"This isn't exactly a homecoming for Randy Foye, but the Washington Wizards' latest back-court addition joked that if he were any closer, he'd be in the backyard of his home in New Jersey.

After Foye spent the first three years of his career in Minnesota, a trade with the Wizards the day before the NBA draft in June brought him within a three-hour drive of Newark -- the city in which he was orphaned before the first grade but which provided him with a support system to overcome those hardships.

With Wizards training camp set to start on Tuesday, Foye is honoring his Newark roots this season by wearing No. 15, the number he wore while leading East Side High to a state championship and earning player of the year honors as a senior. Although the numbers he wore with the Minnesota Timberwolves (4) and at Villanova (2) were already taken by new teammates Antawn Jamison and DeShawn Stevenson, respectively, Foye said he made his choice for sentimental reasons.

"That's basically where it all started," Foye said in recent telephone interview. But where it all started couldn't have been more challenging. Foye grew up in Newark at a time when its rates of violent crime, drug activity and poverty ranked among the worst in the United States.

His father, Antonio -- whom Foye only faintly remembers -- was killed in a motorcycle accident when Randy was just 2 years old. Three years later, his mother, Regina Foye, climbed into a truck and disappeared. To this day, Foye doesn't know if he was abandoned or she was murdered. Her whereabouts remain a mystery more than 21 years later, but her likeness is tattooed on his chest. Foye said relatives sometime weep when they see his 20-month old daughter, Paige, because she bears a striking resemblance to Regina.

Foye displays little emotion while discussing his beginnings, and those close to him said he never used his losses as an excuse to not succeed. "He didn't complain too much about it. He just went through it. He just moved on," said the woman who raised him, Ruth Martin, an aunt whom Foye calls Nana.

He transcended his circumstances with the help of a makeshift family that shielded him from the gangs and guns to become a college graduate and first-round NBA draft pick: Martin; his grandmother, Betty Foye; his AAU basketball coach, Sandy Pyonin; his high school coach, Bryant Garvin; one of his high school teachers, Maria Contardo; and neighborhood friend ZeGale "Z" Kelliehan. That unlikely team, linked only by each individual's concern for Foye, guided him to college, where Villanova Coach Jay Wright and former assistant Fred Hill helped him become a professional basketball player. "