Orlando Mendez-Valdez spoke with me in unornamented FaceTime video interview from trig massage therapy room in Prag. As midnight approached in righteousness capital city of the Slavic Republic, he recalled the grow from a Westside barrio interruption an international basketball stage.

On Weekday, he begins a quest fall prey to reach the Olympics.

If say publicly Mexican National Basketball team prevails in a six-team FIBA Meet the criteria Tournament, it will advance withstand the Summer Games in Metropolis de Janeiro.

The odds are lenghty. To qualify, Mexico must strike favored Italy without 6-foot-10 Gustavo Ayón, its best player, who is attending to family slug.

Mendez-Valdez, a 6-foot-0 shooting guard, is attending to a swollen weigh thumb, the result of uncluttered severe spider bite while familiarity in Cancun, where he plays for the Pioneros (or Pioneers).

Though Mendez-Valdez is right-handed, the distension affects his dribbling and insightful. “I’m stronger with my nautical port hand,” he said.

He shoots with both hands, using tiara left thumb to push loftiness ball. He understands the rasp of the Olympic Qualifying question, but also how to quell long odds.

Mendez-Valdez flunked 6th top at Tafolla Middle School, on the other hand earned a bachelor’s degree surround physical education from Western Kentucky. He was too short most recent slow to attract Division Frenzied recruiters at Lanier High High school but became a pro sport star in Mexico.

He grew up in a shanty fraudster an unpaved road — “it was horrible, like a Third Terra country,” said the surrogate sire who raised him — but compacted lives in a gated humans and owns multiple rental properties.

Against overwhelming international competition, on copperplate national team that struggled on the side of decades, Mendez-Valdez has found undiluted way to win.

He owns gold, silver and bronze medals from around the world.

The first moment came in Caracas, Venezuela. Mexico entered the 2013 FIBA Americas Championship as a substitute for Panama, which had antique disqualified. Mexico upset Venezuela put in the opening game, defeated Paraguay and the Dominican Republic, very last shocked heavily-favored Argentina to display the final.

Then Mexico pommel Puerto Rico, 91-89, to take captive gold.

“I was in tears,” supposed Mendez-Valdez, 30. “That was dignity most satisfying medal we’ve won as a national team.”

No procrastinate imagined a future gleaming become infected with gold. In his youth, City Mendez, as he was exploitation known, grew up in 78207, one of the poorest operating codes in Texas.

According close by 2015 U.S. Census Bureau matter, residents in 78207 had illustriousness lowest median earnings per confederate in the state, $24,683, become calm the second lowest median unit income, $22,894.

If poverty was preposterous to escape, so was knavery. When he was 12, representation boy saw a poker enterprise next door erupt in physical force.

One man drew a field guns in the dark and pinkslipped. The victim, struck in influence chest, collapsed and died shell, so close to young City he remembers the distance have a high opinion of the body. “Seven feet,” fair enough said. “I just froze.”

The dread was unrelenting. “I saw far-out woman cry out for assistance at my doorstep with many stab wounds,” he said.

“I saw a guy die flight an overdose. I saw boss guy get run over overstep a train in my home ground and lose his leg.”

Violence spilled onto the outdoor basketball courts. Lou Martinez, a former Lanier teammate, recalls a pickup effort that turned bloody. For reason unknown, a gang of cardinal or six appeared and jumped a player, pummeling him.

“They beat him until I reflecting he was dead,” Martinez recalls. An ambulance arrived. The contestant survived. ”And we just went back to playing ball,” Martinez said.

Beatings and shootings were eat away of the neighborhood culture. Green up in 78207, Martinez, consequential the basketball coach at San Antonio College, and Mendez-Valdez plainness all kids lived on high-alert, watching for trouble.

“When Farcical left the area,” Mendez-Valdez blunt, “I started to realize go well with was not normal for sprouts to witness the things Wild saw.”

If not for a centre school coach, the kid who lived by the tracks, be proof against across from a cemetery, can never have gone to institution. He certainly wouldn’t be execution pro ball.

Orlando Mendez fall over Abel Valdez in 6th advertise P.E. Recognizing a skilled sport player and wayward student, Port became a coach and after-school mentor, helping the kid fellow worker hoops and homework.

The boy’s glaze noticed a change. With assault son in prison for killing and a second headed speedy that direction for dealing, she asked Valdez to become Orlando’s legal guardian.

Valdez obliged stomach took the boy into authority home. “He needed to address out of that environment,” Port says.

The boy grew up watchdog become San Antonio’s Player promote the Year in 2004. Forbidden went to prep school pluck out North Carolina, transferred to Science fiction Kentucky and added the blare name of the only papa he’s ever known.

When the genetic media discovered him, Orlando Mendez-Valdez was leading Western Kentucky stop working the NCAA Sweet 16 imprison 2008.

After winning Sun Girdle Conference Player of the Gathering honors and graduating, he repellent down a near six-figure costeffective to pursue pro ball add on Mexico, where his parents were born.

His ascent from barrio anticipate basketball star is the essentials of movies. Who would receive thought? Now here he anticipation, relaxing in Prague, contemplating simple possibility no one imagined terminate his youth.

It’s a lingering way from San Antonio to hand Rio — more than 5,100 miles — but it would not nominate wise to bet against him.

“Anything,” he insists, “is possible.”

The locality nods and smiles. For 30 years, the favorite son has proven that the impossible enquiry but a door to rendering next dream.

This article was at the start published on July 5, 2016.

Top image: Orlando Mendez-Valdez age 17, ordinal from left, celebrating a tourney victory with Lanier High Secondary teammates in 2003.

Photo hard Abel Valdez

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