Lies pile up, leaving humiliated players in their wake
Someone told Kentucky junior Kelenna Azubuike and Duke junior Shavlik Randolph that they needed to be in this draft. Someone lied.
Azubuike has an NBA body and explosion, and he's a nice shooter, but he can't dribble from Point A to Point B if there's a traffic cone in between. For someone who stands about 6-4, that's bad.
At least Azubuike was an above-average college player. Randolph was not. He was a bust, one of the biggest recruiting busts in recent memory. So of course he entered the NBA Draft. Like Azubuike, Randolph went undrafted.
Azubuike's father, Kenneth, is going to jail for fraud and owes roughly $330,000 in fines and restitution. Randolph's father, Kenny, also has fallen on hard financial times. While Shavlik was at Duke, his father's company succumbed to bankruptcy, reportedly with liabilities of $4.9 million and a $4.7 million federal tax lien.
Today is humiliating for all of those players ... and for draft rejects like Alabama junior Kennedy Winston and Kentucky freshman Randolph Morris ... and for second-round surprises like high school senior Andray Blatche and Pittsburgh sophomore Chris Taft.
The players should be humiliated. They did this to themselves.
But let's not fool ourselves. They had help.
