Former professional basketball player and executive Lance Blanks has died, the NBA said Thursday.
Blanks died in Dallas on May 3, the league said in a news release. He was 56 years old.
Blanks played college basketball at Virginia and Texas before he was drafted by the Detroit Pistons in 1990. He competed in the NBA for three seasons for the Pistons and Minnesota Timberwolves before playing overseas for another seven years.
He returned to the States and had a number of front-office jobs, including as a scout for the San Antonio Spurs, assistant general manager for the Cleveland Cavaliers, general manager for the Phoenix Suns — a job he kept for five seasons — and, most recently, as a scout for the Los Angeles Clippers. He also worked as an analyst for ESPN and a commentator for the Longhorn Network.
He was on a scouting trip when he died, according to the Austin American-Statesman.
“It’s been a privilege to have called him one of my closest friends,” former Pistons teammate Joe Dumars said. “I’m eternally grateful for all the support he has shown me throughout the years. His legacy will be carried on, not only by his family, but by all those whose lives he touched for the better.”
Blanks is survived by his mother Clarice, brother Sidney Jr., the mother of his two daughters, Renee, his daughters, Riley and Bryn, and granddaughter, Isabel.
“The love I have for him is simply immeasurable,” Riley Blanks Reed said in a statement. “He carried his family and friends on his selfless shoulders and he was the wisest man I’ll ever know.
“The path ahead is dark without him but he once told me that he trusted my sister and me to carry the torch of our family’s legacy. And we will.”
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