Carmelo Anthony told reporters he didn’t think it was serious, and it turns out — it wasn’t.
On Monday, the Denver forward left two tickets to a Lakers-Nuggets game for O.J. Mayo, a longtime acquaintance and current Southern Cal basketball star. At first, there were rumblings that Mayo could be in big trouble for violating an NCAA bylaw, but the NCAA announced today that Mayo’s eligibility has been reinstated. All Mayo has to do is give a charity $460, the amount of the tickets.
And, as put in an NCAA statement, “Normal reinstatement guidelines call for a withholding condition of 20 percent of competition based on the dollar value of this benefit. However, when determining the specifics of this individual case, the NCAA staff determined that repayment without withholding from competition was warranted since the university provided information that the student-athlete first asked his coach if he could accept the tickets offered to him and was told it would be permissible.”
Mayo, Southern Cal’s leading scorer, is considered to be a potential lottery pick in the upcoming draft, should he leave college after his freshman season.
Benjamin Hochman: 303-954-1294 or bhochman@denverpost.com
