Robert Traylor wants to finish his rocky career the right way
BY MICHAEL ROSENBERG
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
It takes a large man to look small at 298 pounds, but Robert Traylor does. The man known as the “Tractor” since high school is 32 now. He is determined to make it back to the NBA one more time, after several seasons overseas.
Traylor wants to finish his career the right way. If he succeeds, it will be the only chapter of his career that went as he planned.
Traylor went to the University of Michigan, hoping to win a national championship and become a U-M legend. Instead, he became embroiled in the Ed Martin scandal, helped land Michigan in NCAA trouble and cannot have any official contact with the school.
He turned pro after his junior year, was drafted sixth overall and figured he would be a star. Instead, he became a role player, ate too much, stayed out too late and left the league.
He always thought of himself as a role model for Detroit kids, an example of what they could be if they got out. Instead, he was accused of money-laundering to help a Detroit drug kingpin.
The public perception is that Robert Traylor destroyed his basketball career. But really, his career was falling apart before it ever began.
* * *
Lenora Traylor was a registered nurse. She had worked in the emergency room at Saratoga Hospital in Detroit. So she should have known better. And she knew she should have known better. Yet there she was, smoking crack with a boyfriend, and pretty soon she was an addict.
She hated herself for it. Her son Robert was not yet 10 years old, and Lenora's crack habit had left him in the care of her mom, Jessie Mae. But Lenora couldn't get herself to stop. She got pregnant again and kept smoking crack; her son Walter Glover was born with the drug in his bloodstream.
Robert Traylor would get up in the morning, go to Murray-Wright High School, practice with his basketball team, and come home at 5 or 6. Then Jessie Mae Carter, Robert's grandmother, would go off to work as a janitor.
Robert would feed Walter, change his diapers, and put him to bed. Their mother was on the streets.
"We're brothers, but I was more like a father to him," Robert said.
Lenora became a prostitute, turning tricks for drugs and cash. Sometimes she would bring johns back to the house, even if one of her kids was there.
When a numbers runner and basketball junkie from Detroit named Ed Martin started offering Robert cash, Robert didn't hesitate. He took money, food, whatever Ed would give. He took thousands and thousands of dollars' worth.
One February night in 1996, Traylor and his U-M teammates, Louis Bullock and Maurice Taylor, took recruit Mateen Cleaves to Detroit for a night of partying. First, though, they stopped at Ed Martin's house.
Traylor says each of the four -- Traylor, Taylor, Bullock and Cleaves -- took around $300 from Martin. (Cleaves, who remains friends with Traylor, declined to comment.) They then went to a hotel and had some women dance for them.
Taylor fell asleep at the wheel on the way back to Ann Arbor. The ensuing crash broke Traylor's arm and triggered an investigation into the players' dealings with Martin. It would result in one of the biggest cash scandals in NCAA history.
When Robert got to the NBA, he would spread money around like it was lawn seed. He bought his grandmother a new house. He'd go to clubs with friends and pick up the check. He would come back to Detroit every summer and throw a huge block party, complete with fireworks -- he'd spend as much as $15,000 on it.
He says he provided financial support to as many as 15 to 20 family members and friends. But he would not give to his mother. He didn't want to support her crack habit.
He gave money to Walter, though. And Lenora would take it.
She tried rehab three times, but it never took. She would get out and reach for the nearest pipe. When Jessie Mae died, in 2004, Lenora felt helpless and distraught -- and estranged from her sons. The woman who had raised her, Robert and Walter was gone. Lenora took stock of her life and made a decision:
I'm going to smoke until I die.
Conned by cousin
Quasand Lewis is Robert Traylor's cousin. From 1994 to 2005, he was also one of the biggest drug lords in Detroit.
Authorities said Lewis ran an enormous marijuana operation; he made millions of dollars by selling more than 33 tons of pot. They said the ring plotted kidnappings and fatal shootings. In 2006, Lewis was sentenced to 18 years in prison.
Traylor let Lewis buy two buildings in his name. He said he did it because Lewis is his cousin, and that he was "naive" and did not understand money-laundering laws. Authorities never believed that he dealt drugs.
But what Traylor did was indisputably illegal. He eventually pleaded guilty to a federal income tax charge for putting the buildings' depreciation on his tax returns.
What did he get out of the deal?
"Trouble," Traylor said with a laugh.
While the Lewis case was unraveling, Traylor found trouble of another kind: He had an enlarged aorta and needed heart surgery if he ever wanted to play competitive basketball again. When he found out, he sat on the side of his bed and cried. He thought he might die.
Lifestyle is downsized
Early in his NBA career, when he thought he would be a millionaire forever, Robert Traylor bought a 7,000-square foot house in West Bloomfield. It was big enough for the Tractor but more than Robert needed. It also turned out to be more than he could afford.
He now lives in a three-bedroom house in Novi, in a perfectly manicured, uniform community. The lawns are all green and the condos and houses all look the same. It is quintessential American suburbia.
Robert lives there with his wife, Raye, and his kids, Raigan and Robert Jr.
And Lenora, too.
"I realized that I had a drug problem," she said last week. "I had broken all friendship and communication with them and everything."
She spent four months in a rehabilitation center last winter. Robert was skeptical; he still is, sometimes. But she says she thinks this time is different.
"I went because I wanted to," Lenora said. "Before I went because of Robert, my family. This time I really went for myself."
As for Robert, he says he is content. He wishes he had done some things differently, of course. He says he regrets not taking his NBA career more seriously.
"Sometimes I do," Traylor said. "I always try and tell myself, 'Don't regret the things that are past.' But when I do think back sometimes, I look at tapes ... I think I could have been a lot better than I was."
He regrets the building deal with his cousin, Quasand Lewis.
"I tarnished my reputation," Traylor said.
But he does not regret taking money from Ed Martin.
"I will never sit here and say I regret that situation," Traylor said. "For the situation that I was in, with my family, I did what I had to do to support us and to get us through the times that we were in. I can't sit here and say that I don't feel blessed to have the opportunity to take care of my grandmother or support my little brother at the time. I just can't do it."
Of the four players involved in the Ed Martin scandal -- Traylor, Chris Webber, Taylor and Bullock -- only Traylor paid Martin back.
He has played in Puerto Rico and Spain; last season, he played in Turkey. He can go back to Europe and make guaranteed money, and maybe he will.
But first he wants to take another shot at the NBA.
One reason is closure. But a bigger one is that Robert Jr. is a huge NBA fan, and he has never really seen his dad play, except on old tapes. This is why Robert Traylor wants one more chance. He wants to show his son who he really is.
Contact MICHAEL ROSENBERG: 313-222-6052 or
mrosenberg@freepress.com.
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Originally Posted by Baker
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