More than a game is on the line

His tale was the stuff of fantasy: rescued from homelessness at age 10, given shelter and self-esteem by strangers, and presented with a new life that once seemed destined for aimless tragedy when his biological mother abandoned him. He even had the Cambridge street he lived on named after him.

That tale, inspiring and incredible, has taken a shockingly tawdry twist.

His adoptive mother wants the street, Rumeal Robinson Place, stripped of its name and rededicated to her late husband. And she wants a mural of her son, placed in honor near the Cambridge Rindge & Latin School fieldhouse, purged of his glory-days image.

Helen Ford, incredulous and embittered, alleges that Robinson swindled her of the sprawling old home where she lived for 35 years and raised him. She has since been evicted, lost many of her belongings and mementos, and says she is struggling to pay the rent for an apartment in Somerville.

“He’s not deserving of none of this fame,’’ said Ford, 65, who has worked as a safety officer for the Cambridge schools for 30 years. “He was thought of as a nice person, but he’s not a nice person. Not after what he’s done.’’

Robinson could not be reached for comment, but his lawyer said he finds the allegation “hard to believe.’’

Ford and her attorney accuse Robinson of a brazen fraud committed in June 2003, when the lawyer alleges that Ford was duped into signing over the home to one of her son’s business associates. Dennis Benzan, the attorney, said that Robinson had asked Ford to put up the home as collateral for a loan he needed to build a luxury resort in his native Jamaica.

Instead, amid a flurry of documents pushed under her pen, Ford says she unwittingly signed a deed that sold the two-family home to Robinson’s associate for $600,000. Ford says she never saw a dime of the money, a later mortgage defaulted, and Ford was dumbfounded when she received an order in March to vacate the home.

To Mike Jarvis, who coached Robinson for three years in high school, the accusations are stunning.

“Rumeal Robinson was not only one of the best players I ever coached, but probably one of the better people I ever coached,’’ said Jarvis, who now coaches at Florida Atlantic University. “He cared about the game, he cared about the team and his teammates, and he was very unselfish. He never was a kid who was looking for anything.’’

Benzan said he will seek a federal injunction to prevent the house from being sold at auction. His goal, he said, is to return Ford to her familiar home on a short, narrow cul-de-sac near Central Square. A victim of fraud should not be displaced, he argued.

“I haven’t paid rent in God knows how long before this, and I don’t know how long I can do it,’’ Ford said. “It’s not home, I don’t sleep, and I’ve never been alone before. I’ve always had my family around me.’’

Since April, Ford has been living outside the city where she was born, raised, and opened her doors to children in need of a hot meal and a place to sleep. The home, with its open-door reputation, became known in the neighborhood as “Ford’s Castle.’’ In addition to five biological children, she and her husband adopted four more, including Rumeal.

In November 2006, the Boston Celtics honored Ford in a halftime ceremony as part of the team’s “Heroes Among Us’’ program. With Celtics captain Paul Pierce at her side, Ford was recognized for her decades of work to keep the Cambridge schools safe.

Jarvis said Ford made a deep impact on the school community.

“Helen was not only a person that everybody knew in Cambridge, but she was a very integral part of the Cambridge high school culture and success,’’ Jarvis said. “She was like the mom to everybody.’’

Now, Ford said, she has been betrayed.

“When you take children in, it comes from the heart,’’ Ford said. “My mother died when I was 2, so I didn’t have a mother. And here’s a child whose mother put him out. I couldn’t rationalize that.’’

Ford shakes her head and wipes away tears when asked how Robinson allegedly could deceive her.

“I’m not answering his calls,’’ Ford said. “I’m too hurt. I can’t even imagine what the conversation would be.’’

Robinson’s attorney, Hugo Rodriguez of Miami Beach, Fla., said he had not heard many of the specifics of Ford’s allegations. However, he said, “I find that hard to believe.’’

Rodriguez has other pressing business involving Robinson. His client is facing federal allegations of bank fraud, bribery, wire fraud, and making false statements to an Iowa bank, where a loan officer allegedly broke the bank’s rules to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars to a development company controlled by Robinson for the Jamaica project.

Robinson, 42, who lives in Miami, was arrested Sept. 4, pleaded innocent, and has been released on $50,000 bond.

Rodriguez said that Robinson, who played for six professional teams in the National Basketball Association after being selected 10th in the 1990 NBA draft, lost all his assets in the real estate collapse. “He has been dramatically affected,’’ Rodriguez said.

That predicament is a stunning reversal from the fame that once surrounded Robinson. From hungry nights spent sleeping in hallways to the comforts of a safe, adopted home, Robinson became a basketball standout at Cambridge Rindge & Latin and led the team to the state championship. From there, he attended the University of Michigan, where he helped propel the team to the national title game against Seton Hall University.

In overtime, with his team trailing by one point and 3 seconds left, Robinson calmly hit the free throws that made him an instant icon for success under incredible pressure. Cambridge held a parade for Robinson, and his home street of Norfolk Place was renamed in his honor.

In 1998, Robinson spoke with the Globe about the impact his adoptive mother had on his life.

“There aren’t words to express what she has done for me and a lot of other kids,’’ he said. “She makes you walk a straight line. I don’t know if she thinks of it that way, but, no question, I love her for it.’’

To Ford, those days seem an upended lifetime away.

“It’s been very emotional and traumatic for me and my family,’’ said Ford, as she walked toward the home that her late husband, Louis Ford, bought in 1951. “My family has been dispersed through this whole process.’’

Five children, ranging in age from 6 to 20, have been living elsewhere with relatives since the eviction, she said.

Benzan, her attorney, sees the path to eviction as yet another catastrophic example of a housing market that ran amok before the recession. “At the heart of this terrible case is the canker of the mortgage industry,’’ Benzan said.

The home has been sold twice more to Miami buyers since the original sale in 2003 - for $625,000 in February 2004, and again in September 2006 for $1 million to the brother of Robinson’s girlfriend. The final buyer, Stephen Hodge, received 100 percent financing for the purchase, according to real estate documents. He defaulted on the mortgage almost immediately, records show.

Benzan sees Ford as one more casualty of reckless speculation in real estate. But Ford thinks of Rumeal and sees something else, closer to the heart.

“He once told me, ‘You not only gave me a second chance, you gave me my only chance,’ ’’ Ford recalled. “Now, there’s nothing I can say to him.’’