Robert Traylor, left, mock interviews teammate Maceo Baston and Erik Szyndlar after a practice in March 1996.

File photo

During his junior and senior years at Michigan, part of Ryan DeKuiper’s job on the road was waking his roommate, Robert ‘Tractor’ Traylor, to make sure he made meetings and meals on time.

“He’d growl and roll over and put the covers over his head,” DeKuiper said Wednesday.

DeKuiper was the Michigan basketball walk-on, Traylor the star. Yet the two players from different backgrounds and on different basketball trajectories bonded.

Traylor’s death Wednesday in Puerto Rico shocked teammates and friends. Traylor was found dead in his apartment Wednesday in Isla Verde community of San Juan, Puerto Rico, where he had been playing for Vaqueros de Bayamon.

The team’s website said Traylor, 34, died of a massive heart attack and had not been seen for days.

His former teammates at Michigan remembered not only the basketball player, but the man with a big heart, a gentle soul and someone who had started to turn his life around after an NBA career that never quite went as planned.

“What I remember the most is his bigger-than-life presence,” DeKuiper said. “A big heart and a big passion for enjoying the game and those are the things.

“He didn’t have to treat me well. I was a walk-on, and he treated me very well, with a lot of respect.”

Memories of Traylor and what he accomplished will be mixed.

Former teammate Dugan Fife remembered Traylor’s freshman year, when Fife scored a basket and Traylor, with one arm in a sling, grabbed him and gave him a bear-hug he couldn’t escape.

“He was so excited,” Fife said. “He was just a great teammate. We had a lot of McDonald’s All-Americans, guys who cared more about their stats, and he was not that guy.”

Traylor led Michigan to the first-ever Big Ten tournament championship in 1998. But he was also in a Feb. 17, 1996 rollover car accident on M-14 in Maurice Taylor’s Ford Explorer. Also in the car were Traylor, Louis Bullock, Willie Mitchell, Ron Oliver and recruit Mateen Cleaves that eventually spawned the investigation into booster Ed Martin. That investigation, in which it was discovered Traylor and others accepted money from a booster, hurt Michigan for a decade and left him disavowed from the basketball program.

Even in his death, Michigan was barely able to acknowledge one of the better players in its history because his records have been essentially expunged due to sanctions from the school and the NCAA.

“We are saddened to hear about the loss of a former student-athlete, Robert Traylor,” Michigan athletic director Dave Brandon said. “Our sympathies go out to his family during this difficult time.”

His teammates, though, could remember Traylor on Wednesday.

They thought about a player who was the MVP of the 1997 NIT and the 1998 Big Ten tournament and was good enough to be drafted sixth by the Dallas Mavericks in the 1998 NBA Draft. He never played for Dallas, instead being traded to Milwaukee for a German player named Dirk Nowitzki.

Nowitzki went on to be one of the best players in the NBA over the past decade. Traylor bounced around the NBA for seven seasons and three teams, averaging 4.8 points and 3.7 rebounds before going to play overseas.

“He was a great guy, good person, a gentle giant with a great personality,” said former teammate Erik Szyndlar. “It’s sad when anybody goes and goes too early, but I felt for the last decade he’s been an outcast and not necessarily beloved in his own state. It’s been a sad last 10 years or so once he left school and moved on to professional life.

“Talking with friends, friends of the program, people were kind of saddened because he was playing in Puerto Rico and didn’t quite make it to the big time the way he wanted to. It didn’t unfold the way everyone thought it would in the late '90s.”

Back then, most people thought Traylor had the chance to be a surefire NBA star. At 6-foot-8 and his weight hanging around 300 pounds, he had the skills of a player half his size.

Traylor had the strength of a big man and the agility of a guard. He was able to use his body to change games. In high school, those skills helped Murray-Wright in Detroit win a state championship. In college, it gave Michigan three winning straight winning seasons from 1995-98 — the last time Michigan has done that — as he averaged 13.3 points and 8.2 rebounds during his three-year career.

“He was a force on the court,” Szyndlar said. “Everyone made a big deal about it. He was a nice guy.

“He was laughing all the time, joking around. The equipment managers to the people sweeping the floors, everyone loved being around him. They found him energizing and warm, an all-around great personality.”

He also seemed to be coming back into shape after a rough few years. He had surgery on his aorta in 2005 and had tax issues in 2007 and was sentenced to three years probation.

He had played in Mexico and Puerto Rico the past two seasons and played well. In Puerto Rico, he went by “Tractor” on at least one of his jerseys. In most of the game pictures on the El Nuevo Dia website, Traylor was smiling while he was playing, looking happy with the game.

“He seemed like he got into pretty good shape,” Fife said. “He would have a lot of quotes and thoughts on his Facebook page. He seemed to be opening up a lot since his heart surgery in 2005 and had a new outlook.”

It was a new way of life, though, that ended up being cut short.

Michael Rothstein covers University of Michigan basketball for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at (734) 623-2558, by email at michaelrothstein@annarbor.com or follow along on Twitter @mikerothstein