NYT: The Tragedy of a HoF Coach and His Star Recruit

[Harry0569]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/06/sport ... ports&_r=0

DALLAS — Word that Keith Frazier, who played on the best college team you will not see this postseason, had dropped out barely registered beyond the confines of Dallas.

Frazier, a 6-foot-5 shooting guard who was Southern Methodist’s third leading scorer, simply stopped showing up for practice in early January, with the Mustangs still undefeated. A few days later, he left the university.

As emotionally fragile as he was talented, Frazier stood at the center of an academic scandal that led the N.C.A.A. to ban S.M.U. from the postseason this year and suspend its coach, Larry Brown, who is in the basketball Hall of Fame, for nine games.

A few days after Frazier dropped out, I asked Coach Brown about the student. Brown shook his head; more than a hint of a native Brooklyn rasp lingers in his voice. “I think I invested more time in that kid than my family,” Brown said. “It’s a tragedy now in college sports, kids leave.”

That is not the tragedy.

The tragedy is that the adults in big-time high school and college basketball, despite attempts at reform and despite the presence of many fine student-athletes, exert far more energy trying to churn out wins than trying to provide an education. Young men like Frazier, who just three years ago was Brown’s top recruit, are collateral damage.

Frazier’s educational track record was pockmarked with failure. His high school grades mysteriously and quickly improved whenever his eligibility to play was at stake. He likely had too many absences and failing grades to graduate from high school. And top officials at S.M.U. ignored their own professors, who recommended that Frazier not be admitted to S.M.U., an academically tough college.

Frazier took an online summer course before enrolling in freshman classes. An S.M.U. team assistant secretly completed Frazier’s work, an N.C.A.A. report found.

Frazier’s walk up and tumble down the stairs of big-time high school and college basketball kicks open a door to the corruption and neglect that mark the educational lives of too many elite athletes. This pervasive corruption extends from Division I colleges down into the high school and amateur ranks.

There are phony addresses for players, doctored grade sheets and illegal recruiting. In one terrible case, Dallas high school coaches concocted fake addresses and stashed top basketball players in a poorly supervised home. Two teenagers, who were friends, got into a fistfight, and one died.

Frazier, thankfully, remains healthy. But no adult, not even, it appears, his own mother, seems to have demonstrated more than a passing interest in his education. As long as he stroked jumpers and took jagged, high-leaping dashes to the hoop, all was fine.

“High school athletics are a tight little club where nobody wants to question anything,” said Anita Connally, a wiry former middle-school teacher who, as the Dallas schools’ athletic compliance officer, investigated the grade-fixing and recruiting scandals surrounding Keith Frazier.

Dallas school officials later fired Connally, who was a fierce reformer. “You’d dig deep here,” she said, “and everyone just gets angry.”

This column is based on two confidential reports by the Dallas schools — which contained Frazier’s attendance records and extensive transcripts of investigative interviews with more than a dozen officials — and the N.C.A.A. sanctions report on S.M.U. I also interviewed two dozen players, teachers, investigators and coaches.

A Prize Catch

In 2013, Frazier was a McDonald’s high school all-American and perhaps the best player in Texas. Brown, an undisputed coaching genius, was newly hired at S.M.U. and looking to draw attention to a basketball team that had long been mediocre. Brown and his assistants pursued Frazier like bird dogs after a pheasant. When Frazier signed, Brown howled with glee.

“Keith changed our program,” Brown said at the time. “We’ve never been successful in recruiting inner-city kids.

“Now, everywhere I go, kids are interested in us because of Keith.”

Brown had coached college ball twice before, and twice the N.C.A.A. sanctions ax had fallen on his teams, at U.C.L.A. and Kansas. Those penalties were ridiculous, he told me. Check it out.

I did, and he was wrong. At Kansas, there was a taped phone call in which Brown admitted to illegal payments and assistants who acted as bag men. At U.C.L.A., he coached his team to the title game, only to have the N.C.A.A. toss out the tournament run because Brown had played two players who were academically ineligible.

S.M.U. knew of Brown’s college track record when it hired him. The search for a nationally ranked basketball team requires sacrifices.

And the Frazier signing appeared to pay off.

A few months later, Frazier’s friend Emmanuel Mudiay, who was the best high school point guard in America, declared that he, too, was bound for S.M.U. Unfortunately, Mudiay attended Prime Prep high school in Dallas, an academic wreck of a charter school founded by the former N.F.L. star and commentator Deion Sanders. When questions arose about Mudiay’s grades, he skipped S.M.U. and went to play in China. He now starts at point guard for the Denver Nuggets.

Frazier grew up playing basketball in Irving, a suburb west of Dallas. Like many talented athletes, he played for school teams in the winter and for Amateur Athletic Union teams each spring and summer. Adidas, Under Armour and Nike sponsor these amateur teams, which are perpetually warring duchies. To lure new players and poach stars from rivals, A.A.U. coaches hand out athletic gear and other swag to players and parents alike.

Erven Davis, known as “Big E”, a hulking man with a honey-soft voice, agreed to chat with me in the lobby of a south Dallas hotel. He has coached A.A.U. for years and is close to Frazier. He stressed that his team, Dallas Showtyme, is the vassal of no sneaker company, although he allowed that he has an “affiliation” with Under Armour.

“It gets bad, man,” he said. “People offering kids and parents all kinds of stuff — stuff that people get into trouble for.”


A Questionable Transfer

Davis had a close relationship with Royce Johnson, his cousin and the coach at Kimball High School. Kimball was on academic life support. It also was a basketball Valhalla, a perpetual contender for the state championship. Over the years, many of Davis’s best players — some of whom clearly did not live in Dallas — enrolled at Kimball. In return, according to a 2013 Dallas schools investigation, Kimball coaches allowed A.A.U. teams to use their gym without a lease and without paying rent.

A few months into Frazier’s junior year at Irving High School, his mother announced she was moving her family to an apartment near Kimball. The basketball coach at Irving protested angrily. He argued that the Kimball coach had recruited Frazier, which is forbidden under Texas athletic regulations.

Dallas pulled together a committee composed of representatives from public elementary and middle schools that feed into Kimball High School. Frazier’s mother told this committee she could no longer afford her Irving apartment. It quickly approved the midyear move.

“There were a lot of back-room deals in Dallas,” said Gil Garza, the new director of athletics for the Dallas schools who is charged with cleaning up this system. “The thinking was: ‘I’m going to vote for your kid, and you’ll vote for mine.’ ”

Brett Shipp, an investigative reporter at WFAA-TV in Dallas, discovered that Frazier’s mother had lied to the committee. Her federally subsidized rent in Irving was fixed at $505 a month and had not gone up, as she claimed. Her former landlord complained that she owed him back rent.

Irving High School, while far from perfect, had markedly better academics than Kimball High School. Frazier’s mother responded to her critics on her Twitter account: “This is a cut throat business, I’m just saying.”

Frazier and his mother did not reply to phone calls, an email or a note left at their apartment.

A Dallas schools investigation concluded that Kimball’s coach had “improperly recruited” Frazier.

Frazier proved a godsend to Kimball’s team. He averaged 21 points, 8 rebounds and 7 assists per game and pushed the Knights to a second consecutive state championship in 2012.

Frazier’s academics were another matter. When he arrived at Kimball in November of his junior year, his grades bounced along a river bottom. Investigators later discovered that his grades took a mysterious upward turn in the last weeks of that semester, just enough to allow him to retain his basketball eligibility.

As a senior, the report said, he continued to skip many classes and fail many tests.

S.M.U. Gets Involved

At S.M.U., meanwhile, Coach Brown had zeroed in on Frazier as his top recruiting target.

Brown, like most of his highly paid peers, stayed away from the recruiting, which can become an ethical bog. That was the job of his hungry young assistant coaches. And Ulric Maligi, who had deep roots in Dallas, was the first among equals.

“He is going to be a great head coach,” Brown said of Maligi.

First, however, Maligi had to land Frazier. By late May of his senior year, the student was at risk of not graduating. Maligi repeatedly called Kimball to ask about Frazier’s grades, according to the Dallas schools investigative report.

Maligi exchanged hot words with Johnson, Kimball’s basketball coach, according to the report. Do you realize, Maligi told the coach, that S.M.U.’s compliance office has threatened to reject Frazier? He needs a higher grade-point average. Can Frazier raise his grades in science, English, math and history?

Coach Johnson had reason to fear S.M.U.’s anger. A high school coach who cannot place his stars with a top college team risks seeing his supply of young talent dry up.

A day or two later, an assistant coach and a school aide at Kimball lobbied Frazier’s teachers to raise his grades. Richard Dennis, a physics teacher, was so troubled that he sought the advice of an academic adviser.

“He asked my thoughts about him changing the grade,” the supervisor later told investigators for the Dallas schools. “I told him that he should not change the grade because Frazier was a high-profile student and changing the grade could result in him losing his job.”

The physics teacher held firm. The other teachers said that they had done the same — yet, somehow, Frazier passed all their classes. An assistant coach picked up Frazier’s grade sheet and delivered it by hand to the central office at Kimball, stopping to cross out and change his physics grade. A secretary at the school then sent it to S.M.U.

This, the Dallas schools investigators noted, “created a fraudulent report.”

Maligi insisted to investigators that he had never asked anyone to forge a grade for Frazier.

An S.M.U. spokesman said in an email that the university’s coaching staff asks about grades only because “we care about the potential of our student-athletes to be academically successful.”

That is lovely. Perhaps Maligi, who was hired for his understanding of the Dallas schools, did not realize that by late May, the spring semester was all but at an end and that it is difficult to transform failing grades into passing grades.

Later that summer, on Aug. 15, 2013, Dallas schools investigators asked S.M.U. officials to help investigate the Frazier grade scandal. University officials responded with aggressive lethargy.

Kyle Conder, S.M.U.’s senior associate athletics director for compliance, waited 50 days before sending a substantive email. His email was an exercise in terse and not terribly helpful language. Conder twice answered the investigators’ questions with a single word: “No.”

None of Frazier’s problems should have surprised S.M.U. officials. The university has a faculty committee that examines athletic applications. Its charge is to balance leniency with pragmatism: Can an athlete survive at this academically rigorous school?

That committee turned down Frazier.

The S.M.U. provost, in a move that startled committee members, overruled them. The provost explained he had made an “extraordinary exception” based “on the broader university perspective and needs.” In September, I asked an S.M.U. spokeswoman about the nature of those broader needs. She wrote of “holistic” criteria.

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“Holistic” was a fine word, and it signified that no one in the administration was prepared to sound embarrassed. Dennis A. Foster, a literature professor who is a former S.M.U. faculty president, said professors had expressed anger at the university’s handling of this case.

“If athletes go to most classes, if they go to tutoring, we will carry most of them and make sure they pass and get a diploma,” Foster said. “But some athletes have so little internalized good study habits that even that is hard.”

Sadly, and predictably, none of this turned out well.

The Dallas schools finished their many investigations, and the superintendent fired more than a dozen coaches and staff members, including Johnson, Kimball’s coach.

In a deeply puzzling move, he swept out Anita Connally, the reformer who had helped investigate these cases.

Two of the official reports excoriated Kimball High School Principal Earl Jones for his lack of leadership, his poor management controls and his failure to recognize that his coaches were running amok. He survived with his job intact.

I asked Dallas schools spokesman Andre Riley about this. “All I can tell you is that he remains the principal,” he said.

In January 2015, Maligi announced that he was taking an “indefinite leave of absence.” Three days later, the university announced that the N.C.A.A. was investigating its basketball program.

Maligi quit. He now serves as national scouting director for John Lucas Enterprises, which evaluates and develops top middle school, high school, college and professional basketball players.

He did not respond to a request for an interview.

Frazier returned to the S.M.U. team. When the N.C.A.A. barred the Mustangs from postseason play in September, Brown called a team meeting. Frazier stood up and, in a loud, quavering voice, insisted that Brown tell everyone the truth: It was all Frazier’s fault.

He ran out of the room in tears.

By early winter, Frazier had lost his starting position and was coming off the bench. This was not his hoop dream. After leaving S.M.U., Frazier transferred to North Texas, where his A.A.U. coaches have connections.

Nothing Seems to Change

The N.C.A.A. has insisted, improbably and absurdly, that the quality of a prospective student’s high school education is not its headache.

All it cares about is whether a student hits the minimum grade-point average. It has taken few steps to address recruiting and academic violations, and it has forced head coaches to assume responsibility for the missteps of assistants, who, after all, are trying to please their boss. That was why the N.C.A.A. hit Brown with a nine-game suspension.

That struck me as generous sentencing for a three-time violator.

Brown was not of the same mind. When I asked about it, he shrugged. The N.C.A.A., those bureaucrats, have a thing about him.

“It actually turns my stomach; there’s got to be some motive,” he said. “They say ‘unethical behavior.’ If you lie to the N.C.A.A., you’re fired. I’m not fired.”

Brown is not fired. However, he obstructed and at first lied to investigators, the N.C.A.A. report said.

Let’s posit that Brown is no worse than his sainted peers. John Wooden’s U.C.L.A. had boosters who offered illicit favors for players. The University of North Carolina staged phony courses. Kentucky’s John Calipari coached at two previous universities, and each was punished by the N.C.A.A.

Big-time college basketball is a business, and head coaches soldier on without a backward glance. Have the sanctions and the attention paid to your team, I asked Brown, damaged recruiting? He brightened.

“Not one bit,” he said. “I think it’s only helping.”


His most physically talented player sat out the year as a redshirt. A top 6-foot-9 Australian recruit recently signed with S.M.U. The talent pump is primed. It’s a pity Frazier cannot enjoy the fruits.

Brown shrugged sadly. “We were all trying to help him,” Brown said. “It’s kind of a tragedy.”

There’s that word again. No doubt there’s tragedy to be found in this story. Although in the case of Frazier and troubled students like him, it centers not on wins and losses but on missed educations and on cynical adults and school officials who use these young men as athletic baubles

[RGV Pony]

Thanks for the hatchet job, NYT. Impeccably timed. The story loses all credibility, among other places, when it suggests Snoop would be intimidated by something a coach at SMU would say.. About grades, no less.

[PonyTime]

My email to the author of the story...

I liked the article and the general point that it is trying to make about the tragedy of the top recruit, but had you actually done your research, you would know more about the history of the incidents at UCLA and Kansas with Larry Brown. Either you chose to not include those details in order to slant your story in the direction that you wanted to send it or you just did not do the research. The NCAA issue at UCLA was inherited from the previous coach and was not Larry's doing. At Kansas, it was shown that Larry Brown did purchase a plane ticket for a player so that he could visit his dying grandmother. I am sure that you would not want your readers to know this part of the story as they might empathize with Coach Brown as he actually made a decision that had the best interests of the student athlete in mind. It is obvious that you want him to be seen as the problem and not the NCAA itself as the problem. By not including the facts, or not doing your research and knowing the facts, all that this article becomes is a nice hit-piece on a respected coach.

[Stallion]

The only part of this story that really bothers me is the following excerpt-this is grade "washing" and especially so late in the last semester of his Senior academic year. "Washing" 4 core classes (out of required 16) so late in the last semester of an academic year-that's pretty damn bold even to bring the subject up. SMU is lucky as hell that the investigation seems to have stopped there with regard to that part of the investigation-and Maligi should probably have been fired for this alone. BTW the NCAA has passed legislation to make most of that type of Senior year grade washing impossible. Guys who have this type of problem transcript are headed to JUCO or overseas

"Maligi exchanged hot words with Johnson, Kimball’s basketball coach, according to the report. Do you realize, Maligi told the coach, that S.M.U.’s compliance office has threatened to reject Frazier? He needs a higher grade-point average. Can Frazier raise his grades in science, English, math and history?"(emphasis added)

[RGV Pony]

okay, since when does compliance "accept" or "reject" student athletes?

[PonyKai]

I for one am shocked, shocked I tell you that the New York Times is interested in pushing a narrative.

[RGV Pony]

well, good news is thanks to this election cycle we know how to respond to such things.

@powellNYT ...just say that he is sad, and a loser. And desperate in his attempt to prop up a dying medium.

[PonyKai]

If only the dear leader had already eviscerated the First Amendment, we could sue them for libel! SAD!

[smusportspage]

Once again a DISD problem somehow becomes and SMU problem.

[Top Twenty]

If this moron only knew the efforts that the school went through to help Frazier on the academic front...

To cast Frazier as the victim is beyond laughable. By the way, all he had to do was take one simplistic high school course on-line, but he didn't even have the discipline or attention span to do that. The rest is history.

[lollaperuna]

Exactly what I would expect from that liberal rag.

[smupony94]

[ponyscott]

What a bunch of crap..nice respectful response ponytime...but this writer didn't deserve a respectful answer.

[Terry Webster]

Wow. Is that for real about KF?

[smupony94]

Yes