Sports as tragedy

It's not often that a newspaper article completely changes your view of someone you thought you knew about.

I'd always thought of Larry Hughes as a knucklehead. Saw him as one of those flashy new-school NBA players living the hip-hop life, the kind who leave school early and despite great talent are uneven in their performance, shoot poorly and lack discipline.

Well, I was totally wrong about the guy. Not the on-court numbers, but the person.

The Associated Press: Cavaliers starting guard Larry Hughes will remain with his grieving family and miss Game 3 against the Detroit Pistons on Saturday following the sudden death of his 20-year-old brother.

Hughes is in St. Louis mourning the loss of his brother, Justin, who died Thursday after a lifelong battle with heart problems. Born with a heart defect, Justin Hughes had a heart transplant in 1997.

Along with his mother, Larry Hughes helped raise his brother, whose wake is scheduled for Monday at about the same time the Cavaliers play the Pistons in Game 4 of their best-of-seven series. ...

Larry Hughes centered his life around his little brother. He was recruited by several elite college basketball programs while in high school, but chose St. Louis University so he could be near him.

When Justin's medical bills became overwhelming, Larry Hughes left college after one season for the NBA. He signed with the Cavaliers as a free agent last summer partly because of the nearby Cleveland Clinic.

In 2000, Hughes and his mother, Vanessa, formed The Larry Hughes Foundation to provide financial and emotional support to families of organ donors and recipients.

I did a quick google search, and found more on Larry and his brother.

Marty Burns in Sports Illustrated: But when Larry was seven, his parents had another son, Justin, who was born with a congenital heart defect and would undergo a heart transplant at age 10. Larry would come home from school every day to help take care of his little brother while Vanessa was at work.

"Larry was a gift from God," Vanessa said of those early days. "It's like we grew up together. That's how I look at it. I was so young. I didn't know what I was doing. We struggled through it together."

On Wednesday I placed a call to Vanessa. I had met her back in 2000 while writing a feature story about Larry for Sports Illustrated. I remembered how close she was to her son, then a member of the Philadelphia 76ers, and the special bond they had shared. It was a relationship unique even by NBA standards.

Vanessa answered the phone and immediately agreed to an interview. She was proud of Larry and wanted the world to know it. But first she wanted to tell me about Justin, who had been experiencing complications with his heart since last June, and how he was handling his latest setback.

"He goes through moments when he's scared," she said. "He'll say, 'Mom, I don't want to die.' So we talk about it. He wants to know, is it OK to feel that way? I tell him, 'Yes, of course.' But he's [20 years old] now and he understands. We just try to talk through it. He's strong, but we both have our moments.

"The thing we try to remember is that every day is a gift from God. So we just keep praying."

Vanessa went on to say that she and Larry had arranged to take Justin to Cleveland next week to get some more tests done and to see about getting him on the list for another transplant.

"We're pretty much day-to-day right now," she said. "But our spirits are high. Our hopes are high."

Less than 24 hours later, as I was sitting at my keyboard working on this story, I got the news: Justin Hughes had died. ...

Somehow Larry avoided the gangs that were prominent in the area and never complained even though Vanessa estimates that she moved the family five or six times before Larry turned 13.

"We lived in the projects. The gangs were popular. So I just kept moving," she explained. "You can't run from crime, but I'd find someplace else. That's how I did it. I just tried to keep him protected some way. It might have been wrong, but I didn't have a book on how to do it." ...

Everybody who knows Larry knows how close he is to Vanessa. They know how he used to send her a card not only on Mother's Day but also on Father's Day each year, because she served both roles in his life.

AP photo of Larry Hughes during an NBA playoff game against his old team the Washington Wizards by Mark Duncan.