Wright lasted three days in his mother's apartment. On the fourth, he hobbled on his crutches and caught a bus to Irvington. He says he made his way to a crack house and bought five hits. He sat down and smoked the first. Then he felt the moisture in his right foot. He pulled off his sock and saw the bandage soaked in blood.

He looked around at the junkies, took a deep breath and "said to myself, 'I'm done,"' he says.

He gave away the rest of his drugs and called an ambulance. Doctors at University Hospital stitched up his wound. Again they told him to stay off his foot.

This time, he checked into Bayonne Medical Center, where he stayed for two weeks. Doctors steered him to Flynn House, a halfway house in Jersey City for substance abusers. Holding all his belongings in two plastic shopping bags, Wright arrived in late January.

For the first time in a decade, he lived without alcohol or marijuana, or cocaine or crack. He did little but attend meetings and tell his story.

The story was just about all he had.

When the Jazz cut him in 1994, DiFazio, converted his five-year, $5 million contract into an annuity that would pay Wright $158,000 for the next 25 years. But Wright's mother, Mae, had gained control over the annuity when Wright was mentally unstable, he says. She used it as collateral for a large loan. Payments on that loan ate up much of the money.

Wright won't say how she spent the money. He refuses to allow access to his mother, whose health, he says, is deteriorating.

Most of the rest of the money went to child support payments to four children Wright supposedly fathered with four different women, leaving just a small piece — he won't say how much — for Wright himself.

· · · · ·

"I just like people to be comfortable around me." — Luther Wright

· · · · ·

A home at Morning Star

It's a quarter past eight on a recent Tuesday night, and Wright is in a groove. He's cradling his white Fender Stratocaster and has just picked up the riff of the song the Morning Star Community Christian Center band is rehearsing. It's so loud the rehearsal could be an arena show.

"God is the strength of my heart,

Am I pushed? Forever."