Los Angeles Lakers rookie Kyle Kuzma hasn’t been shy about voicing his criticism of the NCAA since joining the NBA ranks, and it appears he may not have respected the rules and regulations of the institution that allow it to make profits off of college athletes while they’re in school during his time at Utah.
According to documents and bank records that have come to light as part of the federal government’s investigation into the NCAA, Kuzma might have been among a large group of players receiving money from formerly prominent player agent Andy Miller and his group, ASM Sports.
Kuzma is listed as one of numerous players to have taken money from Miller in the breakdown of the documents published in Pat Forde and Pete Thamel’s report for Yahoo Sports:
Former Utah star Kyle Kuzma received at least $9,500 while in school, according to the documents.
While Kuzma appears unlikely to be in any real legal danger from the investigation (only under the NCAA’s arcane rules is it a bad thing to get paid for being good at a sport), the findings could lead to some of Kuzma’s statistics or records from his time in Utah being retroactively declared invalid by the NCAA.
Having previously spoken out about NCAA guidelines, Kuzma again made his thoughts on that type of punishment (and the NCAA in general) clear in a tweet about Louisville’s 2013 National Title being taken away by the NCAA earlier in the week.
Someone take down the ncaa for generating billions of dollars to only to pay its student athletes a cost of attendance of a $900 dollars a month. https://t.co/tWtPo9sJGY
— kuz (@kylekuzma) February 21, 2018
Whether this investigation finally is the one that will lead to college athletes getting paid a fair wage for making millions of dollars for their schools remains to be seen.
But it appears Kuzma was far from the only one to circumvent the system to get something closer to fair value for his services, but the exposure of how widespread this practice was would seem as likely to lead to change as any reports that have come before it.
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