The Melo issue is funny. What’s the upside financially for Melo doing this? Don’t get me wrong. Personal vanity projects and love for one’s child are perfectly valid reasons to spend big bucks. But most ultra high net worth individuals I meet are notoriously cheap. Look at LeBron. His NBA buddies clown on his cheapness; for example, he won’t even pay for Spotify premium. Big expenditures are usually supported by a business/financial upside. Look at Weitsman. Once he could no longer use SU hoops as a platform for his personal brand building, his NIL dried up. And from what I understand, his donations were pretty paltry for a big local billionaire. While Kent doesn’t want him around campus, nothing is stopping him from cutting checks to the collectives. But without exposure, such donations don’t seem to be worth his time. Suffice it to say, to this outsider, the expectation that Melo is going to be our program sugar daddy seems off and an impractical solution. I hope I’m wrong. Maybe Melo has that much money that he can just throw a couple million each year at a loser college basketball vanity project, but I don’t see an upside for him to single-handedly support this program. When he built the melo center, he got a nice tax write off, which isn’t possible for NIL.