Back in March, Chris Dokish wrote a long article on J.O. Stright. It was supplemented with an additional Q&A. Over the weekend there was another article on Stright in the Trib. As with the earlier stuff, nothing gets any clearer. If anything, it muddles further. You have local high school coaches who work and coach with Stright in the AAU (there are multiple age groupings of AAU teams and multiple JOT squads) saying good things about him.
Former Blackhawk High School coach John Miller, a long-time JOTS coach, credits Stright with improving the quality of basketball in a football-crazy region.
“Everyone talks about how we have some big-time guys in the junior class,” Miller said. “How do we know they are big-time? Because they went to North Carolina and competed against the best guys in the nation. You have Herb Pope and Pryor and D.J. Kennedy and DeJuan Blair. What’s the common denominator? Someone is rounding them up and taking them places to play against national competition.”
Shaler coach Howie Ruppert, a former assistant at Seton Hall and Duquesne University, and current AAU coach, agrees.
“J.O. is not in the business to recruit for Pitt or against Pitt,” Ruppert said. “He gives kids an opportunity. He knows how the business works. If you want to play big-time college basketball and you’re good, J.O. is the guy who’s going to show the way.”
Miller, of course, is also Xavier Head Coach and former Pitt star Sean Miller’s father. John Miller is a high school coaching legend in the area for his longevity and success. That is a strong voice in Stright’s corner. Then there is the issue of monies refused.
College coaches attend summer-time national AAU tournaments rather than high school games. They see the best half-dozen players from Western Pennsylvania in one trip. The high school coaches are taken out of the loop. The AAU coaches become the players’ primary mentors.
Through it all, Stright has shunned any sponsorship deals. He has reportedly received six-figure offers from shoe companies that would help defray the team’s annual budget.
Instead, Stright pays for costs (travel, hotel rooms, meals and tournament fees) out of his own pocket. Stright is almost bashful about his benevolence. He declined to talk about how much money he has spent to support the JOTS, other than to say it’s over $100,000.
“I’d rather not talk about the money,” Stright said. “But it’s a lot. We hold some fundraisers, and I get a few small donations. It’s very expensive. But it is my hobby.”
That’s impressive if so. That is one of the big moneymakers and influence in AAU basketball. Consider the comparison from this article concerning O.J. Mayo.
Mayo is about as “amateur” an amateur basketball player as Amare Stoudemire in 2002, LeBron James in ’03 and Sebastian Telfair in ’04. Proof? The biggest buzz of the current spring recruiting circuit came when Mayo played in the Kingwood Classic in Houston with the Miami Tropics instead of his longtime team, the D-One Greyhounds — wearing the Tropics’ Nikes instead of the Greyhounds’ Reeboks. O.J. with a new shoe company? That’s news.
For years Mayo has been generating money for his handlers — guardian Dwain Barnes, North College Hill High, the Greyhounds. Mayo long ago ceased to be a basketball prospect. By age 16 he was a corporation. If you’re lucky enough to be attached to Mayo, turn your umbrella upside down. It’s raining money.
Reebok gives Barnes, as head of the Greyhounds, roughly $75,000 a year for expenses. North College Hill has turned Mayo and teammate Bill Walker into a traveling circus. When North College Hill played Oak Hill Academy in February at U.S. Bank Arena in Cincinnati, a crowd of 16,500 paid roughly $400,000 in admission to watch Mayo score 43 points.
Considering the godfather of AAU shoe dealings, Sonny Vaccarro, is a Western PA native representing Reebok/Adidas interests these days it is quite surprising if true. Stright is leaving some serious cash on the table.
I’m not saying Stright is clean and pure. Hell, he’s an AAU coach and close with Bob Huggins. Either one, carries a strong taint on its own. Nothing around Stright is particularly clear. It all seems to be a wide spectrum of gray that has plenty for supporters and detractors to point to one or the other.
Speaking of muddying things up, there is this part.
Stright is a University of Pittsburgh booster, according to Pitt director of compliance Dan Bartholomae.
Bartholomae said anyone who donates money to a program — which includes being a season-ticket holder — is what they call a booster.
Because Stright is a booster, he can’t recruit for anybody, whether it’s Pitt or Kansas State or Robert Morris.
“He is not permitted to give a recruiting presentation for any school,” Bartholomae said. “If we find out a booster is involved in any recruitment that we think is not within the by-laws, we would have to look into it.”
Kent Barrett, a spokesmen for the NCAA, said any violations boil down to “institutional culpability.”
The NCAA pushes it off onto Pitt. Not to be too cynical, but Pitt would gain nothing by looking too closely at Stright for that sort of thing. Especially since the issues would presumably involve other schools doing the recruiting. What exactly would the NCAA do to a school who’s booster was recruiting for a different school? Who exactly would they blame and punish? Cleveland State?
