Orlando Mendez-Valdez, who once lived in a shack in the barrio, grew up to star at Lanier, Western Kentucky and a professional basketball league in Mexico.
An unpaved road led the coach to a dark corner of 78207. The road took him past a creek and a cemetery to the front door of a shotgun house. Railroad tracks sliced through the backyard. Gravestones rested across the front yard. Inside the shanty, a fatherless boy slept on a mattress. His mother answered a knock and woke her son. “The team is counting on you, Orlando,” the coach said. “It is not good to shirk responsibility.
The dirt road in 78207, now paved, holds warm and terrifying memories of a 25-year climb to the Hall. Young Orlando saw a train roll over a man lying on the tracks behind his house, severing a leg. He awoke to a woman at his door, bleeding from stab wounds. He saw a man get shot after a poker game next door, then collapse and die 7 feet in front of him. “When Orlando came to live with me,” Abel recalled, “he was scared. You could tell he had a lot of trauma.
Lanier High School’s Orlando Mendez-Valdez is recognized at the SAISD Athletic Hall of Fame induction ceremony Saturday.Today, Orlando lives in a gated community. An entrepreneur and real estate agent, he serves as interim general manager of the Mexico City Capitanes in the NBA’s G League. Though Orlando retired from pro ball in 2023, he remains grateful for the game and the people who inspired him in the barrio: The Lanier varsity coach who shaped his talent.
“I knew he was going to be a good player,” Lanier coach Rudy Bernal said. “But I did not see that coming.”
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