I simply cannot resist the temptation to comment on the latest O.J Mayo "fiasco." You can read about it here and here. If there’s one thing in sports that angers me more than athletes breaking the law, it’s people and institutions which take advantage of kids to make money. The Mayo case gives us a perfect example of this phenomenon and people like Guillory and Johnson are flat-out reprehensible people.
ESPN describes people like Guillory as “middlemen" or "(people) who develop relationships with high-profile athletes with the goal of delivering them to a sports agent when the players turn pro.” ESPN calls them “runners” but I call them con-men. These people exist for the purposes of leeching off talent and serving the interests of people or groups without their target's best interests at heart. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why these guys are “helping” out star players. Johnson, one of the runners, “admitted that he hoped to profit more once the player made it to the NBA.”
Basically they found a budding star without a role model and proceeded to take advantage of him for financial and personal gain. What makes this story so tragic (and angering) is that Mayo didn't have a father or at least someone who could give him sound advice. Instead Johnson and Guillory took on the role of a father figure, yet their interests were not pure at heart.
The irony in this situation is that instead of being a high first round pick with guaranteed money, Mayo will probably fall to a lower pick on "character concerns" than he would have otherwise (note: edit based on Jim's comment that the NBA only has two rounds...shows how much I know). His pay-day will be a third of what it probably could have been, and it's all because two older guys took advantage of his youth and poor decisions; instead of helping him, they hurt him.
Mayo isn’t a victim, either. He could have walked away from these guys. Mayo is either incredibly stupid or morally bankrupt, or both. ESPN writes that, “Guillory was an L.A. event promoter who also played a role in the suspension of a USC basketball player in 2000.” Why would Mayo, assuming he knew about Guillory’s role in this prior suspension, willingly take on Guillory as an advisor? So Guillory could advise him on how to get suspended And what about Johnson, the other runner? He had a prior for selling cocaine! Sounds like someone you can trust, right? What the hell was OJ thinking when he associated himself with these guys?
The other option is that OJ was greedy and took the bribes from the people giving him advice and guidance. But who enabled this greedy behavior through favors and money? The runners certainly didn’t have money so they had to get it somewhere. It turns out that sports agencies are in the mix – what a surprise, right? Sports agencies use these runners to preemptively sign talent – they’re in it together for mutual exploitation of someone with poor judgment and a lax moral compass – and after enough favors are spent, they get the contract. ESPN.com writes that:
“Over the course of roughly three years prior to the start of Mayo's freshman season at USC, BDA Sports provided Guillory with about $200,000, some of it through an account set up at Citibank.”
Guillory spent those funds on Mayo in the hopes that once he made it pro, he would choose BDA. What’s to say BDA can’t pay Guillory for this relationship, too? Everyone wins, right? Everyone gets a piece of the pie!
Wrong. Everyone suffers.
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4 comments:
Well done sir. I have a few thoughts, which basically echo what you are saying.
1) There need to be some serious sanctions put on USC. It's very clear that they have an extensive network of crooked shit out there.
2) There are many people out there who are going to rush to place all of the blame for this on Mayo and Bush and the other individual players. I'm certainly not saying that they're blameless. But, just remember, they're kids. You look at either of them, and they are these huge jacked dudes that appear to be mature and totally grown up. If you think back to when you were 18 or 19, you will probably remember that you were most likely prone to making poor decisions and easily led to trouble by others. The only way that we can be sure that these higher ups (institutions, runners, agents) really do keep the best interests of the kids in mind is to present serious punishment when they show otherwise. Punishing the kids ruins their future, and does nothing to damage the reputation of the people with the real power. We need to focus on the athletic departments, boosters, and agents who cause this trouble, because stopping them is the only way to clean it up.
yeah imagine you and I at age 18, on the cusp of making millions of dollars
what would be worse? having the money or negotiating with all the creeps out there in order to get the money?
my only criticism of mayo is for him to have "hired" this USC guy for advice - very bad move on his part
"The irony in this situation is that instead of being a first round pick with guaranteed money, Mayo will probably fall to the second or third rounds on "character concerns.""
Just wanted to throw out that the NBA draft only has 2 rounds. And first round talent rarely drops into the second round. For example Eddie Griffin and Lamar Odom were considered sketchy guys and they went 7th and 4th respectively. If people think Mayo can play at worst he won't be invited to New York for draft day.
I enjoyed this. USC does seem to have some issues going on there. And while most schools do, the Trojans' have been right out in the open for everyone to see.
Jim,
You are probably right. I was just thinking about the NFL and how players drop to the second or third rounds with first round talent if they have a lot of bad stuff in their backgrounds.
I guess that doesn't apply to the NBA with the same consistancy.
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