Shabaka Lands is out at Louisville

Anyone remember the name Shabaka Lands?

Anyone?

He was an assistant coach at Pike High School in Indianapolis -- the same high school that produced talents like Robert Vaden, Courtney Lee, Chris Thomas (Notre Dame), Jason Gardner, and Jeff Teague -- before being hired by Louisville as a program assistant. Pike's current star is Marquis Teague, a top ten talent nationally. Lands just so happened to get the job with Louisville at a time when Teague was deciding whether he should go to Louisville or Kentucky.

Pitino whiffed on Marquis Teague, so he got rid of Shabaka Lands.
(photo credit: Strait Pinkie)

Quite the coincidence, if by coincidence I mean package deal. And if by package deal, I mean legal-then-illegal-now package deal.

But there was a problem. Teague didn't want to go to Louisville. He committed to Kentucky in April, putting Lands in what had to be an uncomfortable position with the Cardinals.

A position, apparently, he no longer has. According to John Clay of the Lexington-Herald, Lands is no longer with Louisville, which comes as no surprise. Also not a surprise is the reaction of Kentucky fans to this news.

But that's not the most interesting part of the story. Rick Pitino tried to utilize a loophole -- a loophole that has since been closed -- to land a talented recruit. It didn't work, so he cut his losses and dropped his mistake. Pitino broke no rules, and did what any intelligent human being would have done. I believe they say that's being a businessman.

No, the most interesting part of this story is that the scoop goes to some random Kentucky fan named Jacob Kiper. Kiper emailed a whole bunch of bloggers and reporters (including Clay and Matt Jones of Kentucky Sports Radio) until someone took the bait and wrote about it. I think its fair to say that Kiper wanted to smear Pitino, which doesn't exactly correspond with the idea of unbiased "journalism" (That was journalism in the Twitter era, right?), but whatever.

Nice work, Jacob.