Basketball’s Golden State Warrior forward Dorell Wright from south LA didn’t originally play, or even like basketball until late in high school. His interests laid in baseball, and he even moved from Washington High School to Leuzinger for the great ball program there. 

 

He planned to go to the big leagues, but in 9th and 10th grades he couldn’t play because his grades fell. He lost the privilege of being on the team, though he never lost the desire to play. 

 

Then in 11th grade Wright met a basketball coach who casually approached him about his joining the basketball team and asked him to come to practice. He did, and that got Wright hooked bad enough to switch his athletic desires and he joined the basketball team. 

 

Baseball was Work; Basketball was Fun 

He still graduated from Leuzinger and even took a year in a Connecticut prep school after graduation, but he found he could kill the whole floor in basketball and liked it. 

 

He grew up around gangs but he had good parents who kept him too busy to get into trouble. If he wasn’t in a sport he was doing something else, but his mouth did cause him a lot of grief. Admittedly, he had an attitude with anyone who tried to tell him what to do. 

 

Later he figured out that if he kept his mouth polite, he could always play the game and not have to sit on the bench. Since that’s what he was there to do, he conformed. 

 

Everyone knows the rest. He’s a household name for Golden State Warrior fans.