, how the hell is this big guy running from these people? That's what a friend of his said. Like this guy's fucking enormous he's got to run away um so his friend jerry walker who's a future college teammate convinced him that if he just stopped running and yelled at these people they would leave him alone because he's fucking enormous they don't want to fight you you're huge like yeah forrest gump ran because he's the size of Tom Hanks. Yeah. He weighs a buck 60. That's why he's running. You are a monster. He said that worked for the bullies. But the other shit he started, he turned to drugs pretty early on. He said after school he would help his parents sell snacks from the family food truck, hot dogs, watermelon cookies. But the boys in the neighborhood, like his friend Jerry Walker, who he'd play college

with, told him to come play basketball, come play basketball. So he's a six foot eight eighth grader, led his grade school team to an undefeated season. And he ends up going to St. Anthony High School, which was a big powerhouse in Jersey City, coached by Bob Hurley Sr. Is that right? Yeah, Bobby Hurley's dad. Wow. Absolutely.

He's a famous coach. I didn't know Bobby's dad was a coach. Oh, fuck yeah. Hurley's a coach's kid. Absolutely. That makes sense why Hurley's a coach and a coach's coach. Yeah, exactly. He said he lasted only a year, though, because he flunked out of the school

because it's got crazy academics. Have you ever seen Hoop Dreams? It's very hard to take someone who's been in a shit school that they don't do a lot of work and don't do the good curriculums and then take him and put him in a completely different environment and expect him just to know how to do it. It's difficult. Where he gets his own book to highlight and learn, and he's not going to do it. Yeah. He doesn't know how.

Exactly. Yeah. Well, Hurley said about him, this is dad, if he was six foot five, I doubt he would have ever played basketball. He wasn't mentally tough, and he didn't push himself the way the other players did. But he had those three extra inches, and boy, that was helpful. Dude, as a coach, isn't it your job to fucking get that out of somebody yeah that's certainly your job if they don't have it put it in them especially a child i

could see an nba what's in the nba when you get the guys that's who you're getting that's why you you do research and make sure you got the right personalities in fucking when a kid is 12 or 14 your job is to mold them your job is to show them work ethic and how to do it and what to do dennis rodman only did it for one year yeah and he became dennis fucking rodman yep but i guess at the same time if someone isn't going to do it you can't force them because that's the other part work ethic matters he said he was a physical specimen but he only liked basketball he never loved it that's what hurley said anytime there was a problem he wasn't going to fight because you only fight for things you love okay and again this is teaching bigger kids to be a little more gentle i think has something

to do with that meanwhile bobby hurley's fucking six foot and he's supposed to run through walls so you know um so he goes to elizabeth high used a cousin's address and enrolled at elizabeth high school which was a bit another big powerhouse and he led his team to victory in the state's tournament of champions he scored 28 points grabbed nine rebounds um and he loved it he said he loved elizabeth high this was he finally found a spot. He said, quote, I was the Obama of Elizabeth High. What? People liked him, apparently. Wow.

What a weird way to put it. That is the hyperbole. Yeah. Wow. This was the first time in my life that I loved going to school. It was definitely something I could get up, something to get up in the morning and be excited about. Can you imagine that? The fun was happening even before I picked up a ball for the school.

He just liked it. He said, I hung out with the popular crowd. He said, we had the cafeteria on lock. Everyone wanted to sit in our section, but you had to have a pass to sit with us. It wasn't a physical pass. It was an unspoken pass. You needed to be on the football team, the baseball team, the basketball team, or you needed to be popular. It's funny how you go from ostracized to immediately ostracizing others, by the way.

Isn't that funny how that works? As soon as you're accepted into something, you're like. As soon as you have the power, boy, are you using it for bad. Start cutting people off. Wow. That is fucking amazing he said i i also hung out with the big time drug dealers in high school because they always had cars and money and the hookup they used to take me to clubs in new york and we would party all weekend i didn't realize how much danger i was putting myself in at the time i was a kid having fun and i got all

the free weed i wanted well that would have been wonderful as a teenager yeah no doubt i was in high school when i really started smoking i had my first drink of alcohol when i was at saint anthony at a party at the local boys club they were passing a bottle in a paper bag the bottle got finally yeah finally he's having a normal child something normal yeah paper bag playing ball hanging out worrying about lunch tables this is normal in a joint fuck yeah yeah the bottle got passed to me and i hesitated and uh one of his friends said if you don't drink this lou b you can't hang with us uh word i said and took the bottle and took a swig it was real nasty i started coughing and making faces what's that i asked everybody fell out laughing it was boone's farm or mad dog 2020 or something like that. Just nasty.

It tastes gross, but it's not even that fucking potent shit. Yeah, you might as well get at least liquor is potent. But we used to drink that shit too, though. We used to drink Mad Dog. I mean, it was gross, but we drank it. It's awful, but it's not as strong as like fucking 10 high or some shit like that. It's fine. It might be.

Is it 90 proof? I don't know. No, no, no. I don't. Is it? No. Mad Dog isn't that much. 2020.

I don't think so. I think the 20 has something to do with it. It might be 40 proof. Maybe they're saying you'll have 2020 vision after you're shit faced. Mad Dog will ruin your 2020. He said it tasted nothing like the pink champagne my mother used to drink the what the champagne that shit awful what the fuck is that cheap like wine wine champagne crap that people used to drink in the 80s awful pour it into your mop

bucket and drink it out of the pretty much yeah you can mop with it too it's nice it cleans well smells weird but it really that alcohol shine off that wood floor yeah it'll take things off of the floor that are don't need to be there the tannins take the imperfections out pretty cool he said i used to sneak sips from her cup during the house party she would throw from time to time i was eight years old and thought I was doing something. She left her cup on the table and left the room for something. I sneaked over and took her cup and took a sip. It was both sweet and bitter going down, and it made my entire chest warm.

I felt like a grown-up. I felt even better because I didn't get caught. But that hard, cheap liquor they were drinking at this boys club party wasn't for me. I never took to drinking much. I only drank when I was at a party and everybody else was drinking. People would buy me drinks for, uh, would buy drinks for me later on after I was a pro. And even after I left the league later, when I became a heavy drug user, I would only drink when I ran out of drugs or couldn't get drugs.

Liquor was my last drug of choice but it would do in a pinch to take the edge off when i needed it oh you'll find out he's he's into how do you go from i don't we'll get there but i don't see how you get from weed and alcohol to hard fucking illicit drugs he's got mental problems that he never deals with he's running from essentially yeah When you find out what he does, you're just like, wow, he needs help. At Elizabeth High, I discovered weed, and that became

my thing, until basketball season started. Basketball changed everything. While I was popular and the man before basketball season even started, when the season did start, it was nuts. Elizabeth High had never seen anything like me, and I had never seen anything like it. The number of students showing up for our games made it feel like as if we were playing for the Knicks in Madison Square Garden.

Hell yeah. Yeah. His coach, Elizabeth, said, you look back at Luther and think about what he could have accomplished and never did. But in some ways, it doesn't surprise me because other people wanted Luther to be more successful in basketball than Luther wanted it. He just used it because when he did that, people were nice to him more successful in basketball than Luther wanted it. Okay. He just used it because when he did that, people were nice to him. That's why he was playing basketball. He didn't love basketball.

He loved music. He didn't love basketball. He loved attention. Yeah. That's it. Do you know why he loved attention, James? Because he never got it. Yeah.

That's exactly fucking right. He's getting it on his terms now. His whole life so far is such a psychological experiment. Oh, I want to know everything. It gets so much crazier. Yeah, that's the thing. It's you can see it all forming, though, and put it all together here. So he ends up later on.

He's going to go to Seton Hall, basically. Really? Yes. Now, he he said he was playing the basketball, the basketball. He's playing basketball because he wants to help his family get out of the projects. That's what he keeps saying. There you go. So, yeah, he ends up going to Seton Hall where P.J. Carlissimo was the coach.

Hell, yeah. He's a certain type of guy, a yeller and a screamer. You know, a guy will choke you. Yeah. Yeah. Luttrell, he's the guy that got choked. So, I mean, he's not exactly the most beloved coach ever here. But Seton Hall was a good program, and it was close, so why not? He was recruited by dozens of colleges, though.

He was amazing. But he didn't want to have to move away from his mom, so he went to Seton Hall. Oh. So his closest friend from childhood, Walker that we talked about he also was going there and there was a bunch of other players he knew because they recruited a lot from the northeast he's like oh great so he knew some guys and uh also carlissimo had led seaton hall to the ncaa final in 1989 so this was the next year so he thought he was going to be a part of like this dynasty you know yeah was pj the coach

of the of the trailblazers that were really pieces of shit i don't think he was i wonder if he was the one that was there i don't think so i don't know why but i don't think he was a portion of it possibly i don't remember him coaching there i don't know i thought he was he was the trailblazers yeah i don't remember when though yeah i don't remember when exactly. That's a tough one. I feel like it was then. The mid-'90s, maybe. Maybe. Because this would drive you from college here, having this guy frustrating you.

Yeah. He said, and this is what Carlissimo said, he was probably, not probably, he was the one with the most pure talent of anyone we ever recruited. Pure talent. Pure talent. Pure talent. Now he's a pure talent seven two he moves well i mean as a basketball player if you could put alan iverson's brain in his fucking head he would have been bill russell you know what i mean like he had all the tools for it

he just didn't have the the the motor for it i guess here's an article from july 7th 1991 and um it said that the headline is on the right on the right track you know luther wright wr from the daily news in new york i mean yeah seaton hall big man undergoes big change he fucking he said this is funny luther wright never wanted to be seven feet two inches tall he never liked the attention the stares the whispers his one wish to be able to walk down a crowded street and be anonymous that's what he said go fuck yourself yeah oh man he said that um i guess he gets recruited he was ineligible to play his freshman year of uh seaton hall because of grades so he ballooned up to 350 pounds turned into shack and he said this past year was like my party year i wanted to hang out with my friends and

girlfriends i wasn't really into school i had a hard time keeping up with my busy schedule i had this 8 a.m class that was hard to to make, and my grades were bad. I just didn't care. My fall semester was pretty frustrating for everyone here, is what his fall semester. This is Seton Hall, academic advisor. He put school on the back burner. No question he would not have been eligible to play if he didn't turn it around. But apparently he did. Imagine that.

Came back from Christmas break down to about 295. And they said the transformation was startling. We always knew he was more than capable of doing the work. That's why it was so frustrating. But for him to do what he did was just amazing. We were still asking him what happened. So he got ended up with a B average in school to that year. So he's doing great. Yeah.

He said also he's going to try out for the U.S. team in the World University Games. He said he's definitely ready and ready to roll, man. He said it's yeah. One scout for the NBA said, I think I think it's still early to start comparing him to players like Shaquille O'Neal. This was when Shaq was still in college. still in college yeah um he said he hasn't played down uh he hasn't played a down of college ball yet but if he continues to work like a here he has been he could definitely play in the nba in high school he averaged 25 points 11 rebounds and seven blocks in his senior year leading his team to a state championship over saint anthony the team that he left. There's the hug. Yep, that's the hug there. And November 19, 1991, from Newsday, Long Island, the Wright stuff. Oh, my. Yeah. They said, among the scores of college recruiters

who came to New Jersey lusting after Luther Wright. Oh, Jesus. Two of them made the most telling mistake of all. They represented Villanova and Kentucky, as Luther's mom recalls it. And they told her, they told her boy, it was time to grow up,

grow up and get out of the house. Stop being a mama's boy. Okay. Um, yeah. So they said that was a fucking mistake because he wanted to be a mama's boy. Yeah. Yeah.

Uh, Mary said, this is his mom. May. His mom said, I had to grow up fast. I had to cook for myself at an early age, clean house at an early age. Thank God we didn't have a lot of the burglaries and problems we have now because I would have just come home from school, locked the door, and wait for my mother to come home. So she said now she wants him to have a better time.

She wants him to experience a good childhood, she said, which it's kind of late for that now i would say but yeah that's that's what she's saying um she uh pj carlissimo said some people seem to think he's going to be a kareem or a wilt chamberlain from day one i really don't want to count on him to be the real to be that good real quick so i don't i don't like when they do that it's tough for a fucking i get how i get how easy it is to start comparing such a young person to something like that and having some hype behind them and some hope for what they're going to create when they're in the league. But for Christ's sake, give them a chance to at least develop and turn into something. Kareem. Yeah, Kareem.

Kareem. The leading scorer when he retired. One of the greatest of any sport of all time. Wilt. Wilt. I mean, Wilt was the biggest physical force that's ever played basketball. Dominating. Yeah.

That's what you're just expecting from this kid? That's crazy. I hate when they do that so much. That's so much, yeah. She talks about, this is very interesting, she talks about how he was 11 pounds, 7 ounces at birth, Luther. Fuck, that's a big kid. She's 5'10 and a half, his mom. Oh, wow.

One of the great grandfathers, one of his parents' grandparents, was 7'4". There it is. Can you imagine that in fucking 1925? Some 7'4"? Maybe he was probably, I'm surprised he wasn't in the circus for Christ's sake. There's a kid that's like 7'7 and like 12 or 14. And when he runs down the court, James, it is

it's scary looking. Yeah. It doesn't even look normal. Jesus. I can't imagine a 25 seeing that. Now listen to this, and this is a lot of what I'm talking about. Why maybe he doesn't have the fire. They said in the fourth grade when they tried to put him in special education may came to the school and she said quote the teacher told me that luther was intimidating the other children

see what i mean he can't help that he's that much bigger than them so you're telling these kids you're making them take it down a notch take it and then you're going to college and you go dominate fucking go out there and do that. They're not used to that. They don't know how to do that. Um, the teacher told me Luther was intimidating the other children. I said, I don't think you're trying to teach him.

I think you're afraid of him because of his size, but it's your job to teach him. So yeah. Then also this is fucking amazing. She got, when he was in high school, Elizabeth, she got word from them that he was skipping classes during his senior year.

So she went to school and walked him from class to class for two weeks. Oh, that feels comfortable. That is fucking amazing. Yeah, that's fucking hilarious. I'm dying loud. Imagine her just, nope, let's go, Luther, biology. She would quiz his potential girlfriends. She would fucking sit them down.

Do you have any children? Do you smoke? Do you drink? Oh, boy. Are you sexually active? What do you do? When he was 17 years old, his mother spanked him. He was 7'2", 275.

Quote, she told Luther, get down on the floor and lie still while I whip you. I need you to lay flat. I need you to lay flat. I need you to lay flat. You're huge. I got to jump to smack your ass. Oh, my God. That is fucking amazing. So that's just some funny stuff.

So 91-92 Seton Hall. They're 23-9. Pretty good. Yeah, this team here, decent team. It looks like Luther doesn't play a lot. 4.8 points and 2.8 rebounds it's his sophomore year but that's his first year playing um you know not too bad though uh he like i said he's a high school parade all-american yeah all that kind of shit um it's 92 93 seaton hall 28

and 7 and again this year 9.7 and a half rebounds. So, you know, doing okay here. Not too bad. You know, you can't complain. I don't know. Like, it's weird how they work people in the systems, too. I mean, they might be bringing him in slowly. You know what I'm saying? So, I guess he tries.

At this point, he needs another year because he's got two more years of eligibility here. Right. So, he he needs another year because he's got two more years of eligibility here. Right. So he really needs another year. But the problem is he decides that he wants to go to the NBA. Got to get that family out of the projects, man. Got to do it now. By the way, when his friend Walker, who was on the team, asked him,

what would you have done if nobody forced you into basketball? He said, DJing, doing my music. I would have never thought about basketball which is interesting he ignored the advice of all of his coaches and advisors and people he'd been talking to saying definitely don't go into the nba draft this year you're not ready yet um they said that this is a friend of his said he wasn't ready period that was that but why would you go pro then nine points a game shit you gotta get them out quote here's from his book he explains it i never thought about wearing condoms and all of that i'm embarrassed to say get the fuck out of here he had babies the girls were pretty and i felt it was their responsibility to take care of all that i couldn't imagine a young girl trying to get pregnant how naive was i what the fuck my junior year at seaton hall

the young lady i was dealing with that's a way to say going out with dealing with what a weird fucking way to put that right holy shit what a fucking i can already i already know that relationship yeah he's dealing with her wow uh whom i met at club zanzibar in newark told me she was pregnant i said okay i have to go pro wow that was definitely one of the factors of my decision i might have stayed at seaton hall if i if i had not been hit with that i was growing tired of the whole college thing and i was Sure. Yeah. He said, actually excited about becoming a father, especially to have a son.

He said, I was happy because I would be able to take care of the kids. I was all in. I was buying baby clothes. I was on campus and she was at home. When the time came, she called me and told me she was heading to the hospital. Her water had broken. My mom and I went to the hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey. We were both in the room when the baby came.

When the baby came out, I said, look at that yeah oh shit my mother elbowed me and told me to chill out it was a boy oh shit look at that it's got a dick in that nice wow after the baby came things took a turn for the worse for me and my girlfriend things started to be revealed that I hadn't noticed before. What, that life ain't easy? Listen to what he hadn't noticed before about the woman. This is about the woman. He has been dating her enough to date her, get her pregnant,

and then be with her for nine months of pregnancy. Okay. While we were dating, she seemed to have a lot of kids around. I thought she was babysitting these kids. She told me they were her sister's kids after the doctor delivered my son i remember the doctor saying to her i don't want to see you here like this anymore you've had enough you've had enough the doctor cut her off bro like she had like she had too many vodka red bulls at the fucking bar look i'm tired of seeing your pussy yeah listen

the next kid's gonna fucking walk out he's gonna stroll out for christ's sake holy this was look these are getting far too easy he's gonna ride a four-wheeler out of there you're like 21 years old this is crazy i'm running out of stitches lady wow you've had enough that is fucking remarkable holy shit i don't want to see you like this anymore wow that's awesome so the 93 draft is one of the one of the most fun drafts in nba history i remember this as a kid being just blown away by this fucking draft because there was all the trading and all these big huge players chris weber number one overall that oh really to orlando remember that and then and then sean bradley went second to philly the storm and mormon there then penny hardaway went to golden state number three and then the golden state and they flip

flopped and did all that jam Jamal Mashburn, number four. Hell yeah, to the Mavericks. Isaiah Ryder, a definite alumni of crime and sports. Calvert Chaney, Bobby Hurley. Yeah. Did he go to the Kings? He went to Sacramento, yep. Duke, Vin Baker, Rodney Rogers, Lizzie Hunter.

These are guys that were in the league forever, all of them. Allen Houston. Was he with the Clippers? The Pistons. Pistons for a long time, yeah. were in the league forever. All of them. Alan Houston. Was he with the Pistons? Pistons for a long time. Alan Houston was around forever. George Lynch. Terry DeHair who was on his Seton Hall team.

Finally, number 18 overall. Utah selects Luther Wright as a... 18th overall. Overall. That is going to get you some money in 93 when Utah was top three in the West. Yeah, they were giant. They picked him ahead of Sam Cassell, who went 24th to Houston.

And how many rings did he end up having? It was a way. So, I mean, he did very well for himself here. So the George Mirison was in that draft to number 30 overall. I forgot about George Mirison. Yeah. Bullets. Yeah. He did very well for himself here. But George Mirasson was in that draft, too, number 30 overall. I forgot about George Mirasson. Yeah, bullets, yeah, most of the time for him. So they drafted him in the first round, 18th pick. They signed him to a five-year, $5 million contract.

What the fuck? Not bad. I'm going to say grace right now. That's fantastic. He parlayed nine points a game in the Big East division of college into millions of dollars. He just got $5 million. That is wild. Yeah. He says, this is Luther, every time or everyone always wanted me to become a star.

Then as soon as I went pro and got the contract, it was like they all had their tongues out and couldn't wait to get their piece. Yep. Absolutely. So he goes to Utah their piece. Yep. Absolutely. So he goes to Utah. Utah was good back then, 53 and 29 they were in 93, 94. This kid coming from Jersey City to Salt Lake? To Salt Lake. Wow.

As a person who's from the East Coast and from New York, like the culture shock to Utah, when we go there for a fucking day, my head is spinning. I feel like I'm not I literally I feel like I've went to another planet it's just a different place so to say you're gonna live here now changes your day holy shit I'm gonna live here now where do I get a sandwich in this fucking joint no way so Utah that year they beat the Spurs in the first round of the playoffs, then beat the Nuggets in a seven-game series, and then lost in the Western Conference Finals to Houston, who eventually went on to win the whole thing.

So they beat the Knicks with John Starks with a stupid fucking 19 three-pointers. Anyway, this is a team that's got Stockton, Malone, Tom Chambers went here. This is after he left uh after he left Phoenix um yeah a bunch of guy Brian Russell Felton Spencer it's that team the 90s Utah team right with his money bought himself a 27 room mansion get the fuck out of here come on man 20 i get look that's a big house in real estate fine but 27 rooms in salt lake how are you gonna flip that if you need to sell that you're gonna have to sell it to someone with five wives i wonder if the brown family's and fucking in the market for a house there from the sister wives because that's what they have or you're gonna have to sell it to whoever takes

your spot on the on the jazz when you're out. How about a house? That's the only people that are going to buy this. No shit. And he moved his mother, his sister, his brother, all of them to Utah. God, into his own house? Yeah, rather than, it's not a don't go home. He just brought home to Utah.

Right. 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. I am here for you. I'm Darcy Carden, and I'm inviting you to listen to my new podcast, WikiHole, from Smartless Media. Discover the craziest rabbit holes on Wikipedia with me and my funny friends as we bring the cyber frontier directly to your tympanic membrane. And if you listen to my podcast, you'd learn that that's the sciency term for eardrum. We embark on a hyperlink roller coaster as we start out on a Wikipedia page and go from link

to link to link to link, careening through trivia, oddities, and unexpected connections until we collectively shout, how the hell did we get here? Follow WikiHole on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to WikiHole ad free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. And then he got

mad that everyone would just hang around the house all day while he went to practice and earned the money. What the fuck do you think was going to happen? Why would what motivation do they have to go do anything that's what i mean and he said that he could he continued to get high and didn't do shit to stay in shape and he just didn't care um yep he said also when they drafted him he couldn't pick utah out on the map he had no fucking idea where it was even no clue clue. Unbelievable. Spent his whole life in the city, in Jersey City. West of Pennsylvania?

I haven't got a clue. No, no idea. No fucking clue. His autobiography, by the way, is called A Perfect Fit. There. I forgot to mention the name of it. He said in the book here that he'd befriended a Mexican drug dealer who would deliver a package of weed to his Salt Lake City mansion. And he said this was great.

He had a massive in-ground pool and all this type of shit. And he said the guy would bring him a bunch of weed once a week. Five million dollars goes away so fast. So fast. You're buying 27-room mansions? Jesus. Now, the ladies. Luther likes the ladies.

All bad. Most 22-year-old guys who are out there probably do. He says in his book, quote, I was never a suave dude, smooth with the ladies, but I did all right. Yeah, you're 7'2 and famous. Of course you do okay. Especially in Utah. You're going to stand out. But that's a – how are you going to – you can't bring them home.

You got family. I guess to your wing, I suppose. Mom, stay in your wing. He said, I always had a girlfriend or two or three, but I was far from a player, especially compared to some of my boys in the NBA. Jesus, those guys have like a... A two or three is a lot. That's still a lot, but those guys have a girl in every city. You know what I mean?

That's crazy. He said, a lot of my teammates and friends in the NBA had their pick of the groupie litter. There was plenty to pick from. It would not be unusual to show up at a hotel and have ladies waiting in the lobby, in the bar, in the restaurant, even in the hallways of our room floors. Oh, that'd be amazing. That's incredible. For a young guy like that, you're like, oh my God. Young unattached dude.

I didn't have any groupies at Seton Hall. There weren't girlies waiting around the locker room or the dorms we had our fans but nothing like what i saw when i got to the nba yeah because you don't have any money in college that's the difference um he said when i when we had one game a one-away game in oakland against golden state my first week in the league when we came to the hotel a bunch of women were in the lobby they had an ebony fashion show in the lobby ebony magazine there at the hotel too i didn't think anything of it but then i noticed a difference in the women you could clearly tell who was a professional model there

for the fashion show and who was there for us sure yeah um he said the bullets now the wizards in dc had the best groupies and of course la la land los La Land, Los Angeles, New York and Atlanta had theirs, too, of course. But D.C. and L.A. stood out. The ladies there were all fly and all tens in just about every market we went to. But in D.C. and L.A., they had a certain air. They were more sophisticated and seemed to know exactly what they wanted. It was also the best escorts in the country. Yeah.

Yeah. Fuck. He said, I wasn't into the groupie lifestyle. I was into having one lady. I had a girlfriend who lived in Philadelphia. She was my main lady. I moved her out to Utah with me. And when I moved back to Jersey, I stayed with her.

We met at a Greek picnic in South Jersey and just hit it off. What a weird. What? Talk about a strange mad lib. Where did seven foot two Luther Wright meet his girlfriend? Greek picnic in South Jersey. Who knew that there was a Greek picnic? Right?

She was beautiful, had long hair and a laid back personality. She got pregnant while we were living together in Philly. I was excited about having a baby until the baby actually came. We a little girl oh he wasn't excited about that this is baby two this is baby two yeah he already talked about baby one she was beautiful and i loved her but the whole fatherhood husband responsibility thing was getting to be too much father of a girl of a girl i promised to marry her i told her we were engaged but I never broke down and got the ring. She had settled into this routine with me. Pam, not her real name in parentheses, worked at a print shop where she did silk screens.

I used to drop off the baby at daycare, then drop Pam off at work so I could have the car for the day until it was time to pick up Pam and the baby. This went on for about eight months. One day, we dropped the baby off at daycare. Then I dropped Pam off at work. I hopped on I-95 North and never looked back. He just didn't pick anybody up. He just left. What the fuck?

I never called. I never wrote. I never saw her after that. He just left her. What about the baby, Lou? Just ghosted the babies at daycare. Fuck them. Fight for yourself, baby.

That's wild. I've never heard of that shit. He didn't even say I'm going to go get cigarettes or coffee or ice cream. It just dipped. See you after your shift. She called like crazy, but I didn't return her calls. No shit she called like crazy. Where the fuck are you?

I'm in the parking lot, for Christ's sake. I need to get my baby. This is wild. Our baby. Wow. Why did I walk out on her and my baby like that? It's the place where I was at the time is all I can give it as an explanation. I was foul.

I was smoking a lot of weed and just didn't care about anyone but myself. Have you ever, James? I've been smoking weed. I never smoking a lot of weed and just didn't care about anyone but myself. Have you ever, James? I was smoking weed. I never was like, fuck it. Fuck my kids. Leave them at daycare. That never happened. How dare he blame weed for that?

That is not a weed problem. No. Maybe you don't feel like doing it, but you still do it. You gotta. That's, wow. I'm going to earn a fat joint when these two go to bed tonight. That's what it is. And then you take off.

That weed feels better afterwards. Right. After I'm done driving my children around, I'm going to smoke afterwards, and it's going to feel great, because they drove me nuts, and I was sober that whole time. I'm going to smoke. Wow. I'd rather not see them i just that's a different level he's not a week that's not a pothead that's not pothead behavior he's not a pothead that is

crackhead behavior and we'll talk all about that he said i have no excuse i had a drug problem i could blame it on matt but i think more was going on he's got mental problems we'll talk about yeah pam was on me all the time about smoking weed she was right but again uh being hard-headed i didn't want to hear from anybody telling me anything why are you tripping i would constantly tell her i got this why are you tripping what's wrong with you so there's a new woman here that he finds sure the woman i moved in with in newark was going was into going to church i would go to church with her from time to time. One day I didn't want to go.

One Sunday I didn't want to go. She left me in the house. When I moved in with her, I had my stuff pack in big green garbage bags. That's – He bought a 27-room mansion but no suitcases. That's amazing. Wow. 27-room mansion and a pallet of green trash bags.

Pallet of those. So she's at church. He said, I took those same garbage bags and I packed my clothes. I locked her door and left her a note. Quote, I can't do this no more. I'm going back home. And I walked to my mom's house. What the fuck is going?

He just ghosts, dude. He's the original ghoster he's just fucking beast attachment issues for sure oh big time big time the woman called me she talked me into coming back i moved back in with her for a couple weeks then i left her for good yeah i even got married during this period for a month for a For a month. A month. I don't think he gets what that's about. I had no concept of marriage and it was all a big game for me. I knew Sheila. Not her real name.

That means he's done bad things to her and doesn't want to put her name out there. Yeah. I knew Sheila wanted to get married and I wanted to stay with her so I gave her what she wanted. But it wasn't what I wanted and the whole marriage wasn't real to me. Wow. she wanted but it wasn't what i wanted and the whole marriage wasn't real to me wow the day before we got married we were in my mother's cadillac in livingston and ended up on jfk boulevard near the short hills mall my mother got pulled over her car wasn't registered and she didn't have any insurance i hadn't taken care of my business the way i should have i bought

people nice things but didn't cross my t's and dot my eyes. Right? Yeah. You got to do all that. My mother got locked up. He got her. His mother arrested his mom thrown. Oh, I feel horrible. My future wife came and bailed her out. I appreciated her for being for there for us like that and wanted to make our relationship work.

So then he says this one time she came back from her, um, show. Cause this girl would take off on him all the time and go to her parents' house. He said she came back from her runaway to her parents. I had just come back from powdering my nose. Doing coke? When I came in the door, she was coming up the stairs.

She said something like, where you been? I said I was out with my boys. She started getting in my face. I grabbed her and she fell down the stairs. I pushed her down the stairs. You didn't grab her and she fell. I pushed her down the stairs. Yeah. That's what that says.

I threw her down the stairs. I knocked my wife down the stairs. That's not- I grabbed her and she fell. And she fell. If you grabbed her, she wouldn't have fell. Right. That's the thing.

Those don't go together. Wow. She got up, left, and I haven't seen her since. That was 1997. Oh, my God. Just took off, never came back. I tried to get in touch with her, or I never tried to get in touch with her, and I never filed for a formal divorce. Come to find out, I was so high, I never filed the proper papers to be married in the first place, so I wasn't legally married.

Holy shit. Otherwise, he'd still be married to this fucking woman now, probably. This is crazy. He said, at night, there were the parties. I always found out where the hot spots were. My first week there, I went to a corner liquor store and said to someone standing around, yo, where's the weed at? When you're from the hood, you always know where to go and whom to ask.

I wasn't going to ask any of my teammates because I didn't know them like that, and I wasn't asking a Mormon priest. I knew where to go, and I got my answer. Where's the worst neighborhood you got in Salt Lake City? That's where I'm going. Where's the weed at? He said, I was hooked up with my drug connection from day one. That wasn't good because I was smoking just about every day.

I thought I was slick. I thought I was doing a good job of hiding it until things started to unravel. As I think back, a lot of the bad decisions I made could definitely have to do with my smoking too much weed. But I was in such a haze, both from the weed and the huge shift in my life from moving to Utah, but I wasn't seeing things clearly. I enjoyed rookie camp. I got to play. I thought I was doing my thing. Initially, I was adjusting well. I found a place in downtown Salt Lake City on the 23rd floor in a condominium overlooking the city, a penthouse that had great views.

It was two bedrooms, two bathrooms. I shared my bachelor's pad with my stepbrother until I decided to move the rest of my family to Utah. Yeah, I would say. He said, this was definitely different from the dorms at Seton Hall or the hotels I was used to staying in. This was my place. I own this. I told Sal this is where I wanted to live,

and that that week I had the keys and a deed. The place had a jacuzzi on the roof. Jesus. I didn't spend much time in it, but it was nice flossing so nice to have he said uh it was nice saying it was mine yeah he's certainly he certainly knows he knows how to show where he's from do you know like you you get the idea of what what he how he grew up just based on how he talks and how he expresses himself. You can tell. Yeah, you can totally hear it. He said, that feeling of being on top of the world, having it all left me once the real season started.

Once I got with the whole team in the Utah Jazz system, I went from top of the world to end of the bench. Yeah, he's a rookie who scored nine points for Seton Hall. They're not going to send him out there and go fucking D up Olajuwon. You know what I mean? Like there were centers back, David Robinson, Patrick Ewing, Olajuwon. There's a lot of good centers, a great footwork and fucking fadeaway jumpers from the baseline, shit like that. They'll say Olajuwon's taking a breather.

Let's get Oster tag out and put him in. Yeah, there you go. He's taking a breather too. Get in there. That out and put him in. Yeah, there you go. He's taking a breather too. Get in there. That's it. So he said, I found my escape in weed. My weed guy that I'd found my first day in Salt Lake City led me to this Mexican gang. Yes, I managed to find the only Mexican gang in this Mormon state. I arranged for the leader of the gang to bring me weed weekly and either leave it in my stash

spot in my backyard or wrap it up to look like a gift or a package and leave it in my mailbox. I was getting my marijuana on schedule. I would pay him every month when I got my check. Yeah, we became real cool and I started hanging out with him and his brothers. We had a lot in common. Weed and pit bulls. That's a lot. I love dogs and they had a bunch of pit bulls and i would just hang out with them

and smoke and laugh once we started hanging out i had access to all the weed i could smoke i introduced them to blunts they had been rolling their weed in easy wider paper and i showed them how to take a philly cigar and make a blunt which was 90s new york i mean that was everything you could pop i could do that shit in my sleep with my fingers. It's easy. They never looked back at the corny joint after that. Those were my peoples. Corny-ass zigzags. Corny-ass zigzags. So tiny.

Jesus. I would go with my Mexican gang to pawn shops and buy.357 Magnums, shotguns, and rifles. We would go to the rain, shoot guns, smoke weed, chase women, and party. I think I spent more time with them than I did practicing basketball. Well, that's bad. That's bad. Yeah. Basketball was where I felt the least at home at this point.

I felt all over again like that Prop 48 player in college who couldn't play because of his grades. So you're telling me having fun is more fun than work? That's crazy. Weird, right? Work, they pay you millions of dollars. They expect you to work hard?'t that weird strange just to sit around it at the united center shooting fucking off yeah delta center what's in salt lake yeah yeah delta center there you go he said the coach wasn't feeling me my teammates weren't were frustrated with me and i felt a lot of them

had given up on me i wanted out he's there for like a month by the way he wants out dude he cannot commit to shit nope he runs away when there's a problem first instinct run away we lost to the rockets and coach sloan tried to blame me for the loss saying that all of that was a big saying that all of it was a big distraction no hakeem olajuwon and clyde drexler just busted your ass is what Luther says. And Kenny Smith. Yeah, they won the championship that year. They're a fucking great team. You're going to blame the guy who plays four minutes a game for your loss?

Get the fuck out of here. The starting five is incredible. What was Karl Malone doing? Ask him, besides fucking 13-year-olds. Right. Blame him. Blame him. He said, when we got back from the road trip i decided to stage a protest oh if the jazz were going to keep treating me like this keeping me in the doghouse fighting

me for done dumb stuff and not playing me i was through with them i stopped going to practice and team meetings and i just hung out with my peoples no talking about can't do that i was with my mexican gang for days i even missed a game what i got a room at a hotel i watched the game on television from my hotel room my attitude was fuck the jazz you talk and kiss my black ass which i say that every time we land in salt lake city the first thing i say you talk and kiss my black ass. And then I fucking go in. There's only 12 people here that are wearing

a jazz jersey. How does he think that one not showing up will go unnoticed? One who's the tallest, by the way. The largest of everyone. The biggest one on the team isn't here. Not here. He said, I felt like the man with them, meaning the gang people. On the Utah Jazz, I was the rookie nobody.

I was nothing. You've got to work your way into it. That's how basketball works. With my Mexican gang, I was important. I was the OG. It felt good. I was in a comfort zone around these guys because I didn't have to be perfect and I didn't have to live up to anything. Okay.

Now, an incident here happens happens it's one of the craziest incidents ever let's hear the newspaper account of it and the public account and then let's hear his version of it great okay january 24th 1994 this is his first what's called a manic episode oh he has a real alonzo spellman moment here where he just fucking snaps um police found him this is the end result they found him in a highway rest area banging garbage cans and punching in car windows with a five foot stick by the way he has no fucking clothes on either while he's doing this he is nude smashing strangers windows seven foot two 300 pounds giant oh my god um so the headline is utah's top draft pick arrested okay um they said luther wright number one draft pick of the jazz

told salt lake city utah deputies that he was high on ritalin and marijuana when he was arrested at a highway rest stop um he was jailed for 12 hours, then released. The county sheriff's sergeant, Joe Bradshaw, said a deputy patrolling Interstate 80 about 14 miles from Toole and 15 miles west of Salt Lake City was waved down by a motorist at about 4 a.m. This was the middle of the night, too. When the deputy stopped, he saw a man waving his arms with a five-foot-long stick in one hand and what appeared to be a leg brace in the other. Oh, boy.

He started running toward the patrol car, still waving the objects in his hand. The deputy pulled his pistol and yelled it right to stop and to lie on the ground face down. I can't do that. My dick's out. I don't know if he was naked here or that's a different one. I don't do that. My dick's out. I don't know if he was naked here or that's a different one. I don't think he's naked right here. The deputy handcuffed him, searched him, because there wouldn't be anything to search if he was naked,

and took him back to his patrol car. Wright was taken to the county jail and cited for disorderly conduct. The director of operations of the jazz, Scott Layden, said that the center had an adverse reaction to a prescription medication on sunday which he'd been taking for the first time that morning okay yeah

that's that's a super adverse reaction he just took medicine and now they'll adjust it and it'll be fine um although he was causing a disturbance he didn't make threats to anyone they said he was just fucking up property and shit. So they post the bond. Yeah. Deputies questioned two people who were inside a sedan at the rest stop. The occupants said they'd been driving in the sedan when they pulled into the rest stop and started freaking out because of, or he started freaking out, Wright did, because the Ritalin was taking, is what he said. So the guy in the sedan said that Wright broke their windshield with his fist. Wow.

He's a fucking giant guy. Then punched dents in the roof of the sedan. Oh, my. He did like fucking King Kong is outside. Fucking, you know, Godzilla is out here smashing. Wow. He said Wright also had thrown the ignition key somewhere out in the weeds. He reached in and took the key and threw it.

Oh no. Yeah. You can't even get away. Um, so this guy in the sedan had a prosthetic aid. According to that, that's the brace that he was swinging. He had this guy's prosthetic.

He took his leg and his keys and ran away. Wow. Um, that is some shit here. The jazz representatives picked up Wright. They said he offered to give them what he assumed was Wright's knee brace, and they just said they didn't want it. It wasn't theirs. So it's somebody else's.

The jazz guy said, our first concern is for the person, and we deal with it from there. He is under a physician's care, and we'll see what it brings. So he was suspended for a December 4th game for violating team rules and fined for missing a team flight to Minnesota December 14th and missing the home game. He missed a home game against Seattle. That's the game he took off for. He's missed several games. His version of it is this. Yeah.

He's hanging with the gang bangers. And he said, they may have known I was a ball player, but it never came up. They loved hanging with Lou B because I was fun. I knew how to party and I liked to get high just as they did. And I had more in common with them than I did with my teammates. As my disappearance turned into days,

people were now worried and looking for me. I told only one person, my stepbrother, where I was. He eventually told my stepfather, the snitch. Numa came and got me and drove me back home. He took the air out of the tires of my truck and thought that would keep me there.

He's like, you're not going anywhere. I'll fucking flatten your tires. So what'd he do? I called my Mexican posse and they picked me up. We went back to their spot and smoked. I started bugging. I asked the Mexicans to drive me to Houston. Okay.

What? From Salt Lake? I didn't know how many hundreds of miles away it was. I just knew I wanted to go to Houston. What would I do when I got there? I would go talk to the coaches and management of the rockets and ask them for a to trade for me hi i'm not i'm on i'm on pcp uh if you'd like that hold on i gotta go outside i got a car full of mexican gangbangers that drove me here i'll be right back baby gave me a ride i thought i could convince them that i would be

a great addition to their squad yeah their championship team they don't need you they don't need you i don't know why i didn't just call sal and ask him to negotiate something that's his agent you know that's the proper avenue um i didn't understand how things worked obviously more than being high and out of my mind i was ignorant i thought if i made enough trouble utah would want to get rid of me and could convince some team and i could convince some team myself to let me play for them our list is on tv right now you should watch that show but you should understand a lot here wow i was determined to get to houston and that my mexican friends would take me but they said no this was our first real disagreement they didn't want to drive a fucking 70-hour round trip.

My boys were trying to talk me out of it. That's when I lost it. They had this big hoopty. I don't remember the make or model. I just remember it being old and big. What I didn't know at the time was that their big hoopty had an industrial-sized green bag full of weed in the trunk. They weren't going to Houston, not because they thought it was a bad idea. They weren't driving across state lines with a trunk full of weed and risk getting arrested.

I know they were down for me, but I was asking too much. I was yelling and screaming at them to take me. I got into a fight with one of their uncles, who was trying to stop me. I grabbed his leg and it came off. I forgot he had a prosthetic leg and i used his leg to smash out the windows of the car so that's the person they talked to was actually the uncle of yeah i grabbed the keys out of their ignition and threw them across a field toward the great salt lake then i started to walk if they weren't gonna drive me to Houston, I was going to walk there.

Unbelievable. Wow. Now it was the middle of the night. It was pitch black. We're in the middle of nowhere. It was cold outside, but I'm hot. So I took off my shirt, and I guess that's where the naked stories got started, and I started walking.

It's December in Utah. Yeah, yeah. I ended up in this empty lot. It was so dark I couldn't see my hands in front of my face. I came across a dumpster. I was lost. So I figured if I made some noise, someone would find me. Jesus Christ.

Oh, man. I started pushing and lifting this heavy dumpster and letting it drop. It sure did make a racket. I did this about ten times. Then I heard what sounded like tires rolling over gravel, but I couldn't see where the sound was coming from until it got close to me. It was a state trooper who didn't turn on his lights. I heard the ding, ding, ding when he opened his door and got out.

Put your hands over your head, he barked at me. Heck, I couldn't see my hands, but I knew he was pointing a gun at me. I could feel that. I put my hands over my head and the next thing i felt were cuffs going on i was under arrest backup came shortly after they didn't bother my mexican friends it took them a while to find their keys so they were still there i told the cops they had nothing to do with it thank god for them the cops never searched their car they didn't smell a trunk full of weed also which is hilarious that's hilarious i was hauled down to the police station larry miller the owner of the

jazz came and bailed me out is that right wow i went from jail to the psych ward where i stayed for a few months under evaluation okay his story doesn't make any sense because if the end of it is and then they put me in the psych ward for four months yeah he didn't this isn't you can't explain this away i think he was his recollection of this is like way off he was in another on another planet mentally i think he said i was diagnosed with a range of mental illnesses ranging from manic depression to bipolar disease from adhd to adhd or add to adhd i was committed for a couple months then i was shipped back to my home in utah now people were laughing at me and i was known as this crazy person every newspaper article was now

talking about me negatively not covering my basketball play anymore my mother must have sensed something was up because she came into my room to check on me, something she rarely did. She would usually give me my space, but this day she came in my room and found me in bed with those empty pill bottles and called 911. Uh-oh.

I was rushed to the hospital. My stomach pumped. That was very, very painful. Then I was shipped back to the mental hospital for another month's sentence. He tried to kill himself with pills. So he goes back to Jersey after this. He says, the first few weeks back in Jersey, I didn't want to talk to anybody.

I didn't want to do anything. I must have slept for two weeks straight. All I did was lie around the house smoking weed. My mother started in on me to get out of the house and do something. So I did. I left the house and started getting high for real. I started smoking Coke heavily. Why don't you get out and do something so i did i left the house and started getting high for real i started smoking coke heavily why don't you get out why don't you get out and do something okay sure not what i had in mind i'm gonna crack it up today since you need me out of the house

holy shit i lived in a neighborhood where it was easy to find drugs if you wanted to get something everyone knew where to go that was easy and finding people to smoke it where it was easy to find drugs. If you wanted to get something, everyone knew where to go. That was easy. And finding people to smoke it with, that was easy too. Finding places to smoke, easy. You could even get a crack pipe from the local bodega. It was that easy. Every fucking shitty convenience store in Phoenix sells crack pipes.

All of them. Every 7-Eleven. All of them. So it was all too easy for me to smoke Coke every day. Smoking made me feel a whole lot better, I bet. The weed made me sleep. The Coke made me numb. While I was doing it, I didn't think about anything but feeling that high.

He's been looking for the right plug-in. He's been looking for that thing that angels sing when he does it. And he finally found it now. Um, the match, the perfect fucking filling. All of the medication they prescribed was adding to the crazy. Cause you're not supposed to smoke fucking crack while you take mental meds. That's why that's,

those are way different things. Yeah. Wow. They don't say avoid illicit heavy narcotics while taking Lexapro. Yeah. Because they don't think you'll ever do it. That would be crazy to do that. Yeah.

It had me putting on weight and the combination of the 10 pills with the weed and the cocaine wasn't good. I was mixing the prescription drugs with illegal drugs. 10 psych meds? Yeah, 10. He's on 10. And crack. Yeah. 10 psych meds and crack. Wow. I hear this all the time. You were an athlete. How could you use drugs? It's complicated. I can't even say that. I understand it myself. I tried drugs for the first time, partly to fit in partly due to peer pressure, but a big part was curiosity. You wonder what will happen if you do it? Will it affect you? Will you get really high? And what will you feel like? You also think that you're different, that you're special, that somehow it won't have the same impact on you.

All athletes say that. You thought I was special. But cocaine? Cocaine was beyond social. The bond there was hard to break. By the time I graduated to crack, it was a wrap. I wasn't thinking about anything or anyone. It was just that

crack and me. And when I didn't have crack, all I was thinking about was how I was going to get some. Crack came before everything else in my life. That is fucking crazy. That's what those addictions do. That's it. So a couple days later, after the first incident, they put him on

injured reserve is what the Jazz do. They put him, yeah, that incident, they put him on injured reserve is what the Jazz do. Yeah. They put him, yeah, that's it. Put him on injured reserve. His agent said that he apparently experienced a reaction to the medications and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So everything's all good here. The agent said he's going to figure out, they're going to figure out his dosage and everything like that. It'll be fine.

Yeah. This could happen with Ritalin. It's just, you never know how your body's going to figure out his dosage and everything like that. It'll be fine. Yeah, this could happen with Ritalin. You never know how your body's going to happen here. So two months later, actually, February 7, 1994, this is from the newspaper, right in fierce fight with manic depressive illness. They talk all about it. Now he's doing a lot better. He's speaking clearly.

He's telling his agent he's on the way back. He's going to do much better now. He's good now. You know what I mean? Yeah. The agent said, this obviously isn't our primary concern, but Luther is already talking about basketball. Carl Malone was in his room for five hours over the weekend, and he told Luther, don worry young fella i'll take you under my wing that's great therapy for luther no that's the last guy we want around luther he's gonna molest him for christ's sake he's gonna he's gonna get

him pregnant somehow i don't know how but carl malone's gonna impregnate luther and i'm worried worried about it the last person under his wing uh was doing way worse that's fucking amazing so his uh his agent said luther's attitude has been on the upswing going into that night then jerry got on him pretty good that's the coach which is his right as a coach then luther comes home saying i messed up again and he feels bad about it. He had a fall from grace. Yeah, we did grace already. Sure did. Thanks for reminding us. Yeah. He accidentally takes too much Ritalin the next day, and his reaction is a classic case of Ritalin overdose. If you or I had taken too much of the drug, maybe we'd wake up the next morning with a bad headache.

But Luther had these disorders, and he was in a fragile psychological state to begin with. One doctor told me this is a huge load of bullshit one doctor told me if luther had committed a murder that night he couldn't have been convicted i think we know better than that we've done that a few times yeah um they asked the agent why ritalin wasn't detected in right system then when they tested him yeah and he said i'm no toxicologist this is sal defazio goes he said, I'm no toxicologist. This is Sal DeFazio goes, hey, listen, I ain't no toxicologist, but doctors told me Ritalin metabolizes out of your system in four hours. Then they told me what metabolizes mean. And I was like, OK, that's good, because I didn't know what the fuck he was talking about.

Then they told me how long four hours is. And I thought about that. The first urine specimen Luther gave was on that Monday, and he took his last tablet Sunday afternoon. His mother was there when he took the medicine, so we're sure the overdose occurred. That's it. He said that he remained in a manic state more than a week, at which time he reportedly called 911 five times and struck up a friendship with a police dispatcher. He called so many times. What?

He called the police so many times. Yeah, they knew him. Made friends with the dispatcher. Yep. He wanted a couple of undercover cops to take him out of there, and I told him we couldn't do that, said the dispatcher. He said, do you mind if I call you Auntie May? I said, of course not he was lonely and he didn't want to be there and that's his mom's name by the way yeah he wanted a

mom so yeah they said on tuesday morning though defazio said it was like the light was turned back on with this fucking guy i'll tell you what he said he's ready he could be back as early as next week everything's wonderful he said at first first Luther was embarrassed and humiliated by what happened, even though he had no control over it. He's very positive now. He told me he wants to get better. He told me he wants to get helped. All right. February 11th, 1994.

In the hospital again. Back in the hospital again. Mental hospital or regular hospital? Mental hospital. All of his hospitalizations will be for the mental variety it's the mental well until later anyway uh he said that he was you know he vowed to stay away from late night truck stops quit eating so much and not miss any more practices that's what he said very basic things very basic he played 15 games that year, started two, played 6.1 minutes per game.

Chuck stops really getting in the way. 1.3 points,.7 rebounds, 0.0 assists. God damn it, Stuckeys. That's his entire career. What? That's his whole basketball career. Loves and pilots and stuck he's all gotten away his career high for a game in blocks is one that's his career high his career high point total four

one night he scored four yeah um after the season he entered a mental institution again yeah uh six months later he was fucking out of basketball and everything, going back to New Jersey, and his brother remained to try to sell his house in Utah. Yeah. Yep. In New Jersey, people who thought he was a hero were now telling him he was a failure, he said.

Yeah. He said, I started running hard from my past and using drugs and the alcohol to ease the pain. It didn't work. Oh, my God. my past and using drugs and the alcohol to ease the pain it didn't work oh my god now the money because he has a five-year contract right utah drops them four million dollars it's a guaranteed contract so they end up rather than paying it to him right away they end up deferring it out for 25 years so he just gets checks every fucking month for the next 25 years which is the worst thing for

this guy yeah because he's gonna just count on those yeah um he said about his money i would have smoked it all up in less than a year if not for sal my family would definitely have spent it up if i didn't and i and don't think they didn't try instead i get a check every month like an annuity which was still going on when he wrote the book in 2010. Sal was my agent, my broker, my bank teller, my friend. Unfortunately, after I left Utah, my mother stepped in and took power of attorney over my affairs. She had control over all my money and made a mess of it, as if she had graduated from Howard, Harvard, or the Wharton School of Business. I love you, Mom, but you know, all the things Sal put into place for me,

she single-handedly undid. Okay. She somehow managed to borrow against the lump sum that I would be drawing on for 25 years, decreasing my monthly payments from around $15,000 a month, which you could very easily live off of, to just over $1,000 a month. She leveraged $15,000 to $4,000 a month, which you could very easily live off of, to just over $1,000 a month. She leveraged $15,000 to $14,000. She made $14,000 bill payments.

Holy shit. I went from living comfortably for the rest of my life to seeing it all fade away. Of course, I played a major role in all that because it wasn't just the breakdown mentally. It was the drug abuse. Oh god jesus christ so um yeah so the the he's in the newspaper again june 26 1994 they're talking about him saying that um one guy said i also wrote that luther wright's talent was underwhelming but then so but some poor team would still take him in the first round. Well, Utah drafted him, and if you dare ask Coach Jerry Sloan what he thought of Wright, make sure the streams of pointed and profane words don't bother you.

Oh. Yeah. Sloan hates him. Hates him, yeah. Oh, he's not treating him well at all. July 29, 1994, Luther back in Wright mood swing. I hate the way they do that with him all the time. He's doing great. He said, I don't want to dwell on what happened, but I remember one thing about that night.

I got arrested and I was scared. That saved me. It was better that it happened early in my career. The man upstairs knows something was wrong with me and he wanted that to come out so I could get better. Unfortunately, that's not what happened, though, as we'll talk about. Not at all what happened. So he said, I didn't know I had a problem. I thought, OK, I got arrested.

I'm in trouble. I'll have negative press for a few days and I'll deal with that. But I didn't know I had manic depression and would have to deal with my mental health. I didn't believe that at first. You don't feel any differently. If you look at me now, I don't look any different. You couldn't tell I had a problem. Yeah, that's true. A lot of times people get off of drugs and get the right help and they don't appear to have ever had a problem. Yeah, that's the thing. He said, I take my pills every night

before going to bed. It's just a part of me now. My mom has diabetes, so she has to take her insulin every day. It just becomes a part of your routine. Yeah. Jesus. He said, last year I had the wrong attitude about the NBA. I thought I could lay back and I fell by the wayside. But I don't regret leaving Seton Hall.

If I stayed in school and this happened, maybe I would have never been drafted. He says, I guess the man upstairs has always been watching over me. I don't know about that. So he's got a brother, Reggie, that we talked about. Right. And they're talking about, I guess he's a good football player. They're talking about him. Reggie lives with Luther.

As long as Luther stays with the Jazz, the coaches figure Reggie, his brother, will be around. His brother's 5'9", 160 pounds, by the by the way he's gonna do great that's ridiculous wow um yeah i guess they're a good high school team so this is fucking wild uh right below that the brother in the high school team there's a crazy the sales jimmy the sales here. Okay. There is a... I'll show you the fucking ad. Here we go. Let's have a look.

It's for a cabaret sports club called Northern Exposure. Gone fishing? What does that say? Yep. Gone fishing. This is your gone fishing with some chick in a bikini. Not even a bikini. She's in a one-piece bathing suit.

That's gone fishing. No cover charge. SLC location. Sports theater now open for Monday night football. Great lunches. Exposure of what? I'm not even exposed to anything. The woman is covered.

Yeah, put the word fish in there for women and great lunches. That's just weird. So, yeah, October 9th, 1994, Utah's Luther on right track again. They keep the fluff piece after fluff piece after fluff piece. I'm doing better now. Everything's fine now. I've been in the league for a year. I know what to expect.

I'm ready to go. I'm 110%. November 3rd, 1994, waved by the Utah Jazz. Done. Done. It's over. They cut his ass, and that's that. They ate the contract, and they're going to fucking deal with it.

So November 6th, 1994, they're talking about, you know, maybe he'll go to another team. What's going on here? They're talking about the money he made and everything like that. And DeFazio, Sal DeFazio, said, we couldn't see any light at the end of the tunnel. And he said, that's because you're at the toll booth with this guy. That's what he said. I don't know what that means, but it's Sal.

Look, I don't have to tell you. You're at the dog groomer right now. Yeah. I don't know what you got. Now, waivers ran out on Wright, meaning anyone could sign him for a $150,000 minimum deal and not be liable for picking up the Jazz's contract. So you could have had this guy just for nothing. Just take a flyer on him. And they'll pay the money.

Nobody really has any interest at all. Wow. That's the thing. They think he's fucking nuts. Friends tried to get him help. them that's the thing they think he's fucking nuts friends tried to get him help um a former governor richard cody who was a big seaton hall booster helped right get into the essex county hospital center and other facilities and uh cody said you had people talking about him getting back into shape to play basketball i was focused on whether he had health insurance oh jesus yeah um november 22nd 1994 he said he wants back in the nba again

he can fucking do it he said he can do it um you know he's coming back and it's all good meanwhile they're just trying to they're saying that he had a problem defazio said he hit it at first he tried to remain upbeat but just like anyone else in his own mind, he had failed to succeed. So that had a big... He's at the dry cleaners. Yeah, he said, we've had a number of offers from overseas, and we've had some inquiries from teams in the NBA. We're sorting through them, trying to figure out what place would be best for Luther, both geographically and demographically. Primarily, we've got to figure out where he'll have the best opportunity to develop as a

player. Meanwhile, he's smoking crack the entire time. That's the fucking main problem. He's using the word demographic while he's over there with a glass dick in his mouth. Jesus Christ. By 96, no more basketball. They said he'd bounce around from place to place. He'd spend some nights at home with his mother, some nights on the streets of Irvington and Newark in the drug dens and crack houses.

Oh, yeah. His friend Walker from Seton Hall remembers coming home to Jersey City from Europe where he was playing pro ball and hearing friends tell him Luther was up the hill, which is the neighborhood expression for people who went over to Essex County to hang out in crack houses. Yeah. He said, quote, crack before it came before everything else in my life I threw away so much I threw away the opportunity to be great to be the one they talked about for long after I'm gone oh um yeah he said when he he would use his celebrity a lot of times to borrow a few bucks from people here or there. When that didn't work, he would steal what he could. Bicycles, small appliances, anything he could sell for crack money.

Like a crackhead. Like a crackhead. His $15,000 monthly payments are down to just over $1,000. He would have the check mailed. He would have them mailed to a check cashing place in Newark where he would ask the owner to give him half the money at a time. He said if he took it all, he knew he would spend it in a day. Yeah, it's over. Yeah. So he had the guy at a check cashing place be in his bank.

Oh, boy. Wow. They checked him into rehab centers, but he would check himself out after a few nights. People arranged interventions with his family, with former teammates, with fucking pastors, anybody they could. And he would just end up making empty promises and then going out and smoking crack. Sure, you're right. Absolutely. Un-fucking-real.

Yep. One of his friends said, I gave him 20 bucks because he said he needed something to eat, but I knew he was going to take that 20 bucks and spend it on drugs. Until he wants to make changes, we know there's nothing we can do. He loves crack more than he loves basketball. That's not even close. He gets, he becomes homeless. Yeah. Homeless seven foot two homeless. That's $15,000. He had, wow. He says from his book, even when I was homeless, I would end up in a club from time to time or a local bar. It was one of the few things that connected me to something normal. Being in a club around music, around the turntables made me forget my problems. It was almost like a drug for me.

It's almost like crack. Play Jody Watley. Oh, man. Come on. See more CeCe Peddison. You got any MC light back there? Come on. What do you got?

I would go to a dollar store and get a rag, a bar of soap, and go to McDonald's and freshen up in their bathroom. I'd go to the laundromat, wash my clothes, or stay with a girl for a couple days and get cleaned up for a minute. Until the crack called, then I was gone. Unbelievable. You're right, man. The best economical decision you can ever make is be fucking tall. Yeah, it's amazing be very very very tall clubs are not letting me in if i'm homeless and on crack homeless and smoking crack women are

not saying come stay with me get clean and then when crack calls be gone nobody's nobody's allowing this oh my god yeah you have to be seven foot two and have a hope. They're like, oh, come in, please. Come on. He said, I was just using people back then. Even going to the clubs, which was definitely about the music, was also getting my buzz on for free. For sure. Free drinks.

I was still Luther Wright. When I came into a club, people who remembered me from back in the day would show me love. People would buy me drinks all night. Liquor, as I mentioned, was not my drug of choice choice but it became a substitute when i didn't have money for crack bacardi 151 jesus that'll fuck you up anything flammable i'll drink it yeah it's got to be able to be set on fire and really hold a flame i mean i tried to stay out of sight and was low-key the only people who I knew, the only people who knew I was there were the people on the block,

drug dealers and other junkies. Some local cops knew I was there too. You're seven foot two. How the fuck does anyone miss you? Every single person knew you were there. Jesus. They too knew me from back in the day. And sometimes they would stop by and drop off clothes and food and even money. was my spot at night the cops he's talking about yeah during the day i got my

hustle on after my monthly check was done which was usually within a week i would go out early and start begging nickel and diming people for money to get enough to buy a nickel of coke which was five dollars nickel and diming literally give me enough money to get a nickel or a dime or a dime so i would ask people for a dime. Or a dime. I would ask people for a dollar, 50 cents, a quarter, anything they could spare. Most people gave me a dollar. Some even gave me a whole five. That was a good day.

I picked a good spot. A McDonald's was on one corner, a Popeye's on the other. A Subway and a Dunkin' Donuts were right there, too. I had plenty of people to hit up for cash. I knew all the managers at those spots, so I would get free food too. Some would let me sit in there and eat and enjoy my free food. Wow. He said that, yeah, he would have these little victories, such as if I could get my $5 before 10 o'clock. He would set goals.

He said, I would set these little goals for myself. How much money could I get in an hour or two hours? I used my celebrity to get money from people. I did anything I had to do to get that money so I get in an hour or two hours? I used my celebrity to get money from people. I didn't, I did anything I had to do to get that money so I could get high. I would get my drugs and go back to my abandon minimum to get high. That's an abandoned building that he calls an abandoned medium. That's hilarious.

Luther. Yeah. He said, I was luckier than most because I actually had steady money coming in every month. I knew I'd be able to pay for my habit. Under the contract Sal negotiated, I get a lump sum every month for 20 years. That lump sum was about $15,000 when I first got out of the league, about getting my money and buying my drugs. I didn't have a bank account, so I had my check routed to a local furniture store in Newark that also cashed checks called the credit doctors. They sell furniture, too? I now know that they took a hefty fee to cash my check. When I was halfway sober, I would have them hold back half. But back then, I surrounded myself with drugs and people who did drugs. I hung out in drug areas.

Drug addicts, junkies, and alcoholics for my friends. Some of them I would hit off with money or drugs at the first of the month when I got my check. I had their back, but no one could get me to stop. Nothing could either. Not even when I lost my front teeth, which came out about a year after I hit the streets. I had an infection in my gums and they had to be pulled. A person can't take care of himself on the streets. I didn't brush my teeth most days. You can't take a bath. You don't have a bed.

So you're putting this wear and tear on your body. Yeah, I would say. Losing your goddamn teeth. Yeah. Oh, Jesus. That's not enough, man. No, it's not enough to stop. Front teeth. December 22nd, Jesus. That's not enough, man. No, fuck. That's not enough to stop. Front teeth.

December 22nd, 2004. He'd been homeless for about seven years now. Okay. Right before Christmas, he's wandering around the city in winter without shoes. Yep. This is when he loses two toes. Oh, Jesus. Two toes, two teeth.

He is falling apart, literally. Falling apart or taking pieces off of him. He's got, like, leprosy. He said that he was on a crack binge at the time. His lower body they numbed from a local anesthesia. He said he was lucid enough to hear the ping of his toes dropping from his feet into a pan what he said this same sound a rock hard piece of plastic makes when it hits metal he said damn i'm thinking they just cut off my toes yeah you walked through ice bear jesus he's like 400 pounds almost at this time oh my god so basically um he wore

size 20 shoes so it's a hard time for him to find shoes and when they're worn out he has to you don't just find 20s laying around somewhere so he would cut the backs off old boots or sneakers and wore them like slippers so he'd find other shoes and he'd just cut the backs off and wear them like slippers frankensteining his shoes together. Yep. Yeah, just cut them off and that way you could just slide your foot in. So the winter air here turned his second and third toe on his right foot black. Yeah.

And he was so high he didn't even fucking notice. Didn't even feel or see it. Yep. So a few months later, a player he saw a former seaton hall player was at a dinner and um he said i've had people coming to me saying man i heard you i heard you was dead i want the state to know i want the world to know that luther wright is not dead i've been saved i'm just missing some pieces that's it i'm I'm all right. The Reverend Manuel Donaldson, the assistant pastor at the Morningstar Community Christian Church, said, I put it to Luther like this.

Luther, you've tried fame, fortune, drugs, women, and none of them have made you happy. Why not give God a try? Because I'm not in prison. Yeah. So he stays in the hospital for nine days. Doctors told him if he had waited a day to come in, he would have lost his whole foot probably. Wow. So he tries to live at his mother's apartment.

It lasts three days there, and then on the fourth day, he just catches a bus back to where his crack is, and he goes to a crack house and buys crack and smokes down, sits down and smokes it. Oh, God. Yep. He said right when he was smoking crack in the crack house, he crack and smokes down, sits down and smokes it. Oh, God. Yep. He said right when he was smoking crack in the crack house, he felt moisture on his right foot. He pulled off his sock and saw the bandage soaked in blood. And he said he looked at the other junkies, took a deep breath, and said to myself, I'm done. He was like, I'm fucked.

So he gave away the rest of his drugs and called an ambulance. He's like, I got problems. I'm in a crack house with no toes. They stitched up his wound. They told him to stay off his foot. That's why it was bleeding because he was supposed to stay off of it. So he stays at the hospital for two weeks. And yeah, he said, quote, I was sick.

I was sick of being tired and homeless, sick of being high. So he checked himself into rehab and he was trying to make that shit work, make some rehab work here. So, um, anyway, his version of it is this couple days before Christmas, but that didn't mean a thing to me. Christmas birthdays, no holidays had anything for me. My days were spent with one thing on my mind, getting high. Motherfucking crack. Motherfucking crack. I was annoyed that I had this issue that I couldn't ignore any longer. The pain was so bad when I made my way down to the hospital the first time.

I don't know how I did it, but I made it. I didn't have on a shoe. I had a sock or a makeshift sock out of paper towels or rags or whatever I could get to wrap around my foot, which was pretty numb and stinking. When I got to the hospital, though, they acted as if they didn't want to treat me and that nothing was seriously wrong. They gave me some painkillers and I kept moving. But in a few days, things started getting worse. I noticed my toes had turned black and they were starting to smell. few days, things started getting worse. I noticed my toes had turned black and they were starting to smell. I could hardly walk and the pain was so bad I couldn't take it. I had been on the streets on

and off for seven years at this point. This was my new court. This was my new life. Smoking crack, stealing, begging for money to buy crack, finding places to smoke crack, and enjoying the short time that I was high on crack. Oof. Just crack. Then it would start all over again. When I got too tired, I'd find a place to rest with my mother or woman or even rehab. But it wouldn't be for too long. I was more comfortable on the streets with my drug friends than I was with sober people. There was always some drama on the streets,

and I somehow managed to squeeze into the back of an abandoned hatchback car on Ellis Avenue. He's 7'2". He's like living back there. Just somebody's car. Oh, wow. He said, I've been scoping it out for a few days. It was parked next to my abandonmentium, which had just about caved in on my head the night before,

and I needed shelter. I'm going to climb in this Chevette. Jesus Christ. It was getting cold, and the porch where I had been sleeping wasn't going to work. So I checked the front door. I checked the door of this car. It was unlocked and I got in. I started smoking and I guess sparks from the match ignited some oil or something in the back of this car. It all went up in flames. Oh my God. The fire got big quickly. I don't know to this day how I got out. It happened so fast I was just lucky. It was raining cats and dogs and I was running up the street like a crazy man. People were looking at me like, oh, he's just high. He must have had a good one there.

Look at him. Oh, man. He said the car fire was his first close call but not his last. He said I've been walking around in the same shoes for more than a year. They were worn out and didn't give me much support my feet were hurting i was wearing a size 20 but i actually wear a size 22 jesus i've been wearing shoes that were too small for years because something in my mind said wearing a size 22 would make me a bigger freak than i already felt 20 is big enough he wears a 20 fucking 2? 22.

Yeah, that's a lot. What is it, 14 sizes bigger than me? That's a lot, yeah. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. I could get away with squeezing my feet into expensive sneakers and shoes that would eventually mold to my feet, but not these. My feet were hurting all the time. After the car fire, I tried to make my home back on the porch of that house on ellis avenue i found some blankets and i had a sleeping bag and i huddled up in the corner i took off my

shoes and put them put them to the side i fell asleep on the porch and when i woke up one of my shoes was gone one why would you do that to this god damn it i guess i guess as a joke, someone came by and took one shoe. That's fucked up. That's very funny. So I was walking around with one shoe because I couldn't get a size 20 or 22 at the thrift store. Most of my shoes I had to special order.

Yeah, totally. The shoe wasn't that important to me. Getting high was more important. I could have the shoe or not have the shoe. It didn't matter. That's how crazy my life had become. Good Christ. my feet were frozen. I was like, oh no. I looked down and noticed that my two little toes on my right foot were blue. I kept saying, I got to go to the hospital. I went to the hospital. They

looked at them, but they discharged me. I didn't have insurance or Medicaid or cash. So they put me back out on the street. I knew they weren't going to do anything for me. They wrapped my foot in some gauze and bandages and I was good to go. Jesus Christ christ and then he kept going that that's what he said he got to the point where he couldn't walk across the street anymore every step he would make him scream so that's when he went back to the hospital jesus christ what a fucking mess man that is that is horrible so i can't imagine by june 5th 2007 there is a fluff piece on him now. About what? They said it's a quarter past eight on a recent Tuesday night, and Wright is in a groove.

He's cradling his white Fender Stratocaster and has just picked up the riff of the song the Morning Star Community Christian Center band is rehearsing. It's so loud the rehearsal could be an arena show. God is the strength of my heart. Am I pushed forever?

That's what they're saying. Wright showed up 14 months ago. He had moved into a Flynn house facility in Elizabeth and went to City Hall in search of help, a job, financial assistance, anything. He ended up at the desk of a social worker named Stan Neron. And Stan was two years behind Wright at Elizabeth High School and listened as Wright told him the story. He said, I said to myself, this is Neron, I said to myself, this can't be true. Lou wasn't crazy.

He just needed the love and to grow and to be in the right environment. So, yeah, they said that they took him in and he seems to be, you know. And he's playing a concert? Is that what he's doing? Yeah, he's in the church band now. Okay. He's in the church band. Quarter past the amount of toes he has.

He needs a couple more toes. But they said Wright was 34 when he moved in. They got him a room for a week at the Motor Lodge on Morris Avenue. And then helped him get a one-bedroom apartment in Elizabeth. The man had five million dollars. Five million and plenty more to come after that if he was good because that's when salaries really blew up. Yeah.

After the strike and everything he said that this is the first time he'd held keys to his own house which I don't understand because he had a mansion in Utah. It's weird. So Wright asked to sing and play guitar in the band and the band director told him to hear the music and put his own feeling into weird. So Wright asked to sing and play guitar in the band and the band director told him to hear the music and put his own feeling into it.

So, yeah. Now, instead of being a guest of their homeless ministry, he now tries to minister to homeless people. Oh. He says, I know in my heart I'm a good person who's made several bad mistakes and maybe I should have died. That person

I was died, but this new person wants to live. So, yeah, and he meets a woman named Angie and she's a shy hospital secretary who doesn't know shit about basketball. And, you know, they talk about all sorts of shit. And that's like a person who's helping him a lot and doing all of that. And he ended up marrying Angie. Oh, God. parts of shit and that's like a person who's helping him a lot and doing all of that and uh he ended up marrying angie oh god and they settle into a kind of a comfortable life here uh-huh she created a website about lists that's it and uh they have millions of dollars again

that's fucking great she had her own list and now everything's wonderful now remember all those kids he had? Oh dear God. Let's talk about those kids. Okay. Oh no. This is from his book. This is hilarious.

We're almost done here. This is amazing. Okay. One of the casualties of my behavior were the children I had across the country. As you know, I had a lot of girlfriends and several, several of them told me I had their child. I'd been paying child support for most of them, but one of the things I wanted to do

was make sure that I wasn't just meeting a financial obligation. If I had a child out there, I needed to know that child and that the child needed to know he or she has a daddy. Yeah. And if I'd been paying child support for a child, I needed to make sure that child was mine also. Yeah. Remember the first kid, the one that made him turn pro yeah i was a little boy quote once we started with the paternity

tests i realized how much i was out of it the lawyer i hired to sift through this drama made all the women who claimed to have children by me get a paternity test it turned into a couple of bad episodes of of the maury povich show oh first baby, the results were in and I was not the father. God damn it. He turned pro for no reason. He should have stayed at Seton Hall in the first place. Oh, my God. That meant for 13 years I was paying child support and taking care of a child that wasn't mine.

Another man's baby. Wow. Not only had the mother lied that this was her first child, but that baby wasn't even mine. I'd named him Luther Shahid Wright. I gave him the name Shahid after one of my boys had passed away. I even had little Luther's birthday tattooed on my arm. Jesus Christ.

I got another man's baby on my arm. Oh, no. Named him after my dead friend that's amazing had him tattooed not my kid like lamont sanford i was a big dummy apparently your grandma let you watch sanford and son in the 70s god damn it that's awesome oh i knew the mother was a liar after i found out about the other babies but I learned that everything she told me from day one was a lie. She told me she was in the service. That was a lie. She told me she wasn't in the service anymore because she was run over by a tank.

She's so valor. Did she have a flat yet four-foot-wide leg? Because that's what it would look like. Very flat but super wide leg. Come on, man. Have you ever seen Spaceballs? When Rolf's leg, what was his name? Barf.

When Barf's foot gets run over, does it look like that? Like that. Does her foot splatter out the side of shoes? God. Oh, that was a lie. No shit. She said her spleen got crushed and she couldn't have kids that was a lie yeah because the doctor didn't want to see her like this anymore no they're like no more of you here i felt that i wasted my time energy and a lot of money not to mention a tattoo

oh man i never thought about dna the type of man am, if I was sleeping with you and you said you were having a baby, then I was the father. That was it. Yeah. That's not how the world works. When I found out that Luther Jr. wasn't my child, Miss X, as I will call her, didn't apologize. She didn't say, let me pay you back for all the money you gave me over the years. She had that little boy cussing me out and writing me letters, calling me all kinds of names and a deadbeat dad. What? He'd be like, you're not my kid motherfucker and i was never his father and she knew it all along i understand it from his standpoint i understand his pain and anger

he thought i was his daddy and i wasn't there for him but i can't pretend he's not my kid well i feel bad for him i can't be something to him that I'm not. He has to take that up with his mother. Call your mom, dude. We're not related. I just have nothing to do with you. I had another girlfriend from Jersey City whom I was with on and off. I went to grammar school with her, and we had known each other for a long time. We got together when I came back from Utah.

I was out of the pros and smoking a lot of weed and dipping and dabbing with cocaine. She came to me and told me she was pregnant. Once again, I was there for the whole thing. I moved in with her. I changed diapers. I took care of the baby. That's the one where he just took off one day. But the DNA test came back and the results were in

and I was not the father again. Now he doesn't... So don't feel bad about running away. No. She deserved that. That's why she stopped calling you after a while. She was like, well, he might have figured it out. Did he figure it out?

The first one took the sting off it. I was prepared this time. Oh, well, that baby had been named Jeremiah Wright. What a name, right? I don't have any contacts with these women or the kids now. Wow. So, I mean, Jesus, you got to feel bad for him, honestly. He's had a fucking wild life and his toes are gone.

And I feel bad for also his babies that aren't his babies. It's a fucking mess. I feel bad for all these people, Jimmy. But not nearly as bad as I feel for Luther Wright Jr. Oh, God. Executive director of resort at Hilton Head Island Beach and Tennis Resort in South Carolina. Not bad down there. We got Luther

Wright, senior software engineer at Bandwidth Inc. in New York. He went to college and all that. And Luther Wright attended the University of Missouri, Kansas City. And I don't know where he works now but he's wearing a howie long raiders jersey in his picture he's probably a crackhead yeah i think i was security guard he's been a security guard for seven years all right so those

are your mistaken identities a bunch of and there's a lot there's a doctor luther wright junior doctor there's a whole bunch of people here md so 2010 like i said he does his book signings and um yeah you know yeah everybody the one social worker said that when he would walk around with him everybody thought he had a bodyguard like a new guy who's a bodyguard so may 19th 2021 new jersey.com nj.com they do a let's find luther and uh luther is in, I guess, Augusta, Georgia. This is how they put it. I open the creaky aluminum door and step onto a screened in front porch of a single story brick house. A red and yellow cozy coupe toy car sits in the corner.

This that's the first sign that this is the latest stop on a year's long wild goose chase. Two wires stick out in place of a doorbell. So I wrap my knuckles three times on the storm door. An old white woman cracks it open and looks at me through squinted eyes. And before I can say a word, I know I'm wasting my time. I had searched train stations

and Newark homeless shelters in Irvington, gymnasiums in Elizabeth. I heard he was sleeping in an abandoned house on a park bench in the lobby of a Dunkin' Donuts on one cold winter morning. I even cruised the streets of Essex County with an off-duty detective in the dead of night looking for any sign of a legend who had disappeared in plain sight. Luther Wright. Jesus Christ, man.

He, instead of becoming Shaquille O'Neal, became another example of what happens when an athlete can't harness his potential and overcome personal demons. So this lady, he knocked on her door and he said, I'm so sorry to bother you, ma'am. I'm not sure if I have the right address. I'm trying to find Luther Wright. And he said, and that's where it seemed headed to. Wright, a Seton Hall star, seemed like he had peace. He had a home. He had a family.

He turned his passion for music into a DJing gig and even helped write a book about his life then he abandoned it all all that good stuff he did yep disappearing back into a life on the streets and leaving his friends in the basketball community worried that the next time they saw his name it would be in a death notice right oh my god they said he would resurface here and they, usually looking for a few bucks until those unexpected encounters stopped last fall. No one, it seemed, knew where the guy had gone. Who, the old woman says through the cracked door before her eyes, wide with a flash of recognition, and I could feel the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

Oh, yeah, Luther. Check around back, she says. Oh, boy. I leave the porch and walk under a carport to a small cinder block building that was hidden from view from the street. Again, there's no doorbell, so I rap gently. A woman's angry voice cries out,

asking who I was and when I wanted, but before I could answer, the door opens. A hulking figure with a cigarette burnt down to the filter clenched between his meaty finger stands in front of me luther i blurred out before i can even introduce myself you have no idea how many people are looking for you he's living in the back of some lady's house in augusta somewhere smoking cigarettes down to the filter oh not a good sign he said she said he welcomes me into a cluttered living room before retaking his spot on a sofa that looks like it belongs in a dollhouse with him sitting on it.

Few people on earth will ever encounter someone as big as Luther Wright, and it isn't just because of his height. He's built more like an offensive lineman than a basketball player these days, with his belly hanging over the waist of his gym shorts. This, his friends have told me, is a positive sign. When he's fat, it means he's doing good. Yeah. That's how some of them put it. Yeah, his friends have told me, is a positive sign. When he's fat, it means he's doing good. Yeah. That's how some of them put it. Yeah, his crackheads aren't fat usually. He's not cracked out.

Yeah. Luther tends to lose weight and lose a lot of it when he's using drugs. We haven't even finished exchanging pleasantries when he catches me staring at his feet. They're covered in white athletic socks pulled high over his massive calves, but they are flat and thick like the end of a sledgehammer. They cut my toes off, he explains, before I can ask. I caught MRSA. I don't even know how I caught it.

It was eating my feet, eating my toes, and they couldn't save them. I have to be mindful that I don't have the balance I used to have without my toes. They got them all? Not all of them, I guess, but a bunch of them. Yeah, he had MRSA, so I think he's... Oh my God, he should have cut them all off. Maybe he could fit into a 19. Yeah, that's where he could fucking definitely find

shoes. So they said that that's where I steered the conversation as he put out his cigarette to better times, when Wright seemed on a path to athletic greatness. He sits up on the edge of the couch and takes two big gulps from a coffee mug. He's the one asking questions now.

Who won the NCAA tournament? I told him Baylor. What about the women? He is surprised to hear Stanford won theirs. I don't have cable, so I don't watch much basketball anymore, he says. So, yeah, they said that, Jesus Christ, he said, I had heard that Wright was back on the streets in March 2019 when efforts to find him through friends and the basketball community failed. I enlisted the help of Jerry Ramos. He has since retired from the Irvington police but has gotten to know Wright during his 25 years as a detective in the city.

Everyone knew Luther, he said. They knew him because he was homeless. They would need three sets of handcuffs before arresting him. That's the thing. He got arrested a bunch of times in here. We just don't know about it because they don't put arrests of homeless crackheads in the paper. There's no way to know it. And the cops knew who he was because they had to call for backup twice to get another pair of handcuffs. More handcuffs. Oh, my God. Wow. They knew him because other times he'd wander into the police station at night, a smile on his face, and ask for a few bucks. Ramos offered to take me out late one night that March when Wright was more likely to

be on the prowl to see if we could find him. So they checked a bunch. I heard from another cop that they saw him this morning at Dunkin' Donuts, but they didn't have any information. Nobody could find him. So this guy searched and searched and searched. They said, how the fuck did this happen?

How did he end up going back to the streets? Why do you throw it all away? What the fuck is happening? And how do you end up in fucking Augusta, Georgia? Right. And somebody's backyard. Yup.

Um, he, they said, right. Leans back on the couch. He knew the question was coming. And when it does, he points at the recorder on recorder I'm holding and asked me to turn it on. Not off, on. This was something he wants people back home, back at his home state, who are wondering about him to know.

I'm in a good place, he said. I had to get out of Jersey. It was toxic for me. The drugs were taking me down. I couldn't find no exit from that lifestyle. The people, the drugs, the life. He said, I just decided I can't do this anymore. I can't, I can't live in this hazardous, hazardous lifestyle. I was living. Some people, they just can't get out of it. Some people get out, return and die. I've been on all spectrums, all sides, life and death. I figured out that I love life a little bit more than death. You know what I'm saying? And wouldn't give any details about what drove him back to the street except that his life began to spiral when his marriage ended.

Angie, didn't work out. So he lost his DJing gig at Seton Hall Games, he said, after an altercation with a security guard, and he stopped showing up at church too. Jesus. During recovery, he'd been active on social media talking about showing like pitbulls he was raging raising dj gigs and all that kind of shit um then in march 2016 his twitter feed ends with a video of him taking a long hit From a pipe. And saying. I had been 12 years clean.

Oh no. Luther. That's when he started severing connections. From people. On fucking Twitter. That is fucking. Wow. About a year and a half ago.

They said Walker showed up. Wright showed up at his friend Walker's building in Jersey City with a limp. He asked his friend what was wrong and right pulled off a sneaker and a sock. Walker took one look at his foot and almost vomited. He said it was disgusting. I almost passed out. He had this big old hole in his foot. It was just infected.

Just horrible. I was saying to myself, it's only a matter of time. Yeah. Holy fucking shit. You only a matter of time. Yeah. Holy fucking shit. He'll go septic like that. Jesus, God. Yeah. He showed up at an Elizabeth High practice for basketball, and he acted erratically,

so they asked him not to come back anymore. He was spotted walking barefoot down Broad Street in Newark, loudly singing gospel music. barefoot down Broad Street in Newark loudly singing gospel music. He was caught on a video riding a motorized shopping cart until police intervened. He could really

sing, nobody knows. He could do the shit out of that one. That'd be right. So he's back out on the street in and out of hospitals. His sister saw a Facebook post ridic ridic, ridiculing him. And she reached out to their brother and her sister. Basically they said, you're getting the fuck out of here.

Um, he had his remaining toes amputated. Um, Oh no, he didn't. He didn't. He was going to, they were going to, uh, amputate his toes and didn't. And, um, yeah. So he said, when I walked to the door i saw him sitting on the couch and cried her sister said i was so happy i was going to take care of him he's here with me and we're good so then he had uh videos that he would do on his sister's page from shit

and social media and who the fuck knows that's where he is now i I mean, what are you going to do? That's the end of it, huh? We don't know. That was 2021. Yeah. He's still alive. That's good. But, I mean, that's about it.

A little bit, this is funny, we'll take from his net worth here. Yeah. One says this, Luther Wright is one of the most popular and richest basketball player who was born on September 22, 1971. It sounds like there were no other basketball players born on that day. That's it. The only one. Has a net worth of approximately $5 million, which we know that's – yeah. Then another one has his net worth of $1.6 million.

He lives in a cinder block house behind an old lady with with two toes like with two toes and he has a net worth of two toes two toes and a cigarette filter is his net worth that's not a lot not a lot so the man's lost so much he's lost it all that is luther right holy a terrible story of what could have been and what never was and a fucking mess honestly it's just a sad story i can't imagine what a wild fucking seven foot two didn't work so there you go everybody if you like that story tell everyone about it get on whatever app you're listening on and give us five stars say some nice things also spread the word tell your friends tell whatever the fuck i don't know just help out and make the

show go further so there you go do that keep hanging out with us uh you definitely want to head over to shut up and give me murder.com all the merch is there tickets for live shows for swell town murder are going to be on sale for 2024. Come out and do that. You certainly want Patreon. Patreon.com slash Crime and Sports. All your bonus material. It's all there? Anybody $5 a month, you get hundreds of back episodes. New ones every other week. One Crime and Sports, one Small Town Murder.

This week's a little different. The only week of the year where we only put out one is Christmas because we have families and we like to spend time with them. My son comes from across the country. It's kind of nice. So we're going to do that. We're only going to put out one episode, but it'll be a banger. That's how we do it.

We're going to talk about the garden, this weird alleged cult commune survivalist fucking it mixes hippies with survivalist Marines and they go to say it's the weirdest fucking group you're ever going to find. The only thing they have in common is that society is going to fall apart someday. So they're going to fucking, they're going to ready. Well,

it's so there we go. That's patrion.com slash crime and sports. It's wild stuff. It's on HBO max. If you want to check it out there, also follow us on social media at crime and sports on Twitter and Facebook at small town murder on Instagram. That's where you get everything like that. by the way with your patreon you also get a shout out

yeah where jimmy is gonna fuck your name up hardcore and uh you know what i think it's about time for that jimmy jimmy fuck up everybody's name for me i want to hear it and i think it'll be fun let's hear it right now this week week's executive producers are Kyle Norweg, Erica Blank, or Blank, maybe, and Jordan Bennett. Thank you guys so much for everything you do. Thank you. You are wonderful. Awesome fucking people. Other producers this week are Peyton Meadows, Joanna Ryder, Tyler Frazier Music, Janice Hill,

Scarlett Horby, Sinesta Vez Jones on their Jacksonville honeymoon. Good for you. I don't know if they're real people. They may be joking. Jake Brown's brother, Caleb, passed away. He had an accidental overdose. That sucks. Jake's family is – Jesus, I'm so sorry.

Sorry to hear that. That's horrible. Hang in there, Jake. You're a good kid. Other producers are S. Meyer. I imagine that's Seth Meyer. Tori Brock, Samantha Sennett, Sennett maybe? Jason would know the last name. Jenna

Kluke. Geig? Geig? Maloy? What? Christine would know the last name. Bianca Arter, Kelly Sachs Grousteen, Jack Treffery. Treffery? Chris Bowden, Marica Franklin, Rashid Morris, Jane would know the last name. Chris

Clark, Debbie Heather Shaw, Amy James, Sarai would know the name, Big Kahuna, Julia with no last name, Dame Beck, Courtney Hornsby, Reagan France, TJ Curry, Brianne Soldovsky, Robert Von Schmidly, Brandy Heimbrock, Katie W., Jess R. Howard, Melissa Green, Nathan Falk, Reese Page, Fiona Westrup-Evans, Christopher Green, and Jennifer Begin? Benign? Benign. Benign. Benign. Benign. Possible.

Karen Lapina, Morgan with no last name, Chanda Mooney-Ham, Avery Harper, Dustin Iacovizisi. That's not right. Anti- anita peterson anti peterson anti peterson misty uh stefani mist i don't know is this a typo i don't know heather oster uh nuts nuts hugs not drugs uh amanda smith will willis wood dakota coin mccorkle's uh m McCorkle's McCorkle's Bar and Grill oh it's a fake Instagram account that somebody has AI'd

a bunch of pictures of people eating in a restaurant at a bar and grill it's actually very funny Miranda Elrod Ashley somebody donated in their name Miranda I imagine it's a person that owns the Instagram account Ashley Alley Jennifer Thabo Thabo their name. Miranda, I imagine it's a person that owns the Instagram account. Ashley, Allie, Jennifer,

Thabo, Thabo, Thabo, Thabo, Farrah Roberts, Sarah Moore, Erica, Erica, Bowman, Bowman, Roger Ben, Mike Morgan, Lana Emrick, Jolene Vaughn, Chris D, Megan with no last name, Jacob

Wilson, Carrie with no last name, Jessica Sheldon, Carrie Ann Heckman, Holly Rowland, Caitlin King, Andrew Farrell, Alana, Alana Logan, Lily with no last name, Sarah with no last name, Stephanie with no last name, Ellie, Ellie, Ellie, Ellie, Ellie, Ellie Wakasugi, Jared Wilson, Greg the Sound Guy, Jen Wright, Amy with no last last name LK, this show brought to you by the letters L and K, Deb Merch Carl Toussaint Toussaint, Toysent Holly Drew, Alyssa Edwards One of those Elizabeth Golden, Emily Cook, Chris

with no last name, Laura Martin, Megan Wood Toby Geisbrecht Holiday Deese, Brian Butler, Katie with no last name, Raina McCoy, T Deese, Brian Butler, Katie with no last name, Raina McCoy, Tigger with no last name, Jen with no last name, Ash Squatch 91, Dylan Hall, Jennifer Zimmerman, Mike with no last name,

Catherine Haney, M. Shuttner, Elise Eliz, Eliz with no last name, Paul, Powell, Paul Kreziskezuk, Sonia with no last name. Tommy M.F. Herrera. Abigail Tuning.

Oh, motherfucking Herrera. Abigail Tuning. Motherfucking Herrera. Bailey with no last name. Sharon McGregor. Darren with no last name. David Hillen. Jeremy Williams.

Jeff with no last name. Rallamas with no last name. Justin Maine. Kim Rapinoe. Rhonda Wall. Heather Hoyle. Mitchie Tyson. Mychie. Mitchie Tyson, Mikey, Mickey maybe, Jessica Camps, Jamie McGinnis, Andy Fields, Lauren Christie, Amelia Poole, Teresa, Teresa Wishnew, Kevin Callanan, Olivia Rosler, Danny Diamond, Bobby Shutch, Brent Al- Oh, boy. Albert.

Robert Carter. No Mama Marlia. Linda Kosak. Kristen Derkens. You got it. Jeremy Wright. Susie Grant. Sandy McGeachy.

Margaret with no last name. JC. Mary Catherine Kozenza, born in the 90s. Paul Lenz. Amy Latham. Latham Moore. Rayon. Rayon?

Rayon Watts? Like the fucking fabric? Jordan Van Westen. Kaisa Jansen. Arbs. Arbs? A? Christine Jower?

Tori. Look at your face. You're so confused. Tori Miller? Jennifer Koons. Michael Korspisz You're so confused. Tori Miller. Jennifer Koons. Michael Korsbisik. Christopher Kummer. Kummer.

Jesus. Kenny Smith. Rhonda Brodmeier. Teresa Martin. Shiet. Shiet. Shiet. Shate.

Shady Williams. Trey Lawler. Lawyer. Sean Combs. Probably not that one. Jocelyn with no last name. Raquel with no last name. Clint Barnett. Dana Lauren. one. Jocelyn with no last name. Raquel with no last name. Clint Barnett, Dana Lauren, Rebecca Gardner.

Sabrina with no last name. Nathan Rose, Bianca Sternmaker, Justin Brockway, Jessica Nichols Seymour, Alex Peterson, Amana and Paul. Ezra Coleman, the not as great Muta. It's a wrestler. It, the not as great Muta. It's a wrestler. It's the not as great one. Yeah, not as great as Muta. Sarah Cole, Kelly Corbell, Autumn Perez-Diaz, Robin Marie, Heather Abrams, Jamie Lynn Single,

Ali Myers, Claire Stuckel, Kay Thomas, Dr. D'Amico, D'Amique Thompson, Catherine Pakes, Cindy G., Taye Summer, Gary Ferguson, Jamie Price, Rodrigo Alonso, Kennedy Parker, Jacob Nielsen, Kevin K23, Angel Blackburn, Joe DeSalvo, Mahjong Hackensack, Bubba with no last name, Cassandra with no last name, Bobby Luck, Matty Zero, Feral Goblin, Tyler Archuleta, Robert, Roberta Weber, Weber maybe, Alan Nicely, Nick Lee, Rebecca Stanovich, and all of our patrons. You're fucking incredible. Thank you so much, you wonderful, wonderful sons of bitches. Thank you. Jimmy, good job reading them this week, too. Those were some tough names. He was flowing. You wonderful, wonderful sons of bitches. Thank you, Jimmy. Good job reading them this week too.

Those are some tough name. He was flowing. You were flowing for a while there. I'm telling you. So thank you for all that you do for us. We really, really appreciate it. We hope you love the episodes. We'll keep making them,

especially the bonuses and everything like that. So keep coming back and seeing us. You want to follow us on social media as people. You can go to shut up and give me murder.com drop down menu find it all i am sick and i feel like i'm gonna die so i we're gonna end this right i feel horrible so i'm gonna go die now and live from the crime and sports studios we will hopefully see you next week 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.

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