ASM Sports president Andy Miller, whose clients include Kristaps Porzingis and Kyle Lowry, has relinquished his certification as an NBPA agent, tweets Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN.
That information was released in a memo issued by the players union.
ASM Sports has been connected to the FBI’s investigation into college basketball that revealed corruption, bribery and wire fraud at some of the nation’s top programs. The FBI raided Miller’s office in late September, seizing computers and documents connected to its investigation.
Miller has been a controversial figure among agents for years, with an associate comparing him to fictional mob boss Tony Soprano in a story last month by Pat Forde and Pete Thamel of Yahoo Sports. He was ordered to pay $4.6MM in compensatory legal damages in 2002 for luring Kevin Garnett and some other top players from their former agent, Eric Fleisher.
“In order to get a search warrant, the federal agents were able to convince a federal judge that Miller’s computer was connected to either a criminal act or had evidence on it of a criminal act,” former federal prosecutor Stephen L. Hill told Forde.
Miller and ASM are also the target of a $13.5MM arbitration claim filed by Clippers center Willie Reed, who claims that former agent Christian Dawkins advised him to turn down a three-year, $15MM offer to re-sign with the Heat this summer. Reed wound up accepting a minimum-salary contract from L.A.
Other prominent ASM clients include Serge Ibaka, Jeff Teague, Timofey Mozgov, Austin Rivers, Alec Burks and Trevor Booker.
Despite no longer being certified, Miller will be legally permitted to collect the remaining fees from the contracts he negotiated, according to Jake Fischer of Sports Illustrated (Twitter link).