LOS ANGELES — When Stephen Turner pulled his silver Mercedes into the Mobil station on a gritty stretch of Hollywood near Vine Street and Santa Monica Boulevard, he did not immediately recognize the gigantic man with Windex who ambled over and offered to wash his windows for a tip.

But the man, Lewis Brown, recognized Mr. Turner and said hello.

Four decades ago, Mr. Brown had galloped down the court, all 6 feet, 11 inches and 260 pounds of him. Even all these years later, Mr. Turner, gazing at the man, suddenly remembered the basketball center from Compton whom he watched lead his high school to three championships in the 1970s, and whom he once played against in a high school tournament. A member of the celebrated squad that lifted the U.N.L.V. Rebels into the college basketball’s top rank. A regional legend, destined for stardom. Mr. Turner had idolized him.

These days, Mr. Brown spends much of his days at the Mobil station, washing drivers’ windows as they pull in for gas. As dusk fell one recent night, he headed for home, a pile of boxes and blankets on a patch of sidewalk set among the production studios south of Santa Monica. “Vine is mine, all the way down to the 7-Eleven,” Mr. Brown said, his huge frame lumbering down the street, nodding at people who know him from his 11 years on these streets, as well as a few who still recognize him from his basketball days.

At 56, Mr. Brown’s life is an arc of triumph and defeat, of lost opportunities and wasted potential. In his view, he is here — one amid the thousands in this city’s churning sea of homeless — because of coaches who could not understand his emotional turmoil, who never appreciated his talent. Conversations with him are long flights of anecdotes and self-congratulatory statistics that, if impressive in detail, are scarred by bitter recollection of endless slights.