If nothing else, the new landscape of college basketball is producing a push for more transparency within the sport. As it remains a challenge to discern what’s real and what’s fabricated, at least we’re given the opportunity to hear more about what supposedly goes on behind the scenes.
On Monday, an interesting story broke concerning a player that Mark Pope and Kentucky Basketball were pursuing this summer.
Yaxel Lendeborg passed on the chance to attend Kentucky and instead has dominated college basketball
this season with the Michigan Wolverines.
In a recent interview with the AP, the 6-9, 240-pound versatile forward said that the UK offered him between $7 to $9 million to be a Wildcat. That’s a pretty insane number, so I’ll leave it up to you to form your own opinion as to its true merit.
Regardless, Lendeborg hammered home the point that he took a considerable pay cut by choosing to play for Dusty May instead of Pope.
According to Larry Lage from the AP, the difference was about three times less signing with Michigan.
“I was thinking long term. What if I mess up my career because I chased the money instead of a future? Another big reason why I went with Dusty was that he didn’t talk about money at all. It was all about making me better and helping me achieve my goals.” Lendeborg said.
That “he didn’t talk about money at all” part is also pretty fishy in a world where NIL and money are always at or near the top of priorities for players and/or their agents/inner circle. It sounds more like the phony AI-generated feel-good stories you see Facebook flooded with.
Oh well.
Mark Pope will continue to take criticism until he shows a consistent track record of landing big players in the portal like a Yaxel Lendeborg. His 14.6 points and 7 rebounds per game would have been a welcome contribution on a Kentucky team that had considerable opportunity in the frontcourt.
All this being said, this article didn’t paint the UK basketball program in the best light, and hopefully, the wheels are in motion to fix some things on the roster-construction side of the house.
