Delonte West, the player who fell from the NBA to destitution

Delonte West begs for alms on a Dallas street.

Last week several images of the unfortunate situation in which Delonte West, NBA player from 2004 to 2012. At 37, the one who was LeBron James' teammate during two seasons in the Cleveland Cavaliers, he lives destitute and was photographed on the streets of Dallas begging for money.

The story is not new.

In January, two videos were broadcast on the networks in which West appeared in deplorable conditions, in the middle of the street, shirtless, dirty and disoriented.

The police handcuffed him and interrogated him.

One of the officers was suspended for filming one of the videos recorded near the MGM National Harbor casino in Washington, DC.

One of the players with whom he had the most contact, point guard Jameer Nelson, revealed that West suffers from bipolar disorder and that he refused to receive help.

"All we can do is pray for him and his family, and hope that he will seek the help he needs," Nelson said at the time.

The NBA, the Players Association, coach Doc Rivers and Nelson himself have been trying to help West over the past few months.

The problem is that the former player resists being admitted to a medical center to follow the treatments he requires.

Located in a gas station

After seeing the new images released last week, Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, West's last team in the NBA, managed to pick him up on Monday at the Dallas gas station where he located him.

According to the TMZ website, after his family and friends tried unsuccessfully to take him to a drug rehab center, West seems willing to accept help from Cuban, who has offered to pay for his treatment.

West's problems were a constant throughout his career.

In September 2009, after being arrested for a traffic violation, the police found three firearms in his vehicle.

He was sentenced to house arrest and 40 hours of community service.

The NBA sanctioned him with 10 games

Lose it all

In February 2012, as he later explained, he couldn't afford an apartment in Dallas and slept several nights in the Mavericks locker room and also in his car.

Later, he had to work in a furniture store in Maryland and sell his cars and his jewelry, “everything I owned, except my house and my clothes,” he explained in the Dallas Morning News.

West, after playing for eight seasons in the NBA, until 2012, later competed for Texas Legend, the Mavericks' affiliate team in the D-League, then he did so in the Chinese league and for a season also in Venezuela and retired after briefly returning to the Texas Legend in 2015.

During his NBA career, West played on four teams, Boston, which was the one that selected him in the 24th position of the 2004 draft, Seattle, Cleveland and Dallas.

He averaged 9.7 points and 3.6 assists and accumulated earnings of 16.2 million dollars, 14.6 million euros.