This is America. RJ Luis and his lawyers can keep heading to court.
When LSU takes its basketball version on Tuesday, Luis shouldn’t be suited up.
The last six years of NCAA eligibility have been lawless mayhem, and that’s eventually going to come to a stop. Eighth-year tight ends, 26-year-old power forwards and minicamp/Summer League dropouts have been manning NCAA rosters for a few years now.
I have sympathy for some of them. Not Luis.
Two years ago, the Big East Player of the Year left two years’ worth of millions of NIL dollars willingly to try his hand in the NBA. It happens every year. But that’s burning the boats. You can’t come back when it doesn’t work out.
It hasn’t for Luis. One NBA organization moved on. One more probably has. And LSU should, too.
I don’t fault Wade and LSU for exploring the option. I don’t fault Luis for joining the hundreds of lawsuits to seek his own. It’s seven figures. Take a look. See what the judges said.
Luis’ loud-mouth attorney can bark all he wants. And he will. He boisterously served the SEC’s commissioner a “cold cup of gumbo” in August and tossed childish nicknames like “Kim Jong Sankey” at Greg Sankey this week.
Then he took aim at Wade.
“I’m telling you we’re going to use the long arm of the law to force Will Wade to play him because I’m not going to allow these folks to play musical chairs,” Clayton said. “We would bring in Coach Wade and move to hold him in constructive contempt. I would not advise anyone to be in contempt of court. This judge is real.”
As far as I’m aware, the constitution doesn’t provide the rights to life, liberty and a pursuit of the Elite Eight. No judge is going to force a basketball player onto the floor. Clayton’s comments are more ridiculous as the weeks pass.
Make no mistake, Luis would immediately be a first-team All-SEC caliber guard. He’d average 15 points per game and help Wade’s team on the offensive end. The currently rostered players score the ball just fine and combine to offer plenty of the length and experience Luis brings to the backcourt. Saliou Niang is a better athlete. Mo Dioubate is stronger. Skyy Clark and Abdi Bashir are better shooters.
None of that group scores quite as naturally as Luis, but their whole is more than enough to make up for Luis’s ability.
In the risk-reward contrast, Luis’s risk, when it comes to a court of law, conference standing the NCAA selection committee’s opinion and the headlines and headaches that come, is not worth it.
At all.
So Luis can keep sending Tony Clayton to the court room. Clayton can keep up his public persona. Find a new nickname or catchy phrase. Win the case. File a civil suit. Force the NCAA to pay up if the law requires it.
LSU needs to move forward with a basketball team that has a chance to be damn good and an upcoming recruiting class that, as of Thursday afternoon, might be the best in the country.
Wade is a stellar roster builder at middle-tier programs. He proved it at LSU and then made the NCAA Tournament in a quick turnaround year at North Carolina State.
He thought the older players gave his first team back in Baton Rouge the best chance to get things humming again. At LSU, that’s relative. Win more league games than you lose and hear your name called over the CBS theme music when March goes mad.
Wade wants more than that in his second tour on the bayou. Folks can toss barbs at his current roster that features some professional Europeans and a trio of players playing on injunctions.
None of that is unique to LSU. Luis’s case would be. Luis’s next victory may well be in court, just not the one named for Dale Brown.
