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Nike allegedly offered $20k illicit payment to Romeo


madmax

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Can’t say I enjoy reading something like this. Absolutely nothing to say Romeo, his parents, or his AAU coaches even had knowledge of it, but still not a fun thing to read about.

 

https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/27390195/avenatti-filing-nike-okd-payments-zion-more

 

P.S.- Mods feel free to merge with the other corruption thread, but I felt a new thread was appropriate.

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The text messages can't be disputed.  They were obviously made.  What I'm not clear on reading the story is:

  • Was the money solicited by those around the players, or was it an unsolicited approach by Nike.  This is a huge point in assigning blame.
  • Whether the money was being paid to family members (of concern) or non-family handlers (of less concern).

 

 

 

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1 minute ago, Billingsley99 said:

Note to parents if you plan on raising a son that will go on to play NBA ball and you might want to get.paid by shoe companies name your kids Bob or Jim or Mike or any other common names. Not many hi level Zions and Romeo's out there to get mistaken for.

How many bob or Jim the last few years lol 

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I posted this on another forum

1. I'm going to take anything Avenatti says with face value as he's facing extortion and fraud charges that if convicted could potentially land him in prison for the rest of his life

2. It suggests that Nike "offered" Langford $20k. Offered doesn't mean accepted. I'd be willing to wage that most recruits in the top 10 or 20 of their class going back the last 20-25 years have been "offered" something by some sort of third party agency to attend a school. I've seen a post that suggests if Nike was offering $20k, "how much was Adidas offering for him to end up at an Adidas school?"

3. To end my thought on #2, there was just a 2 year investigation and trial that recently concluded that ended with convictions for multiple people involved with Adidas. There was hours of testimony and thousands and thousands of documents entered into the courts, none of which suggested Adidas was in a bidding war with Nike to secure a commitment for Romeo Langford. There were however, other individuals named. Nike very well may have "offered" Langford, it doesn't mean he took it

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1 hour ago, 5fouls said:

The text messages can't be disputed.  They were obviously made.  What I'm not clear on reading the story is:

  • Was the money solicited by those around the players, or was it an unsolicited approach by Nike.  This is a huge point in assigning blame.
  • Whether the money was being paid to family members (of concern) or non-family handlers (of less concern).

 

 

 

I tend to agree.  These aren't all complete word of mouth allegations as there does appear to be some degree of veracity to them.

My thoughts are:

- This took place in Feb. of 2017, long before Langford made his decision.  I'd think if he took Nike $$$ he wouldn't have had 2 (3?) addidas schools in his final 3.

- Hard to believe Nike would not have actually paid some players that did go to Nike sponsored school (as the blurb about a "unnamed UK assistant coach" would suggest)

- The way I read it, it was a request for approval to offer $ to Langford and Williamson while sounding like they already had approval for (or actually paid) the unnamed UM player.  Whether any offer was made, much less accepted, is unknown

 

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5 minutes ago, IndyResident16 said:

I posted this on another forum

1. I'm going to take anything Avenatti says with face value as he's facing extortion and fraud charges that if convicted could potentially land him in prison for the rest of his life

2. It suggests that Nike "offered" Langford $20k. Offered doesn't mean accepted. I'd be willing to wage that most recruits in the top 10 or 20 of their class going back the last 20-25 years have been "offered" something by some sort of third party agency to attend a school. I've seen a post that suggests if Nike was offering $20k, "how much was Adidas offering for him to end up at an Adidas school?"

3. To end my thought on #2, there was just a 2 year investigation and trial that recently concluded that ended with convictions for multiple people involved with Adidas. There was hours of testimony and thousands and thousands of documents entered into the courts, none of which suggested Adidas was in a bidding war with Nike to secure a commitment for Romeo Langford. There were however, other individuals named. Nike very well may have "offered" Langford, it doesn't mean he took it

I was just wondering how was this post accepted on the other board because I would bet some did not buy it and think Archie is crooked.

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24 minutes ago, Zuckerkorn said:

I tend to agree.  These aren't all complete word of mouth allegations as there does appear to be some degree of veracity to them.

My thoughts are:

- This took place in Feb. of 2017, long before Langford made his decision.  I'd think if he took Nike $$$ he wouldn't have had 2 (3?) addidas schools in his final 3.

- Hard to believe Nike would not have actually paid some players that did go to Nike sponsored school (as the blurb about a "unnamed UK assistant coach" would suggest)

- The way I read it, it was a request for approval to offer $ to Langford and Williamson while sounding like they already had approval for (or actually paid) the unnamed UM player.  Whether any offer was made, much less accepted, is unknown

 

Exactly.  His dad coached an AAU funded by Adidas and his school of choice was Adidas. If the report was offer from Adidas not Nike maybe you could suspect they received a payment otherwise I think it's crazy to assume they took any Nike money

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12 minutes ago, Zuckerkorn said:

I tend to agree.  These aren't all complete word of mouth allegations as there does appear to be some degree of veracity to them.

My thoughts are:

- This took place in Feb. of 2017, long before Langford made his decision.  I'd think if he took Nike $$$ he wouldn't have had 2 (3?) addidas schools in his final 3.

- Hard to believe Nike would not have actually paid some players that did go to Nike sponsored school (as the blurb about a "unnamed UK assistant coach" would suggest)

- The way I read it, it was a request for approval to offer $ to Langford and Williamson while sounding like they already had approval for (or actually paid) the unnamed UM player.  Whether any offer was made, much less accepted, is unknown

 

Didn’t it say in the article the text messages weren’t actually provided yet and the motion was just stating what they allegedly have on text messages emails etc?

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16 minutes ago, IU Scott said:

Hoping nothing happened but remember we were the fans who said Duke had to be involved in this.  We said since it showed that Kansas was offering this amount but he went to Duke so we thought for sure Duke had to offer more.

I did not go so far to say that money was not taken.  I have no idea on that. I do feel confident no Nike money was taken

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6 minutes ago, Billingsley99 said:

Exactly.  His dad coached an AAU funded by Adidas and his school of choice was Adidas. If the report was offer from Adidas not Nike maybe you could suspect they received a payment otherwise I think it's crazy to assume they took any Nike money

Why would it be crazy to accept money from a rival company? It’s basically free money and you have no obligation to uphold your end of the deal. What are they going to sue or try to extort you if you don’t follow through? Not a chance they would make what they are doing behind the scenes public information. These companies take huge risks in performing these actions because there is no way they can be guaranteed anything from the other party. 

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17 minutes ago, MPM said:

Why would it be crazy to accept money from a rival company? It’s basically free money and you have no obligation to uphold your end of the deal. What are they going to sue or try to extort you if you don’t follow through? Not a chance they would make what they are doing behind the scenes public information. These companies take huge risks in performing these actions because there is no way they can be guaranteed anything from the other party. 

At some point you will have to pay the piper.  Do not think for a second that companies that spend that kind.of money dont have people to handle those kind of situations.  It could be with future endorsements,  speaking engagements etc.  Lots of shady things go on behind closed doors. Not the kind of people you want as an enemy 

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30 minutes ago, IndyResident16 said:

I posted this on another forum

1. I'm going to take anything Avenatti says with face value as he's facing extortion and fraud charges that if convicted could potentially land him in prison for the rest of his life

2. It suggests that Nike "offered" Langford $20k. Offered doesn't mean accepted. I'd be willing to wage that most recruits in the top 10 or 20 of their class going back the last 20-25 years have been "offered" something by some sort of third party agency to attend a school. I've seen a post that suggests if Nike was offering $20k, "how much was Adidas offering for him to end up at an Adidas school?"

3. To end my thought on #2, there was just a 2 year investigation and trial that recently concluded that ended with convictions for multiple people involved with Adidas. There was hours of testimony and thousands and thousands of documents entered into the courts, none of which suggested Adidas was in a bidding war with Nike to secure a commitment for Romeo Langford. There were however, other individuals named. Nike very well may have "offered" Langford, it doesn't mean he took it

I could be wrong on this as I haven't read the article, just the tweets, but I don't believe the suggestion is that Nike offered money to get Langford to a Nike school. The accusation is that money was offered to get him to play in the EYBL (Nike AAU circuit). Now, you can certainly extrapolate that to assume that's basically to get him into the Nike 'family' and eventually to a Nike school, but from what I read this report is more about getting players to show up for the EYBL. 

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17 minutes ago, BGleas said:

I could be wrong on this as I haven't read the article, just the tweets, but I don't believe the suggestion is that Nike offered money to get Langford to a Nike school. The accusation is that money was offered to get him to play in the EYBL (Nike AAU circuit). Now, you can certainly extrapolate that to assume that's basically to get him into the Nike 'family' and eventually to a Nike school, but from what I read this report is more about getting players to show up for the EYBL. 

https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/27390195/avenatti-filing-nike-okd-payments-zion-more

The article I read (first paragraph) suggests that Nike "approved under-the-table payments". I could be wrong, but I think it would have made much more sense had Nike just sponsored an EYBL team in Romeo's name such as Adidas did with Twenty Vision. That's a business entity that can be written off as income and taxed legally vs under the table payments. 

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38 minutes ago, IU Scott said:

I was just wondering how was this post accepted on the other board because I would bet some did not buy it and think Archie is crooked.

Scott.  Give it a rest.  Let the other board be the other board and let HSN be HSN.  No need to compare one to the other.

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24 minutes ago, IU Scott said:

Hoping nothing happened but remember we were the fans who said Duke had to be involved in this.  We said since it showed that Kansas was offering this amount but he went to Duke so we thought for sure Duke had to offer more.

Hate to say it, but Scott is right. I remember the last time this went down. Revisit around page 60 of the Watford to LSU thread. @btownqb got it from all sides just saying speculation is not proof, but that was when the speculation that surrounded Duke. Now that it surrounds IU, the tone is a bit different. 

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