And-Ones: NCAA Investigation, Max FAs, Playoffs

The FBI’s investigation into college basketball recruiting has resulted in the discovery of documents and bank records that meticulously detail apparent loans and payments issued from agency ASM Sports to current and former college players, Pat Forde and Pete Thamel of Yahoo Sports report. As the Yahoo duo writes, the documents show an “underground recruiting operation” that appears to violate NCAA amateurism rules and could impact many of the top college basketball programs in the country.

While the FBI’s probe is more likely to shake up those NCAA programs, there could be a domino effect on the NBA. According to Forde and Thamel, current college players like Michigan State’s Miles Bridges, Alabama’s Collin Sexton and Duke’s Wendell Carter Jr., all of whom could be lottery picks this June, are among those linked by the documents to benefits for either the athletes or their family members. We’ll be following the investigation to see whether it impacts eligibility for those top prospects, as it did for USC’s De’Anthony Melton.

Here are more odds and ends from around the basketball world:

• In the wake of Sports Illustrated’s report that described the Mavericks‘ business offices as a hostile environment for women, the NBA is establishing a confidential hotline for league and team employees to report concerns about workplace misconduct. Brian Mahoney of The Associated Press has the details.
• Tom Ziller of SBNation identifies nine 2018 free agents who should be candidates for maximum-salary contracts, including a pair of restricted free agents.
• Count LeBron James among those who isn’t fully on board with the idea of reseeding playoff teams one through 16 and removing conferences from the equation. Pointing out that the Western and Eastern Conference have both enjoyed successful runs at various times over the last few decades, LeBron suggests that making such a change would change “the landscape of the history of the game,” per Chris Fedor of Cleveland.com.
• While James is opposed to significant changes to the playoff format, he was on board with the All-Star changes, as was his good friend Chris Paul. The Rockets guard didn’t play in Sunday’s event but said “from my seat it looked good.” As Jonathan Feigen of The Houston Chronicle writes. Paul was happy to spread around the credit for the format changes.