Lorenzen Vern-Gagne Wright (November 4, 1975 – July 19, 2010) was an American professional

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

player for 13 seasons in the

National Basketball Association The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America. The league is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United S ...

. He was drafted seventh overall in the

1996 NBA draft The 1996 NBA draft was the 50th draft in the National Basketball Association (NBA). It was held on June 26, 1996 at Continental Airlines Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey. In this draft, NBA teams took turns selecting college basketball play ...

by the

Los Angeles Clippers The Los Angeles Clippers are an American professional basketball team based in Los Angeles. The Clippers compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the Pacific Division in the league's Western Conference. The Clipper ...

and played for the

Atlanta Hawks The Atlanta Hawks are an American professional basketball team based in Atlanta. The Hawks compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Eastern Conference (NBA), Eastern Conference Southeast Division (NBA), Sou ...

Memphis Grizzlies The Memphis Grizzlies (referred to locally as the Grizz) are an American professional basketball team based in Memphis, Tennessee. The Grizzlies compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Western Conference ...

Sacramento Kings The Sacramento Kings are an American professional basketball team based in Sacramento, California. The Kings compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the Western Conference Pacific Division. The Kings are the oldest ...

, and

Cleveland Cavaliers The Cleveland Cavaliers (often referred to as the Cavs) are an American professional basketball team based in Cleveland. The Cavaliers compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Eastern Conference (NBA), Ea ...

. Wright went missing on July 18, 2010, and was found shot to death 10 days later. In December 2017, his ex-wife Sherra Wright-Robinson was charged with facilitating his murder; a year and a half later, she pled guilty. Her friend, Billy Ray Turner, was convicted of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, and attempted first-degree murder in March 2022, and received a life sentence in prison. Widespread coverage of his disappearance, as well as his status as a popular Memphis figure, led to the prosecution of his murder being highly publicized in Memphis.

Early life and college

Raised in Oxford, Mississippi, Wright played for Lafayette High School in Mississippi before moving to Memphis, where he spent his senior year playing for Booker T. Washington High School. He played all levels of basketball in Memphis – high school, collegiate, and professional. His father, Herb, was a professional basketball player who competed in Finland, and once had a tryout with the

Utah Jazz The Utah Jazz are an American professional basketball team based in Salt Lake City. The Jazz compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Western Conference (NBA), Western Conference, Northwest Division (NBA), ...

. When Wright was seven years old, Herb was working for the Memphis Police Department when he was paralyzed by a gunshot to the back. Wright was recognized as a Third Team All-American by the Associated Press as a sophomore at the University of Memphis. Wright was a member of

Kappa Alpha Psi Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. () is a historically African American fraternity. Since the fraternity's founding on January 5, 1911 at Indiana University Bloomington, the fraternity has never restricted membership on the basis of color, creed ...

Professional career

Wright was selected seventh overall by the

in the

1996 NBA Draft The 1996 NBA draft was the 50th draft in the National Basketball Association (NBA). It was held on June 26, 1996 at Continental Airlines Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey. In this draft, NBA teams took turns selecting college basketball play ...

out of the University of Memphis. On April 26, 1997, as a rookie, Wright scored what would be a postseason career-high 17 points in a Game 2 loss against the

. The Clippers would go on to lose the series. The following season, on December 26, 1997, Wright scored a season-high 32 points and grabbed 15 rebounds in an overtime loss to the

Los Angeles Lakers The Los Angeles Lakers are an American professional basketball team based in Los Angeles. The Lakers compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Western Conference Pacific Division. The Lakers play their ...

. Wright moved on to the Atlanta Hawks in 1999, and averaged a career high 12.4 points per game with them during the 2000-01 NBA season. He was traded to the Memphis Grizzlies on June 27, 2001. On January 6, 2003, Wright scored 20 points and grabbed 14 rebounds in a 106-102 win over the

New Orleans Hornets New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created. New or NEW may refer to: Music * New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz Albums and EPs * ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013 * ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator, ...

. Wright returned to the Hawks in 2006. On February 16, 2008, he was involved in a multiplayer trade, going from Atlanta to Sacramento for

Mike Bibby Michael Bibby (born May 13, 1978) is an American former professional basketball player. He played professionally for 14 seasons in the National Basketball Association (NBA). He last served as the head coach for Hillcrest Prep Academy in Phoenix, ...

. He held career averages of 8.0 points and 6.4 rebounds per game, playing in 778 (793 including

playoffs The playoffs, play-offs, postseason or finals of a sports league are a competition played after the regular season by the top competitors to determine the league champion or a similar accolade. Depending on the league, the playoffs may be eithe ...

) NBA games over 13 seasons.

Personal life

Wright founded the Sierra Simone Wright Scholarship Fund after the death of his infant daughter in March 2003. During the summer of 2003, he returned to the University of Memphis to finish his degree. During his first stint in Atlanta, Wright and three other Memphis-native NBA players (

Todd Day Todd Fitzgerald Day (born January 7, 1970) is an American former professional basketball player and current head coach at Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas. Day is the all-time leading scorer at the University of Arkansas, and pla ...

Penny Hardaway Anfernee Deon "Penny" Hardaway (born July 18, 1971) is an American college basketball coach and former professional player who is the head coach of the Memphis Tigers men's basketball team in the American Athletic Conference (AAC). Hardaway pla ...

, and

Elliot Perry Elliot Lamonte Perry (born March 28, 1969) is an American former professional basketball player. The 6'0" (1.83 m) point guard from Memphis State University (now the University of Memphis), was selected with the tenth pick of the second round (3 ...

) provided financial assistance to Travis Butler, a Memphis orphan whose tragic story garnered national attention.

Disappearance and death

According to his ex-wife (who was later convicted of facilitating his murder), Wright left his home in

Collierville, Tennessee Collierville is a town in Shelby County, Tennessee, United States, and a suburb located in the Memphis metropolitan area. With a population of 51,324 in the 2020 census, Collierville is the third largest municipality in the county after Memphis ...

on the night of July 18, 2010, with drugs and an unspecified amount of money, and was not seen or heard from again. His family filed a missing-persons report on July 22. After Wright's body was found on July 28 in a wooded area on Callis-Cutoff Road just west of Hacks Cross Road, a

9-1-1 , usually written 911, is an emergency telephone number for the United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Palau, Argentina, Philippines, Jordan, as well as the North American Numbering Plan (NANP), one of eight N11 codes. Like other emergency nu ...

call reportedly had been received from his cell phone in the early morning of July 19 by the 911 dispatch center in

Germantown, Tennessee Germantown is a city in Shelby County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 41,333 at the 2020 census. Germantown is a suburb of Memphis, bordering it to the east-southeast. Germantown was founded in 1841 by mostly German emigrants. The ...

. The caller was speaking with the dispatcher when 11 gunshots rang out. The dispatcher did not report the call to her supervisor until eight days later, hindering the police investigation and resulting in a payout to Wright's family. The case was investigated as a homicide. Wright's body is buried in Calvary Cemetery in Memphis, Tennessee. In 2011, a reward for information related to the killing stood at $21,000; the state of Tennessee contributed $10,000, the city of Memphis and the Memphis Grizzlies each promised $5,000, and

Crime Stoppers Crime Stoppers or Crimestoppers is a community program that helps people to provide anonymous information about criminal activity. Often managed by non-profit groups or the police, it operates separately from the emergency telephone number sys ...

promised $1,000. On November 9, 2017, the gun believed to have been used to murder Wright was found in a lake in

Walnut, Mississippi Walnut is a town in Tippah County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 771 at the 2010 census. History Walnut was established in 1872 on land belonging to Henry Hopkins, an early settler. The town was initially known as "Hopkins," b ...

. On December 5, 2017, Billy R. Turner, a landscaper and church deacon at Mt. Olive No. 1 Missionary Baptist Church in Collierville, was indicted on first-degree murder charges and held on $1 million bond. On December 15, 2017, Wright's ex-wife Sherra Wright-Robinson was arrested in

Riverside, California Riverside is a city in and the county seat of Riverside County, California, United States, in the Inland Empire metropolitan area. It is named for its location beside the Santa Ana River. It is the most populous city in the Inland Empire an ...

in connection with the murder. Wright-Robinson was a former member of Turner's church. The seven-year investigation into his death was one of the Memphis Police Department's more high-profile unsolved cases. Wright's mother, Deborah Marion, told ''The Commercial Appeal'' that a police official told her Wright-Robinson would be charged with first-degree murder, the same charge Turner faced. Marion said she believes her former daughter-in-law was motivated by money, specifically a life insurance policy for $1 million held by Lorenzen Wright. In a 2015 article in ''The Commercial Appeal'', Wright-Robinson explained how she inquired early in the investigation whether she was a suspect. "They was like, no, you know," she said. "It was just kind of a person of interest. They said that the list was long and wide and they didn't have any real suspects, if you want to quote that." Records showed that on August 1, 2010, Memphis police searched her home and found burned pieces of metal and a letter addressed to Lorenzen Wright and her, but law enforcement at that time did not say what the items meant to investigators. In 2014, Wright-Robinson agreed to a confidential settlement of a dispute in circuit court over how she spent the $1 million of insurance money meant to benefit their six children. On July 25, 2019, Wright-Robinson pled guilty to facilitation of first-degree murder in the shooting death of Lorenzen Wright and was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

NBA career statistics

Regular season

, - , style="text-align:left;", , style="text-align:left;", L.A. Clippers , 77 , , 51 , , 25.1 , , .481 , , .250 , , .587 , , 6.1 , , .6 , , .6 , , .8 , , 7.3 , - , style="text-align:left;", , style="text-align:left;", L.A. Clippers , 69 , , 38 , , 30.0 , , .445 , , .000 , , .659 , , 8.8 , , .8 , , .8 , , 1.3 , , 9.0 , - , style="text-align:left;", , style="text-align:left;", L.A. Clippers , 48 , , 15 , , 23.6 , , .458 , , .000 , , .692 , , 7.5 , , .7 , , .5 , , .8 , , 6.6 , - , style="text-align:left;", , style="text-align:left;",

Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...

, 75 , , 0 , , 16.1 , , .499 , , .333 , , .644 , , 4.1 , , .3 , , .4 , , .5 , , 6.0 , - , style="text-align:left;", , style="text-align:left;",

, 71 , , 46 , , 28.0 , , .448 , , .000 , , .718 , , 7.5 , , 1.2 , , .6 , , .9 , , 12.4 , - , style="text-align:left;", , style="text-align:left;",

Memphis Memphis most commonly refers to: * Memphis, Egypt, a former capital of ancient Egypt * Memphis, Tennessee, a major American city Memphis may also refer to: Places United States * Memphis, Alabama * Memphis, Florida * Memphis, Indiana * Memp ...

, 43 , , 33 , , 29.1 , , .459 , , .000 , , .569 , , 9.4 , , 1.0 , , .7 , , .5 , , 12.0 , - , style="text-align:left;", , style="text-align:left;",

, 70 , , 49 , , 28.3 , , .454 , , .000 , , .659 , , 7.5 , , 1.1 , , .7 , , .8 , , 11.4 , - , style="text-align:left;", , style="text-align:left;",

, 65 , , 46 , , 25.8 , , .439 , , .000 , , .733 , , 6.8 , , 1.1 , , .7 , , .9 , , 9.4 , - , style="text-align:left;", , style="text-align:left;",

, 80 , , 77 , , 28.6 , , .469 , , .000 , , .662 , , 7.7 , , 1.1 , , .7 , , .9 , , 9.6 , - , style="text-align:left;", , style="text-align:left;",

, 78 , , 58 , , 21.7 , , .478 , , .000 , , .564 , , 5.1 , , .6 , , .7 , , .6 , , 5.8 , - , style="text-align:left;", , style="text-align:left;",

, 67 , , 31 , , 15.4 , , .448 , , .000 , , .281 , , 3.2 , , .6 , , .4 , , .4 , , 2.6 , - , style="text-align:left;", , style="text-align:left;",

, 13 , , 1 , , 11.4 , , .294 , , .000 , , .500 , , 2.8 , , .2 , , .2 , , .2 , , 1.0 , - , style="text-align:left;", , style="text-align:left;",

Sacramento ) , image_map = Sacramento County California Incorporated and Unincorporated areas Sacramento Highlighted.svg , mapsize = 250x200px , map_caption = Location within Sacramento ...

, 5 , , 0 , , 2.6 , , .250 , , .000 , , .000 , , .2 , , .2 , , .0 , , .0 , , .4 , - , style="text-align:left;", , style="text-align:left;",

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

, 17 , , 2 , , 7.4 , , .370 , , .000 , , .375 , , 1.5 , , .2 , , .2 , , .3 , , 1.4 , - class="sortbottom" , style="text-align:center;" colspan="2", Career , 778 , , 447 , , 23.8 , , .459 , , .069 , , .645 , , 6.4 , , .8 , , .6 , , .7 , , 8.0

Playoffs

, - , style="text-align:left;",

1997 File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; ''Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of t ...

, style="text-align:left;", L.A. Clippers , 3 , , 3 , , 30.7 , , .406 , , .000 , , 1.000 , , 7.3 , , .7 , , 1.0 , , .7 , , 10.3 , - , style="text-align:left;",

2004 2004 was designated as an International Year of Rice by the United Nations, and the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery and its Abolition (by UNESCO). Events January * January 3 – Flash Airlines Flight 6 ...

, style="text-align:left;",

, 4 , , 4 , , 25.0 , , .435 , , .000 , , .333 , , 4.3 , , .5 , , 1.0 , , .5 , , 5.5 , - , style="text-align:left;",

2005 File:2005 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico; the Funeral of Pope John Paul II is held in Vatican City; "Me at the zoo", the first video ever to be uploaded to YouTube; Eris was discovered in ...

, style="text-align:left;",

, 4 , , 4 , , 21.3 , , .571 , , .000 , , .500 , , 5.0 , , 2.3 , , .3 , , .3 , , 8.3 , - , style="text-align:left;",

2006 File:2006 Events Collage V1.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2006 Winter Olympics open in Turin; Twitter is founded and launched by Jack Dorsey; The Nintendo Wii is released; Montenegro 2006 Montenegrin independence referendum, votes to declare ...

, style="text-align:left;",

, 4 , , 0 , , 21.5 , , .611 , , .000 , , .700 , , 5.0 , , .8 , , .0 , , 1.0 , , 7.3 , - class="sortbottom" , style="text-align:center;" colspan="2", Career , 15 , , 11 , , 24.2 , , .495 , , .000 , , .652 , , 5.3 , , 1.1 , , .5 , , .6 , , 7.7

References

External links

*
NBA.com profile

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wright, Lorenzen 1975 births 2010 deaths 2010 murders in the United States 2010s missing person cases African-American basketball players All-American college men's basketball players American men's basketball players Atlanta Hawks players Basketball players from Memphis, Tennessee Centers (basketball) Cleveland Cavaliers players Deaths by firearm in Tennessee Formerly missing people Los Angeles Clippers draft picks Los Angeles Clippers players Male murder victims McDonald's High School All-Americans Medalists at the 1995 Summer Universiade Memphis Grizzlies players Memphis Tigers men's basketball players Missing person cases in Tennessee Murdered African-American people Parade High School All-Americans (boys' basketball) People murdered in Tennessee Power forwards (basketball) Sacramento Kings players Sportspeople from Oxford, Mississippi Universiade gold medalists for the United States Universiade medalists in basketball 20th-century African-American sportspeople 21st-century African-American sportspeople

Early life and college

Professional career

Personal life

Disappearance and death

See also

NBA career statistics

Regular season

Playoffs

References

External links