According to a report by Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! Sports, the upcoming trial of lawyer Michael Avenatti could expose Nike and college basketball even further.
Wetzel mention’s “college basketball heavyweights” such as Duke, North Carolina and Kentucky in the article (not because he’s implying they’re guilty; just because they are prominent Nike schools).
Here’s an excerpt from the article:
The trial is set to begin Jan. 21 in Lower Manhattan, and Avenatti, according to court documents, has subpoenaed a number of Nike EYBL executives to testify. Nike has moved to block it. Whoever wins that pretrial argument will determine a great deal about how much the court, the public and the NCAA itself learns about the dealings of the sport.
“Mr. Avenatti would like to elicit the Nike Employees’ testimony to try to establish that Nike engaged in criminal conduct, and that Nike hid this criminal conduct from the Government while claiming to be cooperating,” Nike’s attorneys stated in their Motion to Quash the subpoena, which was filed Thursday. “This narrative — which paints Nike as the villain and Mr. Avenatti as the hero — is false and illogical.”
In addition to two Nike attorneys, Avenatti is seeking at least five Nike employees to take the stand — John Slusher, Lynn Merritt, Nico Harrison, Carlton DeBose and Jamal James. While those names mean little to nothing for fans who fill out a March Madness bracket, they represent the most powerful people at Nike Basketball, all the way down to overseeing travel and high school teams as well as camps and tournaments for top talent.
If Avenatti succeeds and they take the stand, then the testimony and stories that are told could be considerable for the sport. They represent, collectively, a dialed-in group that doesn’t just understand how basketball players are recruited to college, but perhaps even the specifics of individual deals involving individual schools.
While the Adidas trials dragged down a number of high-profile teams (namely Kansas, Louisville and North Carolina State), Nike has a far larger list of sponsored programs, including heavyweights such as Duke, North Carolina and Kentucky.
