B. MACK

Somewhere there is a phone number that has been paid for every month since 2019, and nobody has ever picked it up. It belonged to Frances Pulley. She was John Wall's mother, and cancer took her in December of 2019. He has kept her line active ever since. Every month, the bill. And twice a day, a text to it. It has been almost seven years. That is close to five thousand texts sent to a phone that cannot answer. He is 36 years old. Here is how he explained the bill. "I made sure I paid the bill for that for the rest of the time I'm going to be on this earth, so I can send my daily text in the morning and my daily text at night." The rest of the time he is going to be on this earth. That is the arrangement he made with a phone company. Here is why he keeps the number specifically, as opposed to just keeping the messages. "It helps me. I know she can't respond, but I can still send my messages and know that nobody else has her number." That is the part that stays with you. It is not only that he wants to write to her. It is that he will not let that number go back into circulation and ring in a stranger's pocket. He also said this. "And sometimes you have your moments when you just sitting at home and you just reflect." And then he told them about his phone screen. "My display screen on my phone is my first game against the Sixers, and we win the game and I give her a hug, and I always keep that as my bio picture." So the wallpaper is not a highlight. It is him finding his mother after a win and putting his arms around her. She raised him in Raleigh, North Carolina. In February of 2014 he played in an All-Star Game while she was sick, and everybody covering him knew it. In 2017, at a ceremony back at Kentucky, he stood up to talk about her and could not get through it. "Thank you for being my mom." Then December 2019. Be straight about one thing, because grief does not come with instructions. This is not a model and he has never said it was. There are people who delete the number the same week, because seeing it sitting there hurts worse than losing it. There are people who would find a line like that unbearable instead of comforting, and they are not doing it wrong. He found something that works for him and he was asked about it and he answered honestly. A bill paid every month, on purpose, forever, for a line that only receives.

When Thomas Robinson's name was called fifth overall in the draft, he turned and hugged the only family he had left. His 9 year old sister. Seventeen months earlier, his college coach had asked him who the team should call. "Coach, you don't get it. There isn't anybody left." Here is how he got from that night to this one. He grew up in Washington D.C., raised by his mother, Lisa. He called her before every game. In January of his sophomore year at Kansas, he was a backup forward for the Kansas Jayhawks. Over the holidays his grandmother passed away. A few weeks later, his grandfather. Then, late on a Friday night, his phone rang. It was his little sister, 9 years old, calling to tell him their mother was gone. Within the hour, his teammates, the coaches, and some of the players' mothers were crowded into his apartment. Bill Self asked him who they should call. That is when Robinson told him there was nobody left. Self put it simply afterward. "My heart just broke." He called the scene in that apartment "the saddest thing I've ever seen in my life." The next day Kansas played the Texas Longhorns. Robinson asked to play. Before tip there was a moment of silence for his mother. Marcus Morris stood next to him and cried. Robinson played eight minutes. Two points, five rebounds. Kansas lost, and a 69 game home winning streak ended. Nobody in that building cared about the streak. Then everybody showed up for him. Kansas started the Lisa Robinson Scholarship Fund for his sister. The whole team flew to Washington for the funeral. Here is how Self explained why it mattered so much. "Thomas is all she knows." Even the NCAA made room for Kansas to help. Self said it plainly. "The NCAA has been unbelievable." Angel Morris, the mother of Marcus and his twin brother Markieff, told Thomas she would look after him and his sister. She meant it. Years later the three of them and Thomas started a foundation together called Family Over Everything. The next season he became one of the best players in the country. A consensus first team All-American. Nearly 18 points and 12 rebounds a game. He carried Kansas to the national championship game. Then the draft. The Sacramento Kings took him fifth. His sister was right there. He grabbed her. "She just hugged me. And it was the best hug in the world." Here is the honest part. The pro career did not go the way anybody hoped. He played for six teams in his first five seasons and has spent the years since playing all over the world. He is still playing, most recently in Puerto Rico. But a 19 year old lost everybody he had in a matter of weeks, and he did not lose his sister. There was nobody left. So he became the somebody. For more stories like this, follow us on any platform @thesportsontap