Posted on Tue, May. 13, 2008

Sad part of Mayo saga is the system

By Mark Story

HERALD-LEADER SPORTS COLUMNIST

Damian Dovarganes

Columnist Mark Story on the O.J. Mayo allegations: "If O.J. Mayo felt he could flout the rules, whose fault is that?" Photo by Damian Dovarganes | Associated Press

In the spring of 2001, I happened to call a friend who then worked in Ashland.

During the course of the conversation, he mentioned in passing that he had just seen the best high school basketball player in the state of Kentucky.

Who, I asked.

This sixth-grade kid over at Rose Hill, said he.

You're insane, said I.

Except he wasn't.

That was the first time I ever heard the name "O.J. Mayo."

I've thought much about Mayo since ESPN reported Sunday that the basketball star spent his one year at the University of Southern California essentially on the payroll of the sports agency that -- what are the odds? -- he has now retained to represent him as he turns pro.

From the time he burst onto the scene here in Kentucky while eventually leading tiny Rose Hill Academy to the 2003 state tournament, "The O.J. Mayo Show" has always played on two different levels:

Scintillating basketball, and the jockeying for position of the adults who surrounded the young basketball star.

"Coaching O.J. was a pleasure," Jeff Hall, the former Rose Hill Academy coach and former University of Louisville standout, said Monday. "The kid worked hard every day in practice, was receptive to coaching in the games. He was tremendous. It was always the circus and the entourage that came with him that drove you nuts."

Pretty much everything that is wrong with the basketball development system in the United States can be viewed through the case of O.J. Mayo.

Early rush to hype? Check. The national media dubbed Mayo "the next LeBron" before he was even a high school freshman.

Frequent high school transfers? Check. Mayo's high school career spanned three schools in three states.

Too much commercialization? Bingo. By the final two of Mayo's high school years, promoters were flying his teams all over the country to play for large guarantees, often before ESPN cameras.

Mayo was the absolute marquee name of the summer AAU circuit. One can only wonder what the shoe companies, the pro agents' runners, etc. ... lavished on this O.J. over the years as he traveled the country as part of the basically unsupervised summer basketball circuit.

Which brings us back to the apparent struggle among adults to gain control of Mayo via his entourage. An AAU basketball coach from Huntington, W.Va., Dwaine Barnes, took a young Mayo under his wing. Barnes appeared to be the guy calling the shots for Mayo in the Rose Hill days.

When Mayo left Rose Hill and went to Cincinnati's North College Station High, Barnes was part of the move to Cincinnati.

But sometime after that, a Californian, Rodney Guillory, managed to supplant Barnes in Mayo's inner circle.

It is Guillory who, ESPN alleges, kept Mayo supplied in cash, clothes -- even a flat-screen TV for his USC dorm room -- on behalf of BDA, the sports agency fronted by veteran NBA player agent Bill Duffy.

Mayo is not an innocent, of course.

If he did accept what the NCAA would call "extra benefits" -- and a disgruntled member of his inner circle who fell out with Guillory has provided ESPN with documentary evidence that seems compelling -- he had to know it was against college rules, and a threat to any team success enjoyed by his USC teammates as well as the university itself.

Which is a selfish act.

Yet if O.J. Mayo came to think of himself as above the rules or entitled to things that others aren't, who created that enhanced view of self?

I have a hard time ginning up fiery indignation toward a kid who has watched adults cash in on him year after year after year.

If Mayo looked around "amateur" college basketball and saw schools and coaches raking in multimillions and wondered why the players don't have the same rights, well, in a capitalist economy, on what philosophic basis would you argue that he'd be wrong?

Hall says he never spoke with Mayo after the player left Rose Hill following his eighth-grade year.

"I hope O.J. gets his dream," said Hall, a starting guard on U of L's 1986 NCAA championship team. "He's been through a lot. He deserves it. It's the people jockeying to be around him that have always been the issue, not the kid."