Citizen Akoy

by Steve Marantz

  Louisville’s program under Pitino, so far, was cleaner than his personal life. In 2010 a Kentucky woman was convicted of extortion in demanding millions of dollars from Pitino to keep secret their sexual encounter at a Louisville restaurant in 2003. Pitino, who was married, apologized publicly for his “poor judgment.” Nothing equivalent yet had befallen Pitino’s basketball program, which would go on to win the national championship in 2013. But that would change when allegations would surface in 2015 that between 2010 and 2014 Pitino’s director of operations, Andre McGee, had paid for sex-and-stripper parties for recruits. In February 2018 the NCAA would vacate Louisville’s 2013 championship because of the sex scandal. By that time Pitino had been fired for yet another scandal: a bribery-and-fraud scheme in which his program was alleged to have illegally funneled money to recruits through his shoe-and-apparel partner, Adidas.

  As Akoy looked for a coach and program to trust, he might well have turned homeward, where the Nebraska and Creighton programs were clean, for the most part. Creighton was the choice of Akoy’s mother because its campus was a five-minute walk. Many local fans urged Akoy to take his talent to Lincoln to help new coach Tim Miles. A follower had tweeted in July, “Come on @CoachMiles! Can’t lose @ZerotheHeroAkoy to Gtown. Would be a tough blow to take.” He had detractors too; a few claimed he was overrated and suggested that he had benefited from affirmative action, claims that got under his skin. “Haters Gonna Hate!” Akoy wrote. “Out to prove them wrong!!”

  But neither Nebraska nor Creighton courted Akoy with the urgency he and Hammer considered his due. Miles squandered the capital his predecessor, Kenneth “Doc” Sadler, had built with Akoy. At the onset of the April recruiting period Miles had made his first visit to a prospect in New Zealand. Hammer thought Akoy should have been the priority. “I would have had the pep band in front of Akoy’s house at midnight—whatever you can do to show interest,” Hammer recalled. “He never even called to set up a home visit. I don’t know if they didn’t want him or if they thought they would get him like it was a no-brainer.”

  Akoy was cordial with the staff and players at Creighton because he had spent long hours at the Creighton gym. He had a cordial relationship with head coach Greg McDermott. That changed after an offhand comment Akoy made to media when asked about the hiring of Miles by Nebraska. “He told the reporter that Miles was a good hire for Nebraska,” Hammer recalled. “Then he was asked about Creighton, and Akoy said, ‘Well, there is another D-1 school in the state.’ A few days later he was playing with Creighton’s guys, and McDermott walked into the gym and just chewed his butt about the comment.”

  Even before the outburst Akoy had doubts about playing in McDermott’s system, designed for his son Doug’s considerable talent. McDermott’s infrequent presence at Akoy’s summer games sent a signal, and then too geography was an issue. Creighton was close to home—claustrophobia close. “It was better Akoy got away from home,” Leisha Hammer said. “From his mom’s cultural perspective Akoy was expected to have a greater role in the household. But from an American cultural perspective we wanted Akoy to get a great education. Being too close to home wouldn’t have been fair to Akoy.”

  Creighton’s fate may have been sealed one August dawn when Akoy was awakened by a tirade from his mother, who was on the phone with his father in Iowa. She hung up, stormed into his room, complained bitterly about her marriage, and warned Akoy not to turn out like his father.

  At 6:05 a.m. Akoy wrote, “When your mom wake you up at 5 in the morning to give a speech!! #idiot thankful they won’t be a part of making my college decision! #relief.”

  14

  Temptation and Decision

  What happened next was as old and new as creation: an apple disguised as a basketball tempted Akoy. It pitted him against just about everybody he loved and revered and tested his judgment and principles in a trial without a courtroom. “Akoy versus The People,” he called it.

  In the third week of August 2012 Akoy called Behrens with stunning news: he was about to transfer to a private prep school for his senior year. The school, Montrose Christian in Rockville, Maryland, had 370 students and an ambitious basketball program that had sent numerous players to colleges and a few to the NBA, most notably Kevin Durant. The small campus featured a dingy gym that seated fewer than six hundred, but its coach, Stu Vetter, attracted talent and thrived despite high roster turnover. Several Montrose Christian players had befriended Akoy on the summer grassroots circuit and urged him to transfer. The prep school cum basketball factory became the serpent in Akoy’s garden.

  The final decision would be made within a few days. Incredible as it seemed, Akoy was prepared to walk away from his prophecy of “Four” just one season short of fruition. Behrens did not doubt that Akoy might leave because he sensed what bubbled beneath the surface. “His mom and dad weren’t getting along, and he and his mom butted heads a lot,” Behrens recalled. “As kids get older, they want to get out and spread their wings. His mom had expectations for him to be there and provide. When his dad was gone, he had to be head of the household. He was tired of that and just wanted to be a high school kid. Maybe on the East Coast he could just be a kid. There was some escapism in this.”

  An escape to Maryland might also relieve Akoy’s predicament with young women. There was Lotte, and then there was the pack of she-wolves in hot pursuit. Sometimes they misconstrued his affable manner as flirtation, which touched off speculation and rumor, which inevitably got back to Lotte. Early in August he wrote, “I hate girls sometimes. They can tell you one thing, but turn around and do something else!!” Akoy recalled, “I would meet a girl for the first time and be nice and smile, and she would go off and say, ‘Akoy talked to me and winked at me’ and add on all this extra fluff that didn’t even happen. And then ‘whoa, whoa, whoa,’ something gets added along the way and it gets back to Lotte, and she says, ‘I heard this and ten people said it. How can I believe you if ten people said it?’ If ten people said something, it makes it more true, right? I promise you I met that person one time, and somehow this emerged. A lot of my time was trying to defend myself.”

  Other seductions called to Akoy. Montrose Christian claimed it would introduce him to a higher caliber of opponent, which would elevate his performance and marketability. Its media market, Washington-Baltimore, was ten times larger than Omaha. “He could improve his brand and label; I know that’s what he was thinking,” recalled teammate Tre’Shawn Thurman.

  Then there was the “Christian” in Montrose Christian. Akoy was a pious Catholic and a regular at confession. Throughout his grassroots basketball travels he had sought out Sunday morning church services and had read a daily verse from the Bible. “Basketball takes me away from the church,” he once wrote. “Without the Lord I wouldn’t be who I am today.” The stated mission of Montrose Christian was to provide “Christ-Centered education for the Glory of the Savior and the Good of Society.” The tandem of religion and basketball was hard for Akoy to resist. “Why not go to a school where you get challenged every day, and all you do is school, basketball, school, basketball?” Akoy said. “No other, I don’t want to say distractions, but [no] other things going on.”

  Behrens understood the forces at play and knew well the stress of marriage, but he wasn’t about to hold the door open and wave good-bye. He asked Akoy to put off his decision until they could talk again. Then he huddled with Bigsby, the principal, and the two hatched a plan to talk Akoy off the ledge, so to speak, to keep him at Central. Behrens would handle the basketball side of the effort and Bigsby the academic.

  Soon enough Akoy came to Bigsby’s office with a document to formalize the transfer. He told Bigsby he planned to visit Montrose Christian, with Dave Sjulin, the next week. He planned to stay if he liked it, and if he stayed, he would need a transfer form signed by Bigsby. But his hope of mute compliance was quickly dashed. Bigsby did not do mute.

  “What do you know about Montrose?”

  “It’s got a good ba
sketball program.”

  “I don’t care about that. What about academics?”

  For the first time, but not the last, Akoy felt like he was on trial. He had no answer for Bigsby. “I’m not signing anything,” Bigsby said. “Why would I let you go to an inferior institution and jeopardize your academic future for what—basketball?”

  Akoy’s bile rose as Bigsby picked up his phone, called Montrose Christian, and asked for the assistant basketball coach who had recruited Akoy. When the man was on the line, Bigsby peppered him with questions.

  “I asked about the AP classes they offered,” Bigsby recalled. “They offered one, AP Spanish. Akoy was enrolled in three and we offered several more.

  “I went down the list of what we offered: our broad range of courses, teachers’ tenure, after-school clubs, IB program. They had none of it. I asked how many National Merit scholars they had. None. I was killing him. He said I was being judgmental. I told him he had no business recruiting my student. He said he would find another way around me. Finally I told him, ‘Don’t you come anywhere near this school.’”

  Bigsby hung up and turned to Akoy, who was livid.

  “This place has a website; that’s what it boils down to,” Bigsby said. “Why would you go there?”

  “Kevin Durant went there. He’s got a million dollars in the bank.”

  “If you want to measure a school by successful alumni, I’d put our Alumni Wall against theirs any day of the week.”

  Within a day or two the news reached Akoy’s teammates. “My first thought was, ‘Forget him; we’re gonna win the state championship with or without him,” Tra-Deon Hollins recalled. “But then reality set in, and I thought, ‘He can’t leave. We can’t do it ourselves. We need him.’”

  Tre’Shawn Thurman recalled, “I was disappointed first that I didn’t hear it from him, and I was disappointed that he was even thinking about it. We had been through so much; we had built a relationship. A bunch of us began to talk because if it was a reality, we had to change roles.” Thurman texted an urgent plea: “Hey man we need you. We play some great teams this year and go to some great places too. You didn’t win three in a row for nothing. You got to finish it.” Akoy texted back: “I’m thinking.” Thurman backed off. “I let him be in his own little world,” he recalled. “I didn’t want to push him away.”

  By Saturday, August 18, when local media ran with the story, Behrens had arranged to meet with Akoy, the Sjulins, and Scott Hammer. He showed up at the Sjulins’ home with a thick folder on Montrose Christian. His research attacked a couple of misconceptions. “Montrose touted that their players went to high D-1 programs,” recalled Dave Sjulin. “Eric had stats that showed where they really went and that it was comparable to where Eric’s players went.”

  Behrens was most persuasive when it came to schedules and caliber of opponent. “Akoy thought they played a national schedule,” Behrens recalled. “I pulled up the schedule. They had one decent trip. Basically they played a bunch of overmatched private schools and a DC schedule no stronger than the best teams in Omaha. There was no Oak Hill, St. Anthony’s, or Montverde Academy. He was a little surprised. He thought it would be travel and games around the country.”

  Meanwhile, Central was scheduled for the City of Palms tournament in Fort Myers, Florida, in December, against some of the best teams in the country. In February it was matched against vaunted Oak Hill Academy in a showdown at Grand Island, Nebraska. “He [Behrens] showed us that Montrose Christian’s level of opposition wasn’t appreciably different than what Akoy would experience at Central,” Dave Sjulin recalled.

  Behrens urged Akoy, the Sjulins, and Hammer to consider what Akoy would leave behind. “I told them that kids who leave for prep schools usually are struggling,” Behrens recalled. “Akoy was thriving. It was strange for a kid in a good environment with a strong support system and teachers who had his back to think about leaving. Basketball aside, Akoy was in a good place from eight to three. He couldn’t have gone to a better high school to prepare for college.” Behrens finished with a plea to Akoy’s self-narrative: “One more title and your legacy will be cemented,” he said. “Don’t you want to finish up what you started?”

  At the start of the meeting Akoy thought Montrose Christian had the support of at least one adult, Dave Sjulin, whose faith inclined him toward private religious schools. Sjulin had bought two airplane tickets to take Akoy to Maryland. Behrens had Sjulin in mind when he said, “Not every school with ‘Christian’ in its title has a religious curriculum. . . . That’s not the right reason to be making a change.” Sjulin flipped, and Akoy realized he was on his own. Now truly it was “Akoy versus The People.”

  Akoy went home with a lot to think about. What did he owe his mother and siblings with his father absent much of the time? He shuddered to imagine the household without his steady hand. What did he owe his coaches and teammates? They were family too, and their hoop dreams were hitched to him. What did he owe his high school, which had secured its stature with his help? If he left, even Bigsby would be hard-pressed to put a positive spin on his departure. How much would he miss his extended family of Lotte, the Sjulins, and the Hammers? From a business perspective what if Behrens was right? What if another season with Central, and a potential fourth title, could do more for his brand than Montrose Christian? At bottom was the question of identity. What part of him was still a nomadic refugee? What part a rooted Nebraskan? What part teen drama king? Was he someone who ran from his problems, or confronted them?

  Thoughts churned and sleep was elusive. At 2:33 a.m. on Sunday, August 19, Akoy tweeted:

  Got to go to #Church in the morning!!

  Hopefully #God can help me with this decision!!!

  True to his tweet and habit, Akoy went to church and prayed for guidance. Sunday afternoon at a Team Nebraska Express picnic he told Hammer of his decision. Then he called Behrens. “I’m staying,” he said. “It’s not what I thought it was.” A day later local and basketball media reported he would stay, and just like that, the serpent was vanquished and Montrose Christian slithered into the murk. Omaha had Akoy back, and those close to him exhaled. “That four in a row meant a lot to him; it might have been the decider,” said Thurman, his teammate. “He didn’t win three in a row for nothing. He started it, and he wanted to finish it.”

  Still the college decision hung over Akoy’s head. Dave Sjulin had two tickets from the canceled trip to Maryland that he now used to take Akoy to Georgetown. Akoy met with head coach John Thompson III and toured the facilities, which included a modest weight room. Akoy recalled Thompson’s words: “This was good enough for Patrick Ewing; you don’t need all that fancy stuff. We can make you an NBA big man, but you’ve got to do the work.” Thompson told Akoy he had seen him play at an AAU tournament in Arkansas. “A lot of times it’s my assistants who pick who we go after,” Thompson said. “But I found you.”

  Thompson had little of the scowling righteousness that defined his father and namesake, John Thompson Jr., who had coached Georgetown from 1972 to 1999 and won the national title in 1984. Akoy liked Thompson and that Georgetown had developed big men for the NBA—Ewing, Dikembe Mutombo, Alonzo Mourning, Roy Hibbert, and Greg Monroe, to name a few. Thompson seemed to like Akoy—just not enough to visit him in Omaha a few days later. Instead he sent an assistant coach to meet with Akoy, Adaw, Hammer, and the Sjulins. Akoy had expected to welcome Thompson and to commit to Georgetown, but now he held off. Louisville was worth a look, particularly because its up-tempo high-pressure style, as coached by Rick Pitino, mirrored Behrens’s system at Central.

  In mid-September Akoy and Hammer visited Louisville. Akoy was squired on campus by Louisville’s 6-foot-11 center, Gorgui Dieng, a native of Senegal. He went to a football practice and game, attended a volleyball game, and dined with Pitino’s assistants. One of Pitino’s assistants, Kareem Richardson, had spotted Akoy as a ninth-grader at a camp in Iowa and had put him on Louisville’s radar.

  After dinner
Saturday Hammer turned in, and Akoy went out with his hosts. This was the period when recruits allegedly had sex with escorts hired and paid by Louisville director of operations Andre McGee. The allegations surfaced in a 2015 book, Breaking Cardinal Rules: Basketball and the Escort Queen, by Katina Powell, a prostitute by trade. The book opened with Powell’s statement, “I felt like I was part of the recruitment team. A lot of them players went to Louisville because of me.” She claimed to have arranged for escorts to have sex with recruits and players on a couple of dozen occasions, at the players’ dorm, and that McGee had paid her more than $10,000 in total.

  Akoy was not among the several recruits and players Powell named. When the scandal broke in late 2015, he made no statement to local or basketball media or on his social media, even though speculation was rife. Kareem Richardson, who recruited Akoy, left Louisville in 2013 to become head coach at the University of Missouri–Kansas City (UMKC). After the scandal broke, Andre McGee was fired by Pitino and hired by Richardson at UMKC. Whatever happened in Louisville, if anything, stayed in Louisville. (My question to Akoy received a “no comment.”) Akoy and Hammer returned to Omaha, and Akoy went back to Central. Three days later Pitino and Richardson came to the Sjulins’ home to close the deal. They dined on lasagna with Akoy, Adaw, Behrens, the Hammers, and the Sjulins, including Lotte. “It’s pretty powerful when Rick Pitino shows up at your house,” Leisha Hammer recalled.

  Akoy managed to push away his favorite dish to listen to Pitino, who carried most of the conversation, about his program and himself, minus the salacious parts. He was married with five children, and a sixth had died in infancy. He had grown up on Long Island and played basketball at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst. He had coached at Boston University and Providence, where he lost in the Final Four in 1987, and Kentucky, where he won the 1996 national title and lost in the 1997 final. He had had mixed success as coach of the New York Knicks (1987–89) and notable failure as coach of the Boston Celtics (1997–2001), which he skirted without mention of his infamous rant about Boston: “All the negativity that’s in this town sucks. I’ve been around when Jim Rice was booed. I’ve been around when [Carl] Yastrzemski was booed. And it stinks. It makes the greatest town, greatest city in the world, lousy.”