The O.J. Mayo Saga Continues

In 2006, I wrote an article about O.J. Mayo. The article was not so much about the person as it was about the phenomenon. It was about the system which creates celebrities out of high school kids.

At the type, my article criticized Reebok's involvement with Mayo, his high school and his AAU team.

According to a recent article, “Reebok grassroots director Sonny Vaccaro confirmed to The Enquirer last May that Reebok funded the D-I Greyhounds with about $100,000 annually.” That money, of course, cannot be paid directly to O.J. Mayo or his family, especially since the new NBA Age Limit means it is likely he will need to spend one year at a college. However, as Forde wrote in his column, “his dimes will come. And the first ones will come from Reebok. Vaccaro, who says he first heard about Mayo when he was in sixth grade, will make sure of that.”

According to the latest allegations, shoe company money and improprieties are the least of Mayo's concerns and according to the allegations, someone beat Reebok to Mayo to get Mayo his "first dimes."

According to the ESPN OTL story:

Clothing isn't the only thing Guillory, now 43, bought for Mayo during the course of their friendship, according to Johnson. Guillory also paid for Mayo's flat-screen television, meals and airline tickets for friends and a family member.

Guillory, of course, is a runner for an agent, the guys that most in the basketball world despise because they leach onto young, precocious basketball stars and make money delivering these stars to certain agents. According to the OTL article:

Johnson said Guillory once tallied the cash and property that BDA had provided him, which totaled between $200,000 and $250,000. About $30,000 of that made its way to Mayo and others close to him, he said.

Guillory's involvement with Mayo started at the Reebok sponsored ABCD Tournament, run by Sonny Vaccarro, and included paying Mayo's Reebok-sponsored high school team:

The week before Christmas in 2005, Guillory began to leverage that relationship. He co-sponsored a tournament in Southern California with Reebok that featured Mayo's North College Hill team. Guillory paid the school $16,000, plus all travel expenses, for the chance to showcase Mayo for two games in California, according to the contract between Guillory and the school, which "Outside the Lines" obtained through a public records request.

Now, everyone, including Dick Vitale is blaming the NBA's Age Limit Rule for such conduct. While I wrote in 2005 that the NBA does not need an age limit and still believe it was a bad decision, most of the issues occurred when Mayo was in high school, not college. Sure, it means USC allegedly had a "non-amateur" player on its team last season, but I long ago gave up this silly notion that men's basketball is a pure, amateur sport. I don't believe the issue is necessarily with the NBA rule or USC, but with the ability of runners to get to high school kids, though stopping that will be far more difficult than reversing a silly rule (I remember a quote by Al Jefferson saying something like: "How am I going to get an education in one year at college? If I'm in the lottery, I'm gone").

As Michael Wilbon writes:

That said, the primary villains here are the scumbags who have been preying on Mayo from age 12 or 13 or whenever it became apparent he had a talent that could make him a star. They always are the villains, the hustlers in the 'hood whispering in a kid's ear, waving a fistful of dollars and buying not only future access but often exclusivity: "Lemme give you this car now, so in turn you'll feel obligated to let me get close to you before the big payday down the road."

Mayo is portrayed as the bad guy because he should have known better or because he's getting free stuff or because he's going to put USC on probation if the allegations are proved correct. However, Mayo the person is not a bad guy, I imagine. Mayo, the product, is the problem. The system from the runners to the shoe agents to the NBA rule turned Mayo into a commodity. He became a meal ticket for more than just himself or his family, but for numerous other hangers-ons. The problem is not Mayo or players like him, though they are not completely innocent. The problem is a society that allows elite talents to become commodities whose talent supports a growing entourage as the player achieves more and more success. As Wilbon writes:

I realized instantly I was wrong for attacking Mayo the way I had. While Mayo isn't an innocent, he's absolutely the product of a subculture in which the ability to play basketball at an elite level is valued more than being a good father, more than formal education, more than almost anything that appears to be within his grasp. Mayo, like so many who've come before him, simply is doing the only thing he knows to negotiate the road before him. Why would he know any better than to call Floyd, full of presumption, and tell him, "I'm coming," when it has been reinforced since he was 12 years old that talent rules the day and when the coach is too spineless to tell him who's in charge?