“I made a lot of bad decisions,” Hargett said. “I don’t have no ego, pride or none of that no more.”

There are still those who believe in Hargett. Lancaster, the high school coach, has offered his full support once Hargett is released. Hargett has a job waiting for him at a Richmond restaurant run by the family of his former girlfriend Aisha, Nylla’s mother.

“He was a victim,” Dannie Carter, Aisha’s father, said. “He was dealt an unfair hand as a child. Jonathan himself, he’s one of the finest young people that you’ll ever meet.”

While Hargett sits in jail, those who surrounded him during his playing days have moved on, though they remain involved in athletics. Anderson, who Hargett said paid him money via Western Union, now runs a youth football league in the Washington area. Cheeks was recently hired by Delaware as an assistant, and Beaman has tried to establish himself as a workout guru in the Washington area. As for Hargett, the Carters have been his only visitors the last two years.

“This is a guy who in high school everyone wanted a piece of,” said Travis Garrison, a contemporary of Hargett’s who went on to play at Maryland. “Everyone was his brother and cousin and friend. Where are they now? That happens all the time. It happens all the time.”

There are times when Hargett acknowledges that he will not be able to make a living playing basketball when he gets out of prison. He is out of shape, his knee is ravaged by a long-ago injury and he has not competed at a high level in almost a decade. There are other times, though, when he watches his contemporaries like the Knicks’ Anthony and Stoudemire on ESPN and feels as if he can still help an N.B.A. team.

In January, Jonathan Hargett will try to start his life over. He expresses no malice toward those who tried to help him and his family along the way. He just wishes his basketball tale had a different ending.

“The moral of this whole story,” he said, “is to help someone not to make the same mistakes.”