Schooled in playing the system

O.J. Mayo is living the life of a basketball cliche.

He attended the requisite 55 high schools before identifying USC as the campus to fulfill the one-and-done requirement of the NBA. He also had a large inner circle of hangers-on who protected his interests and told him how special he was each day.

Now it is being reported that Mayo had his hand out, which is about as shocking as learning the sun rises from the east.

The only shocking element in the sordid business is that USC coach Tim Floyd never expressed reservations about landing an athlete whose background was littered with a mercenary mind-set, fights, suspensions and other issues.

Floyd never even became uneasy by the manner in which Mayo landed at USC.

Floyd did not recruit Mayo. It was a Mayo intermediary who showed up unannounced to Floyd’s office one day two years ago and asked the coach whether he would be interested in securing one of the top recruits in the nation.

Floyd said he was not sure how to take the question or even whether the stranger supposedly representing Mayo was legitimate. But Floyd went along with it because he is a major college coach who has been conditioned to be held hostage to the whims of prep sensations.

So Floyd asked the stranger for Mayo’s cell phone number. It was not an unreasonable request, all things considered. The stranger responded by telling Floyd that Mayo does not give out his number and that Mayo would be calling the coach. In an instant, Mayo flipped the dynamic of the player-coach relationship.

Mayo did call Floyd and asked how many scholarships were available at USC. Told there were three, Mayo told Floyd not to worry, that he would fill them.

And so began the problematic relationship between Mayo and the USC basketball program.

As the steward of the program, Floyd should have heard the sirens and bells sounding at this point. He should have been leery of taking up with an athlete with a troubling background and accustomed to calling the shots and to heck with the adults in his midst.

Not that Mayo could be faulted for seeing adults as so many pawns to be moved on a chess board.

The adults in his tiny world genuflected in his presence because of his basketball talent.

They corrupted his thinking because of their interest in either obtaining his basketball services, if only for a season, or representing him as a client once he became a bona fide NBA player.

Now the dirt has surfaced with Mayo because of a falling out with one of his lackeys, Louis Johnson, who tells of the player’s financial relationship with Rodney Guillory, who had a connection to the Northern California sports agency Bill Duffy Associates at one time.

Guillory served as the money conduit between the sports agency and Mayo, according to Johnson, who shows that basketball hath no fury like a hanger-on scorned, to paraphrase an old truism.

The money dispensed to Mayo is chump change by the standards of big-time college basketball and the NBA if Johnson’s $30,000 figure in cash and gifts is accurate.

Mayo, of course, denies any wrongdoing, and it is mere coincidence that he has signed on with Bill Duffy Associates to represent him.

A projected lottery pick in the NBA Draft next month, Mayo says he is focused on getting ready for the predraft workouts. He says the truth eventually will emerge and that he is as interested as the NCAA and USC in discovering what is what.

His contention passes the smell test only if you have a clothespin attached to your nostrils.

Mayo has no genuine reason to be concerned. He is finished with college, and whatever mess is uncovered at USC, it will be the institution’s problem and not his.

He played the system, and the system was only too willing to oblige.