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udsville 24-Hour Coin Laundry sits on the main drag of Reisterstown, Md., right off I-795 in the northern suburbs of Baltimore. The low-slung building, framed by fast-food joints, gas stations and strip malls, is filled wall-to-wall with washers, driers, change dispensers, vending machines and overhead TV monitors tuned to the local news.

For Isaiah Lamb, Sudsville wasn’t just a place to bring his dirty clothes. Thanks to the benevolence of its workers, who turned a blind eye, the laundry provided Isaiah’s bathroom, rec room and study hall for much of last spring and summer. Night after night, the high school junior and his parents, Donald and Valerie, drove their black 2002 Hyundai Elantra into the back parking lot at Sudsville, hoping none of their friends or Isaiah’s classmates saw them. They washed their bodies and brushed their teeth at the bathroom sinks. Dinner might be a snack from a vending machine. As Valerie and Donald watched TV or read, Isaiah did his homework, using a folding table as a desk and sometimes a laundry cart as a chair. When he finished, the family piled back into the Elantra. Valerie took the passenger seat, Donald settled behind the wheel, and Isaiah pretzeled his 6’ 5” frame into the backseat. Then they tried to sleep.

“Many nights I would cry looking at him, because he was so crunched up in the back,” Valerie says of Isaiah. “I would say, ‘You all right?’ He would say, ‘I’m all right, Ma.’ ”

“My mother told me not to wear my feelings on my sleeve,” Isaiah says. “I always smiled and joked, but [my teammates] never knew what I was going through.”

Money had always been scarce for the Lambs, but early in 2014 they plunged into financial free fall. Donald suffered a heart attack while working as a maintenance man at a Baltimore nursing home. He recovered after months of convalescence but didn’t get his job back. Beset by the stress of Donald’s illness and unemployment, Valerie caught walking pneumonia, which forced her to take time off from work as an EMT. The Lambs incurred more medical bills without the income to cover them. Then came a sequence all too familiar to many Americans, particularly during the recent recession: overdue notices, denied or unattainable credit, eviction, homelessness.

The same long and lithe physique that made sleeping in the backseat so uncomfortable helped Isaiah succeed in football, baseball and basketball. He dunked for the first time in seventh grade, and by his freshman year at Dulaney High in Timonium, Md., he was starting for the varsity. Sports were a source of escape and joy. “I just went out and had fun,” says Isaiah. “It took my mind off of what was going on.”

Isaiah’s living situation exacted a price on his game, however. He missed tournaments and AAU events because the Lambs couldn’t afford the entrance fees or were on the move. How do you sign up for leagues when you don’t have a permanent address? How do you arrive at practice on time when you have to take three public buses and a subway to get to school, as Isaiah did? How do you add muscle or stay in shape when dinner often consists of a 99-cent cheeseburger or a snack from a vending machine? How do you fit into a team when you’re hiding a secret?

“[Teammates] would say, ‘Hey, let’s go to your house,’ ” Isaiah recalls. “I’d make up excuses: ‘Aw, my mom’s sleeping.’ What I couldn’t tell them was that I didn’t have a home.”

A

s acceptance speeches go, it was a bravura performance. In May, Kevin Durant received the NBA’s Most Valuable Player award. Standing before a room full of family, fans, Thunder teammates and team employees, Durant was all honesty, humility and emotion. The moment of soaring sentiment, though, came when he addressed and thanked his mother, Wanda Pratt. “Everybody told us we weren’t supposed to be here,” he said. “We moved from apartment to apartment by ourselves. One of the best memories I have is when we moved into our first apartment. No bed, no furniture, and we just all sat in the living room and hugged each other because we thought we made it. . . . You made us believe. You kept us off the street, put clothes on our backs, food on the table. When you didn’t eat, you made sure we ate. You went to sleep hungry. You sacrificed for us. You’re the real MVP.”