Analysis : Mills Case Is Latest of Kentucky’s Woes

LEXINGTON, Ky. —  “It’s Kentucky basketball,” the Kentucky Basketball Facts Book says with pride. “Not just basketball -- Kentucky Basketball basketball.”

It is a special place for basketball, at a university that has won more games (1,453) than any other university in history -- at a 75 percent clip. The names roll off -- Adolph Rupp, Joe B. Hall, Cliff Hagan, Louie Dampier, Dan Issel, Jack Givens, Kyle Macy. National championships in 1948, 1949, 1951, 1958 and 1978.

And it’s in trouble -- again -- with the NCAA, which began an investigation after an 8x10-inch cardboard delivery package being sent to a Kentucky recruit came apart at the seams.

Under this cloud, what was already a bad month in Lexington got worse last Friday. The team’s standout sophomore guard, Rex Chapman, announced he was going into the NBA draft. He insisted that the investigation had little to do with his decision. But regardless of Chapman’s motivation, losing the state’s young idol is a horrific blow at the worst possible time.

The central character in this latest case is Chris Mills, a do-everything player from Fairfax High School in Los Angeles who signed with Kentucky last November. The 6-foot-7 Mills averaged 30.5 points and 14.4 rebounds a game as a senior, and was averaging 37 points until an ankle injury late in the season hampered him.

The centerpiece is an overnight air-delivery package -- specifically, Emery Air Freight Corporation Air Waybill No. 043365177, a package that once again has thrust the University of Kentucky under a harsh light.

The package was mailed March 30 from the athletic department at Memorial Coliseum. After a flight from Dayton, Ohio (the superhub of the Emery company), it arrived at the Los Angeles Emery center, a warehouse a few blocks from Los Angeles International Airport. The addressee was Claud Mills, Chris Mills’ father and his biggest booster; the return address bore the name of Dwane Casey, an assistant coach at Kentucky.

The package came open between 7 and 7:30 a.m., while being handled by Emery employees. In the package was a videotape.

In the videotape jacket were 20 $50 bills.

If Casey sent the money, the $1,000 would constitute an improper inducement to an athlete, a violation of NCAA rules.

Casey, who played for Kentucky under Joe B. Hall and who’s been an assistant coach since April 1986, emphatically denied there was money in the envelope when he sent it. But he hasn’t elaborated on the subject since the denial. The package was resealed and sent to the Millses; Chris Mills signed for it, but said it contained no money.

Though few in the Bluegrass State seem to believe Casey put money in the envelope, many accept the idea that someone did. Some boosters even advance the theory that jealous UCLA supporters put it there to embarrass Kentucky. It is left to NCAA investigators to sort it out.

Mills is one of those special talents. The type of player who gets his jersey retired. The type of multihonor player (a first-team all-America for Parade, USA Today and Converse, Naismith player of the year in California) that makes college coaches think about traversing the road to the Final Four. In style.

“I haven’t seen a freshman do the things I hope he can do next year,” said his high-school coach, Harvey Kitani. “You had the kid (Temple freshman Mark) Macon with his scoring, but I don’t think there’s anyone who’s capable of doing all of the all-around things that Chris is.”

He averaged 28.3 points a game his junior year and was named Los Angeles City 4A player of the year. The recruiting struggle was fierce. Nevada-Las Vegas thought it had the inside track initially. But after Mills scored 30 points in an all-star tournament in Lexington last summer, things changed.

He narrowed his list to five schools: UNLV, UCLA, Kentucky, Indiana and Syracuse. Unlike other recent blue-chip recruits, who prefer to have recruiters deal with their coach, Mills and his father were contacted directly at home.

“We thought we had him up until 10 days before letter of intent,” UNLV Coach Jerry Tarkanian said. “The last 10 days, we felt he wasn’t as warm when he talked with us on the phone. But up until the day before the letter of intent, we thought we had a shot. His father kept telling us he was going to come here.”

During the final week before letters of intent were signed, Kitani said, “He was getting tired. I could see the strain on his face.”

Mills signed a national letter of intent with the Wildcats Nov. 11. That same month, he began driving a white 1984 Datsun 300ZX. The NCAA inquired, and Claud Mills said he paid cash for the used car (between $6,000 and $7,000) with some of the $24,000 he received in workmen’s compensation for a back injury suffered in 1986. In addition, Claud Mills says he received $10,000 for the settlement of a claim from an auto accident in 1987.

State records, the Los Angeles Daily News noted, verify Claud Mills’ claim. And the NCAA provided the Millses with a certificate approving the purchase.

While Mills was being recruited, Al Ross, a Los Angeles agent, was having a series of conversations with Casey during an eight-month period, including the day after Chris Mills signed with Kentucky. Ross is registered with the NFL as an agent, but says he’s been out of the sports-agent business for about 10 years.

He said he’s involved with his real-estate company, Ross Realty, and with his Century Entertainment Corp. Ross also represents entertainers and recording stars, he said, though he wouldn’t specify who.

Ross said he has not been questioned by the NCAA about the phone calls. “Maybe they’ll send me some money (for his time),” he said. “It’s getting bananas.”

While a sports agent, Ross represented Spencer Haywood (in the 1972 hardship case resulting in underclassmen being eligible to enter the NBA draft), Bob McAdoo and Elvin Hayes. Ross said he also was “involved” in various projects with other athletes, including former NFL players Marv Fleming, Roy Jefferson and Diron Talbert.

Ross’ association with Mills started in 1985. Fairfax High had had two out-of-town trips revoked by the Interscholastic Athletic Committee because of rowdy fan behavior. Teams were banned from out-of-state trips for a year, and parents contacted Ross to appeal the decision, which was upheld.

Ross said he spent as much time and money (he said he was not compensated either then, or by Claud Mills now) with the Fairfax case as he could before he had to return to his real-estate office. After the 1985 appeal, Ross said he kept in contact with the Mills family.

“I went down to play basketball at the Fairfax gym (Ross played at Michigan State) with the team,” he said. “One of my boys is the same age as (Claud Mills’) youngest boy, so they always played together. We are just friends. There was no business relationship at all.”

When the stories about the money broke, Claud Mills contacted Ross and asked him if he might talk to the Emery employees about their versions of the story, because Mills’ attorney, Ron Hecker, was out of town.

“I came from a Lakers game,” said Ross. “(Claud Mills) said he was concerned, and would I make some calls ... and as as favor, I said, ‘Let me find out what their position is, and I’ll get back to you.’ ... Next thing you know, they had me delivering Chris Mills to Kentucky.”

Hecker was somewhat dumbfounded about Al Ross. “I don’t know Al Ross,” said Hecker, who has represented Claud Mills for two years, beginning with the 1987 auto-accident case. “His name has come up. I don’t know who he is. As I speak to you, I’m looking at, I think, his office out the window.”

“I don’t know why (Hecker) wouldn’t call me,” Ross said. “I’ve never heard of him (either).”

After hearing from Claud Mills, Ross made the calls to Emery. He said he “might have spoken” with Paul Perry, the Emery supervisor who said he counted the $1,000 in front of employees and had the package sealed by security personnel for delivery.

Casey’s calls were made between July 1987 and February 1988, according to telephone records obtained by the Lexington Herald-Leader. Ross spoke with Casey on five occasions, the newspaper reported, Casey initiating each call. Ross said he spoke with Casey about basketball players Casey coached while an assistant at Kentucky Western.

“I’ve spoke maybe to 50 other assistant coaches in the last year,” Ross said. “They’re friends of mine. When they’re in town, I have them come over to the house, come for dinner.”

Could Ross want to represent Chris Mills sometime down the line?

“That’s four or five years from now,” Ross said. “A lot of things could happen in four or five years. I never think that far in advance. You know these parents, it’s usually the last person they talk to.”

If Kentucky is one of the most successful programs in college-basketball history, it’s also one of the most frequently investigated by the NCAA -- four times in the last 12 years. On each occasion, the university escaped serious punishment.

All of this has come just weeks after the NCAA concluded its fourth investigation, last March 3. The impetus for that investigation was a series of Pulitzer Prize-winning articles by the Herald-Leader that detailed alleged corruption. The stories quoted former players as saying they received cash, including “$100 handshakes,” clothing and other gifts.

The NCAA said its investigation was hampered by the newspaper’s refusal to provide tapes and notes of interviews with the people quoted in the stories, in addition to the expiration of its four-year statute of limitations.

Several local businessmen were named as financial supporters for players. Among them was Donald Webb, who, along with his brother, Dudley, owns many buildings in downtown Lexington and whose Webb Companies is among the biggest real-estate developers in the country.

“I’m just a basketball fan. I love sports. We grew up on Big Blue basketball,” Dudley Webb said. “It’s just a swearing contest. It’s just the same old contest of who you’re going to believe. ... Kentucky basketball is not bigger than life. The boosters in this town are all good, reputable citizens. And they’re not going to violate their beliefs for anything.”

At the end of the NCAA’s investigation, its committee on infractions could only reprimand the university for not cooperating with investigators. Director of enforcement David Berst said the NCAA questioned 17 of the 33 sources mentioned in the Herald-Leader stories, and Kentucky was able to reach eight others. Only one of the 17 people questioned by the NCAA, Berst said, backed up his statements quoted in the Herald-Leader.

The NCAA’s report on the Kentucky program was critical, but the reprimand was basically a slap on the wrist, requiring Kentucky to monitor athletic expenditures and report to the NCAA for the next three years.

Now, Kentucky is cooperating with the NCAA and conducting its own investigation through its Athletics Association. Legal proceedings already have begun. Judge Eugene E. Siler Jr., granted an Athletics Association request May 6 to force the seven Emery employees and an employee of the security company working with Emery to give depositions.

Siler is the third judge to hear the legal wranglings. The first two, one of whom is a member of the Kentucky board of trustees, withdrew from the case.

The Athletics Association’s attorney, James Park, said at the hearing that the university was taking the action because of “the very real risk that these employees will no longer be with the company, that they will be scattered, and that certain ... documents may be missing.”

Six of the Emery employees worked out of the Los Angeles office; the other is “John Doe,” an Emery employee not known to NCAA or Kentucky investigators. He was the employee who took the package from the university to Emery’s local office in Lexington, and he would have known the condition of the package before it was trucked to the Dayton hub.

Casey’s attorney, Joe B. Campbell, has said he will sue both the NCAA and Kentucky if either attempts to blame Casey for the money. Campbell said he expects eventually to be involved in litigation with the university, because the university informed him in an exchange of letters in early May that the charges against Casey might get Casey fired.

The NCAA has interviewed other recruits who ended up not going to Kentucky, looked into a trip to Kentucky last fall by the mother of Kentucky signee Shawn Kemp, and interviewed the Emery employees. Currently, it is not thinking of reopening the investigation that closed in March because of the statute of limitations, Berst said.

“If there were violations that were disclosed,” he said, “then I guess we could treat those issues if they were within the statute of limitations.”

Berst would not comment on when the NCAA might be finished with the new investigation. But the publicity from this latest allegation, in the light of the NCAA’s inability to turn up anything from the last investigation, is creating pressure on the enforcement division.

Tarkanian, who is involved in his own legal imbroglio with the NCAA, remains skeptical about whether the NCAA will act even if a smoking gun -- or in this case, envelope -- is found.

“It’ll be the most minor infraction,” he said. “Or they’ll have them take a seminar on how to seal envelopes.”

But Kentucky President David Roselle has engendered confidence among many that he will pursue a true investigation. He has been serving as president for nearly a year, but only was formally installed April 14. At the installation, he gave a tough speech about keeping athletics and academics on even keels.

It happened to be the same day that the revelations about the Mills package surfaced. Before the ceremony, a woman came up to Roselle and said how it was such a shame that it had to come out today.

“Maybe,” he said, “it’s not such a bad thing.”