Orlando Mendez-Valdez inducted into SAISD Athletic Hall of Fame (2024)

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 12-year-old climbed into a car with the coach and rode to a basketball tournament, to a dream not yet formed. Spinning drives to the basket. Dunks. Roaring crowds. It was hard to see beyond the neighborhood, beyond gunfire and knifings, beyond bleeding flesh. So on drive after drive, the coach wiped sleep from the boy’s eyes until the kid began to see a new world.

Maria Mendez recognized an awakening. With one son in prison and a second dealing drugs, she asked Abel Valdez to take Orlando into his home. Coach and player became father and son. Today, the man who became the kids’ legal guardian beams. The boy from the ramshackle home grew up to star at Lanier High School, Western Kentucky and a professional league in Mexico. When he turned 18, Orlando Mendez-Valdez took Abel’s last name and gave him a lifetime of thrills. The latest came Saturday when he was inducted into the SAISD Athletic Hall of Fame.

Orlando’s story is ESPN “30 for 30” material. Kid from the projects leads Western Kentucky to the NCAA Sweet 16. Struggling middle school student earns bachelor’s degree. Too-short, too-slow guard scores 27 and leads Mexico to a 97-88 upset of USA — featuring Isiah Thomas and other NBA players — in a 2021 Basketball World Cup qualifier.

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.”

Abel was a face of light in the darkness. A dependable ride and calming influence. A physical education teacher at Tafolla Middle School, he recognized Orlando’s athleticism in sixth grade. The kid could ball but hated structure and discipline. He rejected Abel’s invitation to try out for the school team, preferring to hoop on playgrounds, and flunked sixth grade. Abel persisted, applying gentle pressure until Orlando acquiesced.

Trust did not come quickly. Orlando made Abel drop him off two blocks from his house. The coach did not know where his player lived until the kid overslept. A call to school led Abel tosqualor: shacks without running water, crumbling structures fronting a dead-end alley.An image came to mind: Third World country.

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. The Methodist youth minister who influenced his faith. The principal who gave him luggage after graduation “because you’re going somewhere.” And the woman who allowed him to dribble a ball day and night through his Westside neighborhood.

“I remember my mom hand washing my clothes outside, listening to her Spanish music, and I’d be taking my ball to the park,” Orlando said. “Then I’d come back and she’d be cooking food. She never told me ‘no’ when it came to basketball. She never said, ‘You can’t go.’ She knew that brought me a lot of joy and happiness.”

Orlando looked sharp and regal Saturday night, taller than his listed height of 6-foot-1. Dressed in a blue jacket, white, open collar shirt and white sneakers, he was inducted into the Hall with five others: Theresa Diane Acosta (Fox Tech), a legendary athletic trainer; Wade Key (Edison), a former tackle with the Philadelphia Eagles; John “Mule” Miles (Wheatley), an outfielder with the Chicago American Giants of the Negro League; and the 1979 Wheatley/Brackenridge football team that won the San Antonio Class 4A City Championship.

“It’s a huge honor to be here,” Orlando said. “I was a little runt in high school.”

In ninth grade, Orlando got called up to the varsity for the playoffs. He stood 5-foot-1. Only a couple of teammates stood 6-feet. From the end of the bench, he watched his teammates sweep through taller, more athletic teams and take down Dallas Lincoln and future NBA star Chris Bosh in the state semifinals. Three years later, after growing a foot, he averaged 23 points, eight rebounds, five assists and was named San Antonio Player of the Year.

“I knew he was going to be a good player,” Lanier coach Rudy Bernal said. “But I did not see that coming.”

Nor did Bernal see this: Orlando scored at least 20 points against every country in World Cup play except one team. Days before taking the court against that team, his mom succumbed to cancer. Orlando dedicated the game to her and dropped 27 on Team USA.

“I went to the locker room and started praising God because I felt fulfilled,” he said. “I was crying in there all by myself and everybody else was outside celebrating.”

The memories came hard and fast Saturday night, pulling him back. Back to a shanty by the tracks. Back to a coach who awakened him to a world beyond the barrio. Back to a vehicle that carried him out of 78207 and into the Hall of Fame.