(At this point, in a dramatized Hollywood version, Akoy tweets from midcourt: “Here I come to save the day! #bringiton.”)
Bryan inbounded the ball under its own basket with a chance to go ahead. Instead, with Central in its press, K. J. Scott stole the ball and drove the baseline from the left side. Scott went under the basket for a reverse layup and missed. Deshun Roberts, the senior who had not scored a point, was there for the putback and a 54–52 lead with 13.5 seconds left. Bryan missed on its next possession, and Akoy sank 2 free throws to seal a 56–52 squeaker. “I know a whole lot of people wondered what we’d do with a pressure situation,” Behrens told the media. “But we got the steal and we got the winning basket when it mattered.”
Akoy, whose 12 points were on free throws, wrote, “Showed us that we aren’t really as good as we think we are! Everyone made some bad plays! Oh well #forgive and #forget.” And he added: “Just got to improve and play hard tomorrow! Big game! Take no team for #granted.”
The Eagles were better in a 67–47 semifinal win over Lincoln North Star, a game so uneventful it merited not a single tweet from Akoy.
The final against Omaha South was only a bit more suspenseful. Central trailed 27–23 at the half, at which point Behrens read the riot act. Three weeks removed from knee surgery, Akoy took control. In a burst of dominance he blocked a layup, kept the ball in bounds, and passed it to a teammate atop the key. He took a return pass in the post, spun toward the lane, and put the ball in for a 33–31 lead. On South’s next possession Akoy blocked another shot and triggered a fast break bucket. Senior Darian Barrientos-Jackson got hot, and Central didn’t stop until it nailed down a 55–38 victory, a state title, and a perfect 30-0 season.
In the postgame locker room, captured on Jay Landstrom’s video, Behrens congratulated his players. “You just set a Nebraska record. Thirty wins. So look: myself, all the coaches, the administrators, everybody involved, we could not be prouder of you guys. You did everything you set out to do. Enjoy it.”
Enjoy they did, with music and dance and exuberance, Akoy at the periphery, ceding the floor to his more rhythmic teammates. He had finished with a triple double, 16 points, 13 rebounds, and 14 blocks—another monster final to embellish his Big Game aura. His totals for three state finals were 45 points, 35 rebounds, and 30 blocks. This one, three weeks after knee surgery, was a monument to his toughness.
Yet within his perfect game within a perfect season came a moment of ignominy. Central led by 13 in the fourth quarter when a South turnover put Akoy on the receiving end of a fast-break pass. With nobody in his path, he gathered in the ball, loped toward the basket, went up for a dunk—and missed! Not only did the ball clank off the rim, Akoy crashed into the basket support. The laughter was palpable on Akoy’s social media:
How does someone 6'8" miss a dunk. can u say Sprite commercial.
Can those stats make up for the terrible missed dunk?
bro try to take your dunks a lot closer
At least our African dunked unlike Central’s getting rim stuffed haha
Akoy took the ribbing in good humor and fired back:
Thank you! My knee gave out and I also have 2 sprained ankles!
Omaha Central Eagles 2012 #STATECHAMPS 30-0! Yeah we didn’t lose!!!
Have not gotten any sleep in the past 3 days! #celebrating #STATECHAMPS
Had a great time with the bros!
Damn I look good on tv! Got me lookin big!
Did I forget to say that we 30-0?!?!
And if anyone wanna bag about my missed dunk, please read my stats line!
Hey everyone that is hatin I’m lending my state titles out since I got so many! So you can feel like me for once! #mantheyaintme
The missed dunk became a source of amusement even within Central. In the final meta-scene of Jay Landstrom’s highlight video, Akoy’s younger brother, Maguy, now a freshman at Central, is shown at a screen viewing the video.
“Wait, wait, wait, wait,” Maguy says.
“Maguy, what’s the matter?” Behrens asks. “Don’t you like the video?”
“It’s okay, but I think we forgot one thing.”
That one thing—Akoy’s missed dunk—was queued as the slapstick punch line. So the joke was on Akoy. But as Nebraska basketball history forever records, he got the last laugh. Perfect.
13
Basketball and Business
With his third title in hand Akoy might well have basked in satisfaction. Instead he wrote himself into an existential funk:
Why do I happen to ruin the most dearest things that I have in my life?
I can’t seem to make the best decision that fits me without people wanting to be involved!!!
Everything good in my life falling apart!!!
Change! Changes are needed in order to become a better person!! But I’m not going to change over night!
Is it wrong to want to do something to make yourself happy?
Akoy lugged his weary body to track practice a little more than a week after the basketball final. An afternoon of high jump, triple jump, and long jump did not lighten his mood:
My body was just not made for me to be an athlete!
I’m considering #retirement.
Now I hurt my back and can barely move it!! It might be that time to really be considering it.
His disposition improved on a spring break getaway to Florida as a guest of the Sjulins. He went to Disney World, took in his first NBA game (Orlando Magic–Utah Jazz), visited the University of Florida campus with Ann, devoured ample hotel breakfasts, and soaked in the warmth. “The weather here amazes me more and more!” he wrote. “Feels like I’m back home in Africa!!” The vacation tightened the bond between Akoy and Lotte. She had become a regular presence at his home and was embraced by his siblings, though Adaw initially was circumspect. “Your grandmother save cows for you to marry a Sudanese girl,” Adaw told Akoy, half in jest. As Adaw warmed to Lotte, she told Akoy his grandmother had invited the two of them to visit her in South Sudan. “She say, ‘Why don’t he come here with his American girl so I can bless her,’” Adaw recalled.
Back at Central Akoy took comfort in a club he had joined and come to value almost as much as basketball: the FBLA. Future Business Leaders of America was the antidote of relevance to some of his academic courses. It helped him think about the business of basketball, now upon him in an onslaught of college recruiters. Soon he would choose a college, a coach, and a basketball program, a judgment calculated much like a business plan.
FBLA was a decades-old national organization that prepared students for careers in business and information technology. Through FBLA students connected with local businesses, raised funds for local nonprofits, and explored management. Central’s FBLA members sold candy bars to raise funds for the March of Dimes.
“Akoy sold a phenomenal amount of candy,” recalled Denise Powers, faculty supervisor of FBLA. “I would take candy to him in the courtyard at lunchtime, and he would give me a box of money every day. It was a reason for people to meet and greet him.”
Akoy also organized a dodgeball tournament that generated additional funds. Sometimes he missed part of a basketball practice to attend an FBLA meeting. He and Powers hit it off, and Akoy became a regular in her room 444, where she kept a small refrigerator stocked with 64-ounce Powerades. “Every day of the school year he came and grabbed his Powerade,” said Powers. “Even when he went to state, I took his Powerade down to Lincoln and gave it to him. It was kind of a joke, but it was my way of thanking him for supporting FBLA.”
FBLA members explored a business niche of their choice; for Akoy it was sports and entertainment management. He learned about networking, delegating, and event management, but of more interest to him was branding, marketing, and buyer behavior. In the spring FBLA students from across the state gathered at a conference that featured seminars, workshops, and competitions in their field of interest. “We competed in group activities with an opportunity to go to the nationals
, but we didn’t make it,” recalled Powers.
The efficacy of marketing was underscored by an unexpected development that uplifted Central and surprised area educators. For the first time in its history Central had more applicants for its next freshman class than allotted seats. It capped attendance at 2,400, so 685 applicants had been accepted and more than 200 were turned away—as many as 400, according to the Register. Of the 685, about 485 were from affluent neighborhoods outside Central’s attendance area. This surge of applicants had occurred despite the scarlet label of “persistently lowest achieving” hung around Central’s neck by the state. In effect students and parents had thumbed their noses at PLAS and the stealth politics of the charter school movement. Moreover, Central had risen in stature at a time when large urban high schools elsewhere—in Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Cleveland, Kansas City—floundered. Nobody was more pleased than the principal, Bigsby, who told a reporter, “We obviously did a really good job of marketing. I’m aware of that.”
Under Bigsby Central had marketed its academic excellence, its new international baccalaureate program, proximity to the downtown renaissance, a diverse student body, a safe and secure building, and (perhaps most effectively) excellence in sports. Both girls and boys teams were state champions in basketball, and the boys had won six of the last seven. Akoy was the most visible athlete in the city, and as Bigsby explained to me, his persona fed a word-of-mouth buzz that drove Central’s enrollment “What he represented—and I’ll never forget a parent telling me this—was a post-racial era,” Bigsby recalled. “The way he presented himself, in the classroom and on the court helped kids transcend the racial divide. He had this unusual ability to cross lines. Our old white alumni fell in love with him, and African American church-going women fell in love with him. When people asked me what was great about Central, this kid was exactly the image we wanted to be. A tall, photogenic, articulate African American male respected and loved by everybody. He was our ambassador.”
Akoy was modest about his contribution. “The most requested school kids want to go to! #proud,” he wrote. “About us being good in education and sports! #wedeep.” He was more focused on his future. Throughout the spring and summer of 2012 he was recruited by at least forty NCAA D-1 colleges. His ESPN scouting report described a player with limitations and potential:
Strengths:
Akoy is raw offensively. He scores mostly on putbacks, dump offs and tip ins inside. He is much more of a power forward right now and probably projects to that position down the road. He has a decent touch and hit a couple of shots from 19 feet. Akoy is a good rebounder. He has solid length and showed nice effort inside. His length allows him to be a solid shotblocker on defense.
Weaknesses:
He can hit some face up jump shots but that is not his strength. He can score in the low block but currently must turn and face in order to score in the paint. He has to continue to develop but he has a chance to be a good D-1 prospect down the road.
Bottom Line:
Agau, a native of Sudan, is a long, developing forward prospect with a very high ceiling. He’s still raw and inexperienced, but shows flashes of becoming a dominant force in time, particularly on the defensive end.
Coaches came to meet him at Central, and they scouted him at grassroots tournaments or camps where he showcased himself. His schedule took him from Little Rock in late April to San Francisco in late May to Los Angeles in early June. Upon his return he wrote about a stressful moment at home.
My mom came in at 8:30 happy for no reason!!! Woke me up!!
Talkin bout you need to stop talking to all these college coaches cause I’m tired of talking to them (she has spoken to 5 coaches) lol
Not even close to the 40 or more coaches I have spoken to!!
Then she gunna tell me she quit her job working at Creighton so I could go there . . . does that make sense?!?! lol
Akoy went to Lincoln to visit with Nebraska’s new coach, Tim Miles, before he was off to Charlottesville, Virginia, for a “Top 100” camp sponsored by the NBA Players Association. He showed well in Charlottesville, both on and off the court, as ESPN analyst Tim McCormick tweeted: “Akoy Agau understands the power of branding. Great handshake & eye contact when speaking . . . superb around the rim. After the camp concluded, Akoy visited the West Virginia and Georgetown campuses.
By late June recruitment had intensified to where Akoy wrote, “When you wake up from a very very long nap and you check your phone and have 10 missed calls from different college coaches!!!” His Twitter feed was filled with pleas from partisans to choose their dear beloved school and cover it in glory. The online high school/college “recruitment” media were equally persistent. The attention exhilarated and exhausted Akoy, though he clung to his sense of humor:
Waking up and finding (Lotte’s) dads car keys in my pocket! SMDH!!!
He just might need them to go to work. #keyless
He visited the campuses of Kansas and Missouri and then was home for the July Fourth holiday.
“My mom about to have me cooking outside in this hot weather!”
To which a friend asked, “I thought you liked the hot weather?”
Akoy responded, “I use to. I think I’m Americanise now.”
Throughout July he attended a camp in Philadelphia, a tournament in Milwaukee, and a tournament in Kansas City.
By early August Akoy’s short list included Louisville, Georgetown, Connecticut, West Virginia, and Southern California. His slightly longer list also included Marquette, Xavier, Clemson, Florida, Tennessee, and the two local schools, Nebraska and Creighton.
The choice weighed on Akoy; he knew how transformative it could be for himself and his family. Success in college could lead to the pot of gold otherwise known as the National Basketball Association. In the 2011–12 season ten NBA players had salaries above $18 million, with Kobe Bryant’s $25.2 million at the top. Akoy’s role model, LeBron James, made $16 million. Luol Deng, his fellow countryman, made $12.3 million. Within a year the average NBA salary would be $5.15 million. Within four years the league would have $24 billion in television contracts, while James’s salary would be $23 million and his annual income with endorsements would be $71 million. The NBA’s ten highest-paid players would bank $391 million from salaries and endorsements, with 46 percent of the total earned off the court. Much of the endorsement bonanza came from three shoe-and-apparel giants—Adidas, Nike, and Under Armour—whose combined sales were more than $25 billion by 2013.
NBA minimum salary for a rookie in 2012 was $490,180, or roughly what Akoy’s father, Madut, could earn in fifteen years at the meat plant. After a year the minimum jumped to $788,872. The average ticket price for the Sacramento Kings, who in their distant past had played in Omaha, was $48. Add in parking, beer, and hot dogs, and the cost for two to attend a game equaled a day on the production line for Madut—which was a deal compared to the $99 average ticket price for the Los Angeles Lakers.
No mystery then why the NBA called to Akoy. Even one year at minimum salary would gain his family security. Pro leagues in Europe and Asia paid between $25,000 and $100,000. The proven route to all or any of it was through college. Akoy needed a program in which he could mature and develop and a coach he believed in and could trust.
That was the problem. More than a few college basketball coaches fell between “oily” and “slippery” on the trust scale. Some tripped on a dense thicket of NCAA regulations set up to preserve the “amateur” status of “student-athletes” and encourage competitive parity. Others knew exactly what they were doing when they skirted the rules. Bottom line: a lot of money was to be made by coaches who could win.
The NCAA business model of amateurism was a bonanza for coaches. Even as it imposed what amounted to a salary cap on “student-athletes”—a scholarship—coaches (and athletic directors) had no limitation on what they could earn. Flush with an $11 billion broadcast deal from CBS and Turner Sports, coaches cashed in.
In 201
3 Louisville’s Rick Pitino would make just shy of $5 million a year, a bit less than cross-state rival John Calipari’s $5.4 million at Kentucky. The average pay for thirty-seven coaches in the 2012 March Madness was $1.57 million. Average pay a year later would be $1.75 million. Athletic directors shared in the largesse, with Tom Jurich’s $1.4 million salary at Louisville atop the heap. The median pay of head football and basketball coaches rose about 100 percent between 2005–6 and 2011–12, compared with a 4 percent median rise for full professors at doctoral universities, according to the American Association of University Professors.
Amateurism was so lucrative it incentivized a culture of deception. Some of the coaches and colleges in pursuit of Akoy were part of it. Connecticut head coach Jim Calhoun, who was about to retire, was suspended for three games in 2011–12 for recruiting violations. West Virginia coach Bob Huggins, as head coach of Kansas State in 2007, was alleged in a lawsuit to have overseen illegal inducements in the recruitment of Michael Beasley. Southern California vacated all of its wins from 2007–8 after it was revealed that O. J. Mayo had received improper benefits. Tennessee was hit with a two-year probation in 2011 for numerous violations incurred by head coach Bruce Pearl. Marquette would suspend head coach Buzz Williams and fire one of his assistants before the 2012–13 season for recruiting violations.
Recruiting scandals had brought down Florida in the 1980s and Clemson in the 1990s. Memphis, with Calipari as head coach, vacated its 2007–8 season because Derrick Rose’s entrance exam was fraudulent and the team had paid for Rose’s brother to attend road games. Baylor plunged into scandal in 2003 after the murder of a player, Patrick Dennehy, by his teammate, Carlton Dotson, led to revelations of improper payments to players by head coach Dave Bliss. The NCAA put Baylor on probation from 2005 to 2010.
Citizen Akoy Page 12