At Operation Basketball, Coach K Addresses Corruption Trial, Zion Williamson

At ACC Media Day, Coach K, not surprisingly, was asked about the Adidas trial - decisions were announced shortly before he spoke - and Zion Williamson. He expanded a bit more on his previous comments:

“I should have said, ‘A blip on the radar of college basketball. That’s a bad thing; obviously it’s a bad thing because they just found these people guilty [in the Adidas trial]. Is it what’s happening everywhere? I don’t think so. In the world I’m competing in, it doesn’t happen to me, so if you want me to say something …. that it’s happening everywhere, why would I say that if I don’t believe it’s happening everywhere? That’s not me being naïve.”

He also hit on a familiar theme, that it’s hard to run a big industry by committee:

“Who runs college basketball, can you tell me? That is not a clear one in our sport, because it’s not organized in such a fashion. You can’t give me a name and that’s a problem because there’s no pinpoint responsibility, there’s no leadership, so it’s run by committee. You can’t have a billion-dollar industry run by committee and keep up to date with all of the things that occur within that industry.”

“With what just happened here, it was a court of law; not something that happened with the NCAA. What powers do the organization that’s supposed to be responsible for our sport have in making sure our sport is done properly?”

And about the NCAA and Zion Williamson (and the rest of his players) he said this:

“(They) did everything they could to cooperate with the NCAA, including personal records, which I thought was, to be quite frank with you, pretty invasive. You have to prove your innocence, and guilt is assumed. Our guys, and not just Zion, our guys went through that process, so we feel confident.”

“At the end of the day, we would want the truth and we believe that to be the truth, and everything that we know, that is the truth. We can have this theory, ‘you don’t know,’ well, we don’t, but we feel confident about it.

“I have complete confidence in Zion and his family, and he does, too.”