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Wright?s Shelby State Junior College team finished third at the 1990 tournament. His daughter, Adriane, is second from the left.
MORE THAN A COACH
When Herb Wright was injured, it could have been the end of his sports involvement. Instead, he made the adjustment and conquered the challenges in front of him.
View ForumIt was his ability to jump that earned the 6-foot 5-inch Herb Wright a basketball scholarship to the University of Mississippi after two years as a standout with Shelby State Community College (Memphis). He then played professionally for two teams in Finland but returned in the off-season each summer to his hometown of Memphis to coach the neighborhood kids.
Through the summer seasons of his playing days, Wright supervised gymnasiums for the city park commission, and this meant keeping unsavory characters away. In 1983, while overseeing the Sheffield High School gym, a basketball game, some spoil-sports, and their revenge left Wright without his ability to walk or use his God-given gift to soar.
?That particular day, I put some guys out for being rowdy,? Wright says. ?As a matter of fact, my sister and daughter played ?em and beat ?em. And it kind of hurt their spirits. They came back later with guns and started shooting. I caught a bullet in my spinal cord, and that?s what caused me to be in a wheelchair.?
Instead of constantly asking himself Why me? Wright believed if he worked hard and did his best, something positive would result. Because he had a wife and kids, Wright knew he couldn?t just throw his hands up in the air and give in to his disability. He expressed those feelings then and to this day when he says, ?It?s not all about you, it?s about the family. That?s what I preach to all my kids?family is more important than anything.?
Four months after his injury, ?Coach? Wright, as he was indelibly tagged, went to work again when he volunteered as assistant coach for White Station High School, where his sister Gayle played basketball. Then, less than a year later, Wright was named Shelby State (since renamed Southwest Tennessee Community College) women?s basketball head coach. With that, Wright had an opportunity to coach his sister and daughter at the junior-college level, while keeping a watchful eye as a father and coach on son Lorenzen, who was making a name for himself as a senior basketball standout at Booker T. Washington High School. Twice in the first three years of Coach Wright?s tenure, Shelby worked its way to the national junior-college tournament in Tyler, Tex.
Meanwhile, Lorenzen sprouted to 6-feet 11-inches and elected to stay home and attend the University of Memphis on a basketball scholarship. Often father and son would get together and study game tapes, and Lorenzen never lacked for pointers from Dad.
By the end of Lorenzen?s sophomore year with the Tigers, his level of play skyrocketed to the point where he was projected a lock as a first-round NBA draft choice. So he turned pro after that season and, sure enough, the Los Angeles Clippers made him their first choice, the seventh overall selection in the 1996 draft. Wright joined Lorenzen on the West Coast, not as a parent who wanted to live off the richly-rewarded NBA rookie but as a father who was concerned about all the sudden money in the hands of a 20-year-old in a city that could eat him alive.
The move meant giving up his duties as the women?s junior-college-team head coach. In California, Wright again joined the ranks as a volunteer assistant coach when he helped out at Westchester High School (Los Angeles area), where his youngest son attended.
Wright knew he would eventually return to Memphis. And he did, three years after Lorenzen matured as a player and a person.
To Wright, it seemed like a godsend last summer when the NBA?s Vancouver Grizzlies announced they intended to move, with the league?s approval, to Memphis. News followed soon thereafter that Lorenzen, now a veteran with three seasons in Los Angeles?and, after he was traded, two in Atlanta?was dealt again. Unbelievably, this time, to his hometown team.
On October 9, with Wright watching close by among more than 14,000 fans, there was Lorenzen playing at The Pyramid in Memphis, once the site of his home games in college and now his NBA court. The Grizzlies played their first game ever there, a pre-season contest in which they beat the Portland Trailblazers.
Though he is still heavily involved in basketball coaching and conditioning, Wright is also diving in head first as a restaurant owner. This means working with the city in a different manner than the days of the park commission, codes, and ordinances.
Don?t think for a second, however, that there is no basketball connection with the restaurant venture. The establishment, at 3108 Mendenhall in the southeast part of Memphis, is called Lorenzen Wright?s Sports Caf?. It is a 6,000-square-foot building previously run by Wright?s cousin, with Lorenzen as part owner. The restaurant specializes in chicken wings.
Despite taking on the daily grind of running a restaurant, Wright isn?t straying far from the path he sought after recovering from his gunshot wound. These days he works more as a personal basketball and conditioning coach. With his long-time friend and business associate, Dean Lotz, who owns a Memphis gym, Wright works with players ranging from middle-school age to current, prospective pros. The task is the same on all levels: Prepare them in the best way possible for basketball and for life.
Greg Echlin is a freelance sports journalist based in Kansas City. He frequently travels to cover major sporting events and profile sports figures
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