As we mentioned almost two months ago, Arizona is going through some tough times with the transition from interim coach Kevin O’Neill back to living legend Lute Olson. However, it looks like things are more of a mess there than we previously thought. Lute has his work cut out for him and he might want to try to erase any record of his previous prediction that the Wildcats would contend for the 2009 national title, which was before Jerryd Bayless left and Chase Buddinger left and Kevin O’Neill left and Emmanuel Negedu backed out of his national letter of intent and Brandon Jennings failed to qualify academically and Nic Wise brought up the possibility of transferring. . .
Now that the gumshoes (an overly generous term if ever there was one) over at the WWL have pretty much made the case for the NCAA that OJ Mayo was taking improper benefits both before and during his short stint at USC, TrojanLand is doing all it can to respond in the most American of ways – by covering their ass.
Look Who’s Coming, Trojans! (photo credit: AP)
Anticpating an imminent NCAA investigation – after all, Myles Brand ain’t nobody’s chump – USC is battoning down the hatches and getting its story together. According to the LA Daily News:
USC intends to tell the NCAA it knew of no wrongdoing involving O.J. Mayo and banned his mentor, Rodney Guillory, from receiving tickets as an illustration of its attempt to prevent the basketball star from receiving any improper benefits, according to sources. That will be the outline of the university’s defense, according to officials familiar with the situation. “Right now, we’re just trying to weather the storm,” said a USC official, who asked not to be identified.
Sounds reasonable enough. Guillory, the man who gold-foil giftwrapped Mayo for USC, wasn’t allowed to receive tickets to games. We’re not sure exactly what that proves, as we suppose he could have simply bought tickets off of Craigslist like everyone else. But what about this little piece of prejudicial information?
But there remain some questions to this defense. Guillory was frequently seen in the basketball offices and also around the locker room, and regularly attended pickup games at the Galen Center when Mayo played last summer.
So USC’s defense is that they didn’t provide game tickets to Guillory, where unless he was literally sitting in the huddle he wouldn’t have been able to communicate with Mayo anyway; BUT, Guillory wasallowed to loiter around the locker room, the basketball offices and the pickup games (where he could ostensibly run into Mayo at any moment). We’s no lawyerin type, but that sounds like troubles in Troy.
Of course, it IS the typically-befuddled NCAA we’re talking about. They might start investigating USC and end up putting UCLA on probation.
As previously mentioned on RTC (and every other decent site that covers basketball), the NBA held its draft lottery last night. Among the luminaries in attendance were the Basketball Jesus himself Larry Bird, Dwayne Wade of “Fall down 7 times, shoot 14 free throws” fame, Jay-Z, Kevin Durant, Mitch Richmond, Fred “The Mayor” Hoiberg, and some lady who has Sacramento Kings season tickets.
As most of you know by now, the Chicago Bulls defied their 1.7% odds to steal the #1 pick. Rounding out the top 3 were the Miami Heat and Minnesota Timberwolves. The losers of the draft were the Seattle Oklahoma City Supersonics who fell from the #2 spot to #4, which I think they deserved after last year (still bitter despite a NBA record 42-win turnaround and a 1-0 lead in the Eastern Conference Finals).
The top 2 are essentially set in stone although the Bulls lack of an interior scoring presence (not you Joakim) and lack of an elite point guard (sorry, Kirk) means they could go either direction. The Heat will get the “leftovers”. I’m guessing that Pat Riley (still the GM, right?) is hoping that the coachless Bulls take Michael Beasley because it seems like Beasley and Shawn Marion would clash in terms of their inside-outside styles and type of play so he would prefer Derrick Rose, who could be absolutely ridiculous paired with Wade and Marion.
We’ll be putting up draft previews over the next couple of days, but until then we’ll just offer a few thoughts:
(1) If I was the Bulls GM (if Reinsdorf or any one in the organization is reading this, please contact me), I would go with Rose. Even though they lack a great inside scoring threat, I think it’s a lot easier to find a serviceable PF than PG. I also think the impact of a great PG is bigger as Chris Paul and the other great recent vintage PGs have shown everyone the past few years. The Bulls have a lot of talented NBA-quality young guards (Chris Duhon, Ben Gordon, Kirk Hinrich, Larry Hughes, and Thabo Sefolosha) along with a couple talented unproven youngsters (JamesOn Curry and Shannon Brown). While some analysts may argue that this is a reason to get a big man, I would argue they should take Rose (better than any of the current guards) and make a big package of these young guys to try to get another inside presence to compliment Andre Nocioni, Joakim Noah, Drew Gooden, and Tyrus Thomas along with the team’s only “star” Luol Deng. I’ll have more on this in an upcoming post. . .
(2) I wonder if Mike D’Antoni is starting to think he should have asked the Knicks for more money. He could have had almost the perfect team for his offense if he went to Chicago even before they had the chance to select Rose. I also wonder how D’Antoni is going to handle being on a team that uses its draft pick to select a player instead of selling it for money.
(3) Hoiberg looked like he was going to throw the cancer patient’s teddy bear when the Timberwolves ended up with the #3 pick (falling outside of the Beasley-Rose jackpot). That would have made an even better YouTube moment than it already was (around the 2:20 mark of the clip below).
A couple quick, early links on the NBA Draft:
(1) As always, Chad Ford has a mock draft up with a brief analysis. I swear he must have enough spare time during the year to come up with mock drafts for every possible team draft order combination.
(2) Meanwhile, Jack McCallum chimes in with his own thoughts. Mostly just rambling about what D’Antoni must be thinking along with a brief breakdown of what the top teams in the draft might do.
(3) If you want to hate John Hollinger and his ridiculous unproven stats, check out his Pro Potential analysis (ESPN Insider access required). For those of you without access here are a couple of gems:
– Michael Beasley at #1 followed by. . .Blake Griffin at #2 and Danny Green at #4.
– 11 of the top 25 are freshman, which isn’t surprising, but that does not include several notable freshman who didn’t make the list: Derrick Rose, OJ Mayo, DeAndre Jordan, Donte Green, and Eric Gordon.
– The list of freshman that Hollinger considers to have more pro potential than those five heralded freshman: DeJuan Blair (Pittsburgh), Dar Tucker (DePaul), Robbie Hummel (Purdue), Andrew Ogilvy (Vanderbilt), and Matt Howard (Butler). The fact that I decided to list the schools these guys play at should tell you how far off the radar most of these guys are as NBA prospects. Hollinger offers an impassioned defense of his system, but I don’t buy it.
Jeff Goodman is reporting that the nation’s top recruit, Brandon Jennings, still hasn’t officially qualified for enrollment at Arizona. Well, there’s always the D-League, eh, Brandon?
IUPUI coach Ron Hunter gives us reason to believe in humanity again.
Andy Katz listed the results of his polling of various NBA scouts, GMs and other dignitaries, and since it’s Insider, we have no problem stealing it (see below). There were 26 responses, and each response got one vote as to whether a player would be in the lottery.
In the worst-things-you-can-do-when-pulled-over-by-the-cops anthology, this story as perpetrated by Akron sophomore guard Rydell Brooks must rank near the top. Around midnight Saturday, Brooks and his buddy, Ed Davis, Jr., were stopped by police on what they called a “routine traffic stop.”
Shoot First, Ask Questions Later (photo credit: WKYC.com)
Let’s see, we’ve been pulled over many times in our driving days, and we’ve developed a keen sense of what not to do in those situations. For one, you don’t start moving around inside the vehicle, nor do you start reaching for things that may or may not be hidden in the glovebox or the floorboard. You try to keep yourself courteous and polite and you avoid arguing with the po-po man over whatever it is he’s saying you did. Most importantly, you don’t pull out a bitchin’ MAC-10 and start unloading into the friendly officers under any circumstances…
A University of Akron basketball player is being held on charges of firing shots at Akron policeofficers after a traffic stop. Akron police detectives said Rydell Brooks, 20, a UA sophomore, was pulled over on a routine traffic stop around midnight Saturday. Police said Brooks fled from the vehicle and fired several shots at officers, who caught him after a short chase. He is being held in the Summit County Jail, along with Edward J. Davis Jr., 20, of Cole Avenue, Akron. Davis also was in the car, police said.
Rydell Brooks, 20, a UA sophomore, and Edward Davis Jr., 20, of Akron, are each charged with attempted murder, felonious assault and carrying a concealed weapon. Bond was set at $1 million. Brooks is also charged with driving with a suspended license and excessively tinted windows. An Akron prosecutor said five guns and two ski masks were found inside Brooks’ 1997 Dodge Caravan following his arrest. According to police, as officers approached the vehicle on Bellows Street around midnight Saturday they were greeted with gunfire. No one was injured in the gunfire. Police have not indicated that they returned the gunfire.
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmkaaaaaaaaaaay… our first question is how the hell did the police catch someone who was shooting at them without shooting that person themselves? Really, how does that happen? They’re claiming attempted murder here – did Brooks run out of ammo? Did he toss the weapon while being chased? Did the cops have one of those giant cartoon nets they shot out of a cannon?
Your Last TV Appearance (photo credit: Akron Beacon-Journal)
And our second question is… excessively tinted windows? Is that why the cops stopped Brooks in the first place? They couldn’t have possibly known that Brooks was driving on a suspended license or that he had a veritable armory in the van, so that was their probable cause? Talk about walking into a hornet’s nest. So, when buying used cars in fort myers, you need to choose a vehicle that complies with regulations to avoid traffic tickets.
See Rydell, we saw The Wire last week, that’s why you invest in a hollowed-out compartment behind the glove box. Oh, and call Levance Fields – he seems to know how to get out of these types of messes. Heck, he assaulted an officer, grabbed at his weapon, and didn’t even get suspended last year (granted, he didn’t shoot at the guy, but these are mere technicalities).
Former GW and St. John’s head coach Mike Jarvis is reportedly resurfacing at Florida Atlantic University, not to be confused with fellow resurfacer and former FAU coach Matt Doherty (toiling his wares at SMU (24-37) the last two seasons). And yes, we know you were wondering, but “Coach Doh” is now “blogging,” as the kids are calling it. His posts on “Pizza and Ball” and “C-Paul” and simply brilliant – Agent Zero has nothing on Doh.
Kansas Associate AD Jim Marchiony says nothing to see here with respect to the Darrell Arthur grade-changing scandal in high school. If Arthur were returning to KU next year, he may face some kind of suspension (assuming all of the allegations are true), but Kansas’ role in validating his HS transcript probably ended when it was accepted by the NCAA Clearinghouse.
Scout came out with its final Top 100 Seniors of 2008 – Arizona’s Brandon Jennings is their top choice. #71 on that list, Emmanuel Negedu, wants out of his commitment to Arizona, citing coaching confusion as the reason for his change of heart. Gary Parrish stays in the Pac-10 to rate UCLA as his top class of 2008 (5 players in the top 50).
We know that Michael Beasley and Derrick Rose will be 1-2 in next month’s draft, but who will be the #3 player selected?
Egads, so Billy Gillispie isn’t a drunk swimming in hotel pools with topless coeds after all?!?!
Oh my, in the Reverand Wright vein of knowing who you associate with, please tell us that Barack Obama knows about these photos of one of his top aides, former Dookie (and TeaBagged) Reggie Love.
Lost in the huge O.J. Mayo scandal and the smaller Darrell Arthur scandal is the upcoming NBA Draft, which is a little over 1 month away. Unlike last year, where there was a ton of hype regarding the Draft Lottery (Note: This may have just been because I live in Boston), the day has snuck up on us. I just noticed that it would be happening on May 20th in contrast to last year where I had the time of the lottery programmed into my Treo by mid-March (thanks to an 18-game losing streak). Teams that failed to make the playoffs have the following odds of winning the #1 pick:
Basically the lottery breaks down into a couple key segments:
(1) The top 2 picks: Whoever ends up with the #1 pick will have to decide between Derrick Rose and Michael Beasley. Up until the Sweet 16, it seemed like Beasley was the unanimous choice to be the #1 overall pick regardless of who was drafting at that spot. However, after being the best player on the court the last 4 games of the NCAA tournament including lighting up lottery-type talents like D.J. Augustin and Darren Collison/Russell Westbrook, Rose vaulted himself into contention. Unlike last year when there were only minor rumblings of debate over the #1 pick coming from people like Bill Simmons, I believe there is a legitimate debate over who should go #1 that will only be decided when the NBA announces who has the #1 overall pick. Do you think David Stern has noticed that Derrick Rose would be an excellent PG for Mike D’Antoni’s New York Knicks?
(2) Picks #3-6: The guys in this category are Brook Lopez, Mayo, Eric Gordon, and Jerryd Bayless. The key in this group is Lopez. He will go to whatever team needs an inside presence. I’m not completely sold on his game translating to the NBA (covered in upcoming posts), but Lopez is the only legitimate top 5 inside presence in the draft (Beasley is a combo guy). After that it seems like Mayo is the consensus top combo guard in the group although I suspect that with some good workouts Gordon and Bayless might be able to jump him. Gordon is likely being hurt a little by his precipitous drop-off in production at the end of the year while Bayless is hurt by the fact that he didn’t play in a system that fully utilized his skills in the open-court.
(3) The rest: Honestly, I have no idea on picks 7-14 and it seems like that draft experts don’t either as each one has a completely different order. The key players here are Kevin Love, D.J. Augustin, DeAndre Jordan, Darrell Arthur, Chase Buddinger, Joe Alexander, Anthony Randolph, Russell Westbrook, Kosta Koufos, and JaVale McGee along with all the internationals (Danillo Gallinari and Nicolas Batum). We aren’t even going to touch this group until the order is set because so much of it will depend on team need. The one guy that we think could jump significantly is Buddinger based on his workouts.
We’ll have more coverage/analysis following the Lottery on Tuesday as we start to break down the players and team needs.
If you’re a fan of one of these unfortunate teams, you may find some solace in ESPN.com’s Lottery Mock Draft Generator. I know I used it quite a bit last year (getting angry every time the Celtics fell out of the top 2). This year, you guys will be playing with it while I wonder why the f- Rajon Rondo disappears on the road (rtmsf wishes Rondo showed up at all in college).
Finishing out your week with a bunch of meaningless links – enjoy!
OJ Mayo claims he never took nothing from nobody! Apparently Mayo’s HS in Ohio (North College Hill) will keep its two titles from 2005 and 2006 – the OHSAA only gives you six weeks to contest a violation of any kind! nvr1983 update: I prefer the actual LA Times article/interview. Even though I know it is normal for athletes to get rather large gifts from agents before the draft (rtmsf and I witnessed it in 1998 with Vince Carter and Antawn Jamison and a tricked out Navigator), the last sentence is a classic.
UNC’s Alex Stepheson announced that he is transferring closer to home for family reasons (SoCal).
USC may lose a major recruit for 09 in the fallout of the Mayo scandal.
UConn guard Doug Wiggins is transferring to UMass – oh, to reminisce on what an uproar this would have caused ca. 1994.
Indiana’s former assistant coach Dan Dakich got bought out for $185k.
BYU’s Trent Plaisted signed with an agent and will stay in the NBA Draft.
Here’s Shawn Siegel’s most excellent ratings of the top ten players at each position in this year’s draft class (PGs, SGs, and more to come…)
Yes, kids, testing the waters can end up pigeonholing you and hurting your future draft position.
Jay Bilas indicts everyone and anyone related to the stink emanating from the business of basketball (and we largely agree with him). (insider only)
Gary Parrish talks about how teams are stealing players from programs going through coaching changes (Duke and UCLA are the latest beneficiaries).
If this isn’t IRONIC in the wake of Huggins’ stint at Kansas State (one-and-done), we don’t know what is…
Andy Glockner reports that the mid-majors are getting hit hard by the glut of early entries these days too.
Is college basketball being unfairly singled out for additional enforcement (vis-a-vis football) by Myles Brand?
So it’s been 39 days since Kansas’ Mario Chalmers thrilled us all with his clutch three-pointer that sent the national title game into OT and crushed the foul-shooting-challenged MemphinsMemphiansMemphiserswhat the hell is it Memphis Tigers in the process. That’s just about enough time for our first scandal to arise!
Say It Isn’t So, Darrell!
WFAA.com in Dallas broke the story last night that Kansas forward Darrell Arthur may have been the recipient of a favorable grade change in his high school math class (Dallas South Oak Cliffs HS) that would otherwise have jeopardized his eligiblity (both at the prep and collegiate levels). The tale of the transcripts:
[T]ranscripts obtained by News 8 raise questions about whether he was actually making the grade in the classroom during his junior season, specifically in math. Transcripts show Arthur received no grades at all during his fall semester. His final grade was changed to a 70 in September 2005 without an explanation. If, in fact, Arthur had failed math that fall, he would not have been eligible to play basketball, and many of his team’s victories in that championship season might have to be forfeited, according to University Interscholastic League standards.
It gets worse, Jayhawk fans.
Former South Oak Cliff math teacher Winford Ashmore said Arthur had a history of trouble in math. He showed us his 2002 grade book for freshman math in which Arthur was making weekly failing grades: 45, 25 and 24. Ashmore said then-principal Donald Moten, and current head basketball coach James Mays Jr., both asked him to bypass the rules and award Arthur a passing grade. “Darrell was still failing, and was not making much of an effort in class, and was not coming to tutoring,” Ashmore said. “So at that point I ensured Moten — as well as James Mays Jr. — that Darrell Arthur was going to get an F for the six weeks.” Days later, without teacher approval, Arthur was dropped from Ashmore’s class. And despite those low grades, transcripts reflect Arthur received a passing grade of 70.
KU better start hoping that Ashmore (wasn’t he on Fresh Prince of Bel Air?) is a Texas fan with an active imagination. But credibility seems to lie on Ashmore’s side. Principal Moten recently resigned from his post at the high school in light of another grade-changing scandal involving a class subsequent to Arthur’s.
The Kansas blogs are strangely quiet on this so far this morning, but maybe they’re still in shock. We know we would be too. After all, if Arthur is retroactively found ineligible, their season could be officially relegated to the trashbin that 1993 Michigan and 1996 UMass find themselves. Except that it’s worse. 2008 Kansas was the national champion, in case you’d forgotten.
We keep reading all of these arguments in light of the OJ Mayo controversy about how the 1-and-done rule is a joke, about how it punishes the athletes, about how it makes unwitting (or is it witting?) accomplices of the schools in the whole charade, about how peace and prosperity and all things good and holy are tied into the elimination of this silly rule… and we stop and wonder. Why the uproar? Actually, what we meant to say is, why the uproar now?
If all of these pundits maligning the 1-and-done rule haven’t noticed, OJ Mayo isn’t the first kid who was being handled by an agent throughout his college career, and guess what, he won’t be the last. We already know that Rodney Guillory was handling Jeff Trepagnier and Tito Maddox in the early 2000s, well before the 1-and-done rule was implemented. We know that Reggie Bush played at USC for three collegiate years and the agents still got their hooks into him. If writers such as this guy, or this guy, or this guy, really believe that by letting the Lebrons and KGs and Odens go pro straight out of HS eliminates the problem with agents and runners contacting and influencing college players, then LOLOLOLOL on them.
Their complaints aren’t flat wrong, but they’re misattributed. Why? Because there are players right now on nearly every major D1 school across the country who have been contacted by and have talked to agents. Guaranteed. Some of them have probably taken a few gifts here and there. Does eliminating the handful of 1-and-dones from college campuses each year solve that problem? Not at all. The agents will then just focus on the next tier of college players – the Chris Douglas-Robertses, the Deron Wiliamses, the Jordan Farmars. The problem isn’t solved, it’s merely shifted.
The Commish Loves the Free Marketing the NCAA Provides
Look, here’s our point. The 1-and-done rule is stupid for certain, but it’s not stupid because of the OJ Mayo problem. It’s stupid because it places all of the risk on the players and colleges for the benefit of the NBA evaluation process. Nevertheless, it’s not going anywhere until 2011, and early indications are that Comandante Stern wants to tack another year onto the age minimum and the NBAPA is unlikely to battle that point. So then we’ll have 2-and-dones, which isn’t all that dissimilar from the NFL rule currently in existence (3 yrs). But whether there’s a 1-year rule, 2-year rule, 3-year rule or 4-year rule, the problem begins with the corrupt and criminal AAU basketball system in this country and the agents that feed off of it. These folks will not remove their grimy hands from the pockets of college basketball until there are no longer players on which they think they can ride to fortune. In other words, never. While there have been dozens of players drafted in the first round in the preps-to-pros era (the current 1-and-dones), there were far more early-entry sophomores and juniors over that same period. It won’t go away, no matter what these people are saying (well, at least one commentator gets it).
