Saw this on ESPN. Keelon Lawson, the father of three highly touted high school basketball players (and a fourth in sixth grade), was just hired as an assistant at Memphis. His oldest son has already committed to the program, while the second is now leaning to the Tigers because of his father's new job. Apparently, it's technically allowed but a questionable hire. Sadly, Seth never thought to lock up Dell Curry.
http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/11222556/memphis-t...
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Two of his sons played at the Arby's Classic holiday tournament that I attended in Bristol this past December. Both kids had tremendous athleticism, but almost zero basketball fundamentals and IQ. Horrific, ego-centric, and predatory coaches are a huge problem in the Memphis area. The public schools have no money, and the AAU system there is one of the most corrupt in the United States. Sadly, the University of Memphis has chosen to enable that awful system rather than work to improve it in their own community.
There is a history of this throughout college sports though. Mario Edwards Sr. Was hired by FSU.
Seth told Stephen Curry he would have to walk on since he was on the smaller side for college basketball players. Now he is in the NBA... I always thought that was crazy since his dad was arguably the best to ever play at Tech.
Yea that is a HUGE mistake, but all the other basketball powers made the same mistake. He only held offers from Davidson, VCU, and Winthrop. So should Seth have offered yes, but remember hindsight is 20/20
Exactly. I say this practically every time this topic of discussion comes up, but it's hard to fault Seth for not offering a scholarship at the time.
Also, think about this - when Steph Curry was a junior (when most people are getting recruited and a lot of them commit) in high school, he was only 5'-8". He did grow around 3" by his senior year, and then he grew another 3" at Davidson and turned out to be around 6'-3". Oh, and also, Steph weighed 165 out of high school, plus he's never been the greatest athlete.
All in all, it looks stupid in retrospect but you can't forget about the thought process at the time. I love the guy's game though, and it would have been fun to see him at VT.
At the time, you can't even really fault Greenberg, cause the recruit he took over Curry was a MUCH higher regarded recruit in high school and appeared to be a great fit with the team. Greenberg even offered Steph a walkon spot when no other major program was willing to do even that, and yet somehow Greenberg became the villain? I just don't get it.
Yes, we missed out on Steph Curry. But SO DID THE REST OF THE BASKETBALL COMMUNITY. Blew my mind mama Curry (a former VT cheerleader) had so much animosity for us that she refused to let Seth even visit Tech when he was being recruited, and then allowed him to go to Duke. Yeah, because Duke went out of their way for Steph....
I've never really heard much about the parents Curry roles in their recruiting. Personally, my husband and I fall in the Sean and Leann Tuohy from "The Blind Side" category of super fans (all Virginia Tech, all the time). I can't imagine having a kid who was being recruited for D1A athletics and not threatening their very life if they didn't go to Tech.
Yeah, once we didn't offer Stephen more than a walk-on role, his mom pretty much cut all ties to VT. The last time Duke was here, Dell tried to stay quite and out of site, but she made sure her mouth was heard.
This kind of shady hire goes on all the time but remains relatively untalked about. Dorian Finney-Smith went to Florida, where one of his AAU coaches been hired there and the same thing with Montrezl Harrell going to Louisville right after his AAU coach was hired there. Its the shady side of the business where people work all in grays. The NCAA has enough going on so that ferreting out wrongdoing in a case like this is not likely to happen.
Yep Rob. And it isn't new. Recall, Pistol Pete Maravich was a package deal with his dad at LSU. If you check Press Maravich's career, he wasn't a very good coach (losing records at Clemson, LSU even with Pete, and Appy State.)
EDIT: In honor of The Pistol
Turkey Leg for a Pistol Pete highlight video! I'd give you another one for the groovy little jazz tune but alas I only have one leg to give. Hadn't seen a Pistol Pete highlight in a long time. It's funny, some of the stuff he did would still be SportsCenter highlight worthy. But some of the stuff probably wouldn't even make the local news today. Just shows you how far basketball has come (true for all sports I suppose).
Don't know why but the 'one leg to give' comment reminded me of the "Can't spare a square" Seinfeld episode.....
The underhand full court pass is a thing of beauty.
Favorite player growing up. And he died the year after I was born. Shows his impact and how ahead of the game he was. I remember him telling a story in a documentary I watched. He performed a crazy move to the hoop in a game and the ref called a travel. Pistol was irate and said, "You can't call that a travel, you haven't even seen that move before!"