RealGM

The game wasn't starting for another three hours. The parking lot was empty and the fans hadn't yet left their homes. The players and media were just making their way into the building and a familiar noise could be heard. It was the sound of a basketball being swallowed by a net. Over and over again.

The noise was coming from Trevor Ariza, who was already in his warm-ups, alone on the court hoisting jumpshot after jumpshot. The sweat drenched swingman was intensely focused on the rack of balls by his side and the basket that stood twenty feet away.

During one of the family’s trips to Venezuela in 1996 to watch him play, Ariza’s two younger brothers Tajh, 6, and Kenny, 9, were in the hotel with a babysitter. The children began wrestling and horsing around near a window. Somehow, Tajh fell to his death thirty stories below.

Trevor, who was only eleven at the time, would be haunted by Tajh’s death for a very long time. "It was real hard," he says. "My little brother was my best friend. We slept in the same bed together every night. We did everything together. For my mom — for anyone to lose a child — it was very hard. And Kenny actually saw him fall. He had nightmares for a long time.” Flying home from Venezuela was just as hard "knowing my little brother was in a box on that plane," says Trevor.