What's disturbing isn't that these young superstars get paid under the table; it's that the NCAA tries so hard to pretend they're not already professionals.
"The problem with the NCAA is that it's a for-profit business that takes advantage of free labor," says sports agent Jerome Stanley, whose clients have included former NFL star Keyshawn Johnson and the late Celtics standout Reggie Lewis.
It's only natural that boosters, agents, coaches and assorted other hangers-on look for ways to provide young players with under-the-table down payments on their future pro salaries. That's especially so given that many promising college players don't really consider themselves students -- they're NBA players-in-waiting bridging the one post-high-school year before they can be drafted.
The NBA teams don't care a whit about these college recruiting and payment issues. It's not that the teams don't care about the players at all. On the contrary, they're deeply interested in the backgrounds of top draft prospects.
"They care about criminal issues, drug behavior, medical issues," says Paul Chamberlain, president of a Los Angeles-based investigative firm that says it's often called in by NBA teams to perform due-diligence checks on potential draftees.
"It's surprising to realize, but some teams also care about character issues."
Chamberlain, a former FBI man, employs ex-agents and other former law enforcement officials to fan out and interview a prospect's former coaches, teammates and neighbors for info to supplement what can be gleaned from public records.
That's understandable, given that under NBA salary rules the top draft pick can be guaranteed more than $10 million over his first two years in the league, with the team retaining renewal options for two years more. (I drew the guarantee figure from the NBA's 2009-10 rookie scale, which is based on the rookie's rank in the draft. A team can exceed the figure by up to 20%.)
Chamberlain says one category that elicits almost no interest from his clients is NCAA violations involving payments or recruiting.
"I really doubt that potential NCAA problems outweigh whether a kid can dunk with his left hand," he says.
Chamberlain won't identify the teams he's worked for or the players he's investigated, but he says that most of the young basketball players he's investigated are "good kids."
He also says that although he began performing due-diligence checks in 1983, teams' interest in the service took off after 1986.
