kingtidge
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This is a repost from the L'Ville forum that should not be named by poster 'FairdaleKings'... verbatim - full credit to him for compiling the post...
It's rife with innuendo and speculation but also enough dots connected that something doesn't smell right with this... Especially this character, Chris Driscoll and his connections to CAA/PayPal Cal...
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It's rife with innuendo and speculation but also enough dots connected that something doesn't smell right with this... Especially this character, Chris Driscoll and his connections to CAA/PayPal Cal...
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Noel has also had issues surrounding his recruitment, including Tilton’s barring one of his key advisers, the former Providence assistant Chris Driscoll, from campus. Driscoll accompanied Noel in North Carolina for his decision.
Apparently, nerlens noel's handler, chris driscoll, accompanied him to north carolina for the jordan brand classic in charlotte, north carolina. driscoll was also present for noel's announcement on espnu. driscoll also has a relationship with former uconn player alex oriahki who is considering transferring to the university of kentucky, too. coincidence?!?
i've also added some background information from a new york times article dated march 10, 2012 which documents the recruitment of nerlens noel and his association with chris driscoll. it also alludes to his relationship with agents from creative artists agency (caa), who also represent john calipari. the article doesn't mention caa superagent leon rose or world wide wes... but there is enough shady business to draw your own conclusions.
Excerpts from new york times story on latest uk recruit nerlens noel and his relationship with handler chris driscoll.
everybody wants a piece of nerlens noel
a questionable climb, and dubious credentials
when providence named chris driscoll an assistant in the summer of 2010, the move stunned many in college basketball. driscoll had little playing experience beyond high school, his highest basketball position to that point had been as an assistant with a prominent amateur team, and he had not graduated from a conventional college.
what driscoll did have was access to the top players like nerlens noel in the boston area, a precious commodity for providence, which was trying to keep pace in the big east.
recruiting is the lifeblood of college basketball. to win, coaches need a steady stream of good players. and if a person can deliver players like that, he can often parlay that talent, rather than extensive coaching credentials, into a job as an assistant.
driscoll, 41, is separated from his wife and has three children. associates say his main job over the years has been running the massachusetts-based charity mentoring at-risk athletes, called mara. driscoll’s ascension through the coaching ranks can be traced to his connection to will blalock, a talented young boston-area guard in the early 2000s. driscoll was a presence at blalock’s games before becoming a volunteer assistant for the boston amateur basketball club in 2005, said leo papile, the club’s coach since 1977.
the boston club is a prominent amateur team of the sort that now dominate the world of summer high school basketball and often play an outsize role in the development and recruitment of elite players. (for its part, b.a.b.c. says it does not get involved in its players’ recruitment.)
blalock was the first prominent player driscoll became close to, and after blalock accepted a scholarship to iowa state in 2003, driscoll used him as a poster child for mara.
a photograph of blalock, identifying him as an at-risk athlete, appeared on the cover of a mara pamphlet, along with the photographs of several other talented players from the boston amateur club. blalock said he received numerous major scholarship offers before meeting driscoll.
“at risk of what?” said nate thompson, a former assistant with club. “the only thing they were at risk of was becoming great basketball players. that made me suspicious. in my opinion, he was abusing the connections.”
papile — who has coached players like ewing, chris herren and scoonie penn and also worked as a scout and in the front office for the boston celtics for almost 15 years — said he regretted allowing driscoll to have access to the boston summer team and its top players. he has since barred all b.a.b.c. volunteers from becoming involved in a player’s recruitment. he calls it the chris driscoll rule.
“he’s a great disappointment to me,” papile said of driscoll. “i thought he had wanted to be a coach, but it appears that his primary object was to be a handler. He’s not a teacher, he’s not a coach.”
he added, “bluntly, you’re dealing with the worst guy i’ve ever known in this game.”
but driscoll also had supporters from his time with the boston summer team. pernell mcdaniel, whose son, jamal coombs-mcdaniel, went to tilton with the help of driscoll and is now a junior forward for hofstra, called driscoll “the best thing that happened to us.” alex oriakhi sr., whose son, alex, also went to tilton and is a connecticut junior, said his son called driscoll their “white family member.”
driscoll found himself in the middle of controversy during his season at providence. laurel cannon, the mother of guard gerard coleman, called providence administrators and claimed that her son was asked by driscoll to fake an injury in order to lose games. the reason he asked, cannon told providence administrators, was so coach keno davis would be fired and driscoll could take over.
coleman refused driscoll’s request, his mother said, sending him a text message that said “the man in me” would not allow him do that.
“no one wants someone to see their child used as a product; no one does,” cannon said. “he had us fooled. he really had us fooled.”
she informed providence’s athletic director, bob driscoll, of chris driscoll’s request, but bob driscoll, who is not related, said he investigated and did not find reason to take any action. “i took what his mother said very, very seriously,” bob driscoll said. “if that happened, it’s a fireable offense. chris denied it and said it was a misunderstanding, and we moved on from there. i can’t tell you whether it happened or not.”
after multiple phone conversations, driscoll said his lawyer advised him to say, “i vehemently deny all of the allegations.” he declined further comment.
bob driscoll was primarily responsible for hiring chris driscoll at providence. he identified him as a candidate and suggested him as a possible assistant to davis. chris driscoll received a multiyear contract, which is not standard for assistants.
one of the lines on chris driscoll’s résumé appeared to be dubious but apparently did not raise suspicion at providence. he claimed to be a 1996 graduate of amhurst university. two of the country’s leading experts on fraudulent schools, the illinois professor george gollin and the former f.b.i. agent allen ezell, said that the apparently now-defunct amhurst university, which billed itself as a distance learning center, was a diploma mill, essentially a school that awards a degree for money rather than the actual completion of coursework.
gollin said that if providence had investigated, it would have taken it little time to determine amhurst’s illegitimacy. (a phone call placed to the number listed on amhurst university's web site went directly to voice mail, and a message left received no response.)
bob driscoll said that chris driscoll passed a background check and that he was subject to the typical human resources review. chris driscoll also contended in his biography that he had an interim coaching record of 97-2 and won eight national championships with the boston summer team, numbers that papile said were exaggerated. officials from a massachusetts-based charity that driscoll was involved with, community teamwork inc., laughed when told that he claimed he raised $10 million; they said the actual figure was less than $100,000.
“if i had thought or learned that he didn’t have a degree or had surreptitious things on his résumé, we never would have hired him,” bob driscoll said. “i was under the impression he had a degree and it was legitimate.”
chris driscoll had a strong relationship with noel before he was hired by providence, helping to steer him from everett to tilton. just days before he took the providence job, driscoll drove to the house of tilton coach marcus o’neil in eliot, me. according to o’neil, driscoll told him that he thought davis would be fired at the end of the season and that driscoll felt he had a chance to replace him.
“he told me that he thought he was going to be the next coach at providence college and that i could be his assistant,” o’neil said. “all i had to do was help him to get nerlens noel to commit to providence college.”
o’neil rebuffed driscoll, but it was not the last time he was approached. after driscoll had been fired by providence along with the rest of davis’s staff in the spring of 2011, he met o’neil at a pizza restaurant in tilton.
“Nerlens is my last chance,” O’Neil recalled Driscoll saying. “I need to score, and I need to score big.” O’Neil said Driscoll added, “You’re either with me or against me on this.”
Influence of Agents
for george wright-easy, an unassigned teacher at everett high school, he saw the interest of agents in noel up close more than a year ago while at a trendy boston nightclub called rumor. a mutual friend introduced wright-easy to ty sullivan, a low-level agent for creative artists agency, which represents star athletes and actors like will smith.
wright-easy is the half-brother of a former penn state tailback, omar easy, and sullivan immediately began dropping the names of former nittany lions standouts into conversation, along with basketball stars like james.
sullivan eventually said, “your guy is going to be the truth.”
a confused wright-easy asked, “who?” when sullivan said, “nerlens,” wright-easy responded indignantly, “man, he’s like 15 years old.”
wright-easy said that he did not consider sullivan a threat to noel. a low-level agent like sullivan, who handles mostly players in the european and development leagues, is unlikely to land a potential big name like noel. and he is probably one of many agents and their associates who are trying to become involved with noel’s recruitment.
when reached on his cellphone, sullivan acknowledged following noel but denied any relationship with him. (papile, who spoke with sullivan at one of noel’s games, said that sullivan also denied any affiliation with driscoll).
whether sullivan or c.a.a., which also represents Kentucky Coach John Calipari, will become a significant factor in Noel’s agent recruitment is not known. But Sullivan’s presence and attempt to ingratiate himself with someone close to Noel is illustrative of the increasing presence of agents at the high school level.
“Going to a local high school game is, you know, I don’t think is a problem,” Sullivan said. He declined further comment.
