Sam Lowe remembers the time the Duncanville basketball team lost its star 7-foot center. Not to an injury, but in a crowd in downtown Chicago.

For two hours, Greg Ostertag was missing.

How this happens is anybody’s guess.

“We walked over to Sears Tower, and when we all started back in cabs, we looked around and Greg was gone,” Lowe remembered. Their team hotel was not exactly on the next block.

“He walked back by himself,” said Lowe, a starting guard for Duncanville and Ostertag’s roommate on the road. “He showed up two hours later like nothing had happened.

“We thought we lost our 7-footer in Chicago. But there was Greg with some gold chain he bought from a guy on the street. We weren’t surprised.”

The carefree Ostertag rarely did anything to surprise his teammates on Duncanville’s 1991 boys basketball state title team mainly because he had always been full of surprises, from taking fishing poles and shotguns on the golf course to throwing his fake two front teeth at the feet of opposing cheerleaders.

That Ostertag now a center for the Utah Jazz decided to donate one of his kidneys to his sister, Amy Hall, came as no surprise to a few of his former teammates and head coach Phil McNeely.

“His family has always been real important to him, real tight knit, so it’s just not a surprise,” said McNeely, who was at the hospital last Thursday with Greg and Amy’s parents, Jim and Jean. “To be honest, I would think any pro athlete would choose money over his family, but maybe I’m being na.”

Doctors at Baylor University Medical Center deemed Ostertag’s kidney donation to his sister last Thursday a success. Ostertag, 29, was released from the hospital Sunday. Amy went home earlier this week.

Ostertag, the focal point of McNeely’s first of two state championship teams, is the first professional athlete to donate a major organ in the midst of a career.

Dr. Butch Derrick, who helped remove the kidney, said that if Ostertag has no complications (such as infection), he should “be back to significant physical activity in a couple of months.” Ostertag has said he expects to be at full strength by October training camp.

That Ostertag would put his basketball career at risk says something about his character and his strong relationship with his sister, who was a team manager on Duncanville’s state title team.

“I heard him joke about there being a sibling rivalry and how they get on each other’s nerves, but they play that up,” Lowe said. “They’re very close. They’ve always been close. Greg always does what he needs to do.”

For the Duncanville basketball team in 1991, that meant taking charge when he needed to, particularly in the playoffs, said sixth-man Jason Morris. The Panthers won their state semifinal game, 82-50, and then beat San Antonio Jay in the final, 65-38. When he came out with 1:29 left in the game, Ostertag had 35 points, and Jay had scored 34.

“When he needed to be, he became very intense,” Morris said. “He would pull his two front teeth out and throw them on the floor when he got mad.”

Ostertag had to have his front teeth replaced after he broke them on a water slide at a basketball tournament in Las Vegas.

When asked if Ostertag was a leader and took initiative, his teammates gulped yep.

“You couldn’t help but listen to him,” Morris said. “He was huge, and he could hurt you.”

Lowe first met Ostertag when he was 7 in youth league baseball. Lowe, the littlest guy on the team, had to pitch to what he called “a giant.” Lowe and Morris went off to the University of Texas, where they have been each other’s best men in their weddings. Ostertag went to Kansas and then the Jazz.

For McNeely, Ostertag is another extension of his own family, like Chris Owens, who he ate dinner with earlier this week before Owens headed to Memphis to begin working out with the Grizzlies.

“As a coach, you’re always close to your players,” McNeely said. “You spend so much time with them, you see them grow and change, see girlfriends come and go. It’s not just about basketball.”