Troubled former NBA player Delonte West has been spotted wandering the streets of Houston wearing a hospital gown and no shoes.
Delonte West, a 32-year-old eight-year NBA veteran who left the league in 2012, was in a Jack In The Box parking lot when a fan approached him earlier this week.
According to the fan who uploaded photos of the run-in on Instagram, West, who earned more than $16million playing ball with Boston, Seattle, Cleveland and Dallas, had bizarre words to share.
When the fan asked ‘Are you Delonte West?’ the 2004 first-round draft pick said, ‘I used to be, but I’m not about that life anymore’, according to TMZ.
The fan said uploaded two pictures of West to Instagram, where the former NBA star is wearing a flannel shirt, covered by a hospital gown, covered by a vest.
In one photo – where he poses with the fan – West has his eyes shut.
‘Another pic of ex nba player #delontewest bro had hospital robe on like he escaped from the psych ward or some s***,’ the fan said in his photo caption. ‘I asked wat happened and he said life…….d***!’
The former St Joseph’s star was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2008 following a preseason Cavaliers game and not long after separating from his first wife.
He had exploded on an official in that game and said he realized he needed a break.
West, who finished his time with the NBA with 4,000 career points, has a long history of off-court controversies, including an arrest and rumors that he had sex with Cleveland Cavaliers star LeBron James’s mother.
He has denied the 2010 rumor about James’s mom for years, and said he didn’t want his son to be a junior because he didn’t want other kids asking him about the incident.
‘I don’t want my son going to school and people making fun of him for something his daddy did,’ he told Vice Sports in 2014.
Back in 2009, West was arrested in Maryland while driving his three-wheeled Can-Am Spyder motorcycle after he cut off a police car.
Officers who searched him discovered a Remington 870 shotgun inside a guitar case strapped to his back, as well as a 9mm Beretta handgun and a .357 Magnum in his pockets.
Officers also found an eight-and-a-half inch Bowie knife.
He admitted to police that he was on medication and was moving the weapons from his mother’s home to another of his properties after she became annoyed that his friends had found them and pulled them out of storage at her house while they were staying over.
West was sentenced in July 2010 to the weapons and speeding charges and was ordered to do 40 hours of community service and serve two years of unsupervised probation.
He also had to undergo counselling and be electronically monitored for eight months.
It was during this period he married his childhood sweetheart and divorced her a month later.
At the time he cited LeBron as playing a critical role in helping him keep his life on track.
He was quoted by Northwest Ohio Media Group as saying:
‘I was dealing with so much guilt.
‘I wasn’t processing things right. I was under the impression that I was going to do nine years minimum. Everything I’ve ever dreamed of, the sweat and tears of what I worked for would all be wiped away.”
‘He (LeBron) sat with me in the locker room for like an hour and was rapping it up with me by giving me words of encouragement.
‘Keep in mind, practice was still going on. He left practice and sat with me for a while, just keeping me company. He later walked me down the stairs and said, ‘D, I don’t know where you’re going or what you’re about to do, but I’ll be right here when you get back.’
‘My spirits were so high at that point. I don’t know what would have happened had I left in the condition I was in prior. It’s a testament to the type of person he is’.
Despite banking $16m throughout his career, West continually suffered financial problems and admitted to buying things in the early days just because he could.
Teammates said he was always generous to a fault and would give anyone his last dollar.
He bought his mother and father both homes, as well as paying for his mom to attend Howard University and get her masters in social work.
He bought a home for his brother Dmitri Jr. who lives with his wife and four children not far from their mother in Maryland – and put his sister through college at the University of Central Florida, making sure she always had a place to live and a car to drive before she started a career with Washington, D.C., police department.
On top of this he regularly helped his large extended family with whatever they needed, whether it be a car, a stove for the apartment or clothes.
In 2011 the guard revealed that he applied for a job at Home Depot during the NBA lockout, according to the New York Post.
‘It’s official,’ he wrote in a since-deleted tweet. ‘Pride 2 the side. just filled out application at Home Depot. Lockout aint a game.’
He also worked briefly at a Brandywine furniture store and sold box sets of knives with his brother at a stand at Costco.
‘I would get the customers, I would say, ‘I’m D-West from the Celtics,’ tell the people to come on back to a knife display and my brother would chop up tomatoes and stuff and show them how sharp the knives are”‘,West said.
‘Anything I could do, man. At the same time, ain’t no shame. Same way I’m smiling now and enjoying life, I was doing the same thing then’.
After leaving the league in 2012, West had stints with the NBA D-League and in China. He was waived by the Texas legends in early 2015.
In April 2013 West married his second wife Caressa Madden after meeting at a mutual friend’s house and moving in to West’s home in Fort Washington as he waited out basketball unemployment.
Shortly after a pregnant Madden moved into the $1 million, eight-bedroom house with a swimming pool and stunning views of the Potomac, the pair endured a torturous winter because he couldn’t afford a new hot-water heater.
He reportedly filled the rooms with portable space heaters and heated water on the stove so she could take a warm bath.
He famously asked for her hand in marriage by cutting a string off a jump rope he found in the garage and tying it on it her finger.
‘It’s all I can afford, baby’, he told her. ‘I’m broke, heat ain’t working, brain ain’t working right, but I love you.’