Kansas may owe their 2008 national title to Isiah Thomas

If I were to tell you that the New York Knicks, while being headed up by Isiah Thomas, violated NBA bylaws by illegally working out potential draft picks, would you be surprised?

DePaul's Wilson Chandler and Dar Tucker, Notre Dame's Tory Jackson, Kentucky's Joe Crawford, and Baylor's Ekpe Udoh are the players that Adrian Wojnarowski mentions in the article.

The most interesting player mentioned, however, is former Kansas star Brandon Rush. Rush was all set to leave Kansas and enter the 2007 NBA Draft before he popped the acl in his right knee. The injury forced him to miss six months and pull out of the NBA Draft. Guess when he injured himself?

During one of the illegal workouts.


We all know the end of that story. Rush and company rolled through the competition, winning the national title when Derrick Rose and Chris Douglas-Roberts could not hit a free throw down the stretch of the 2008 title game. If he hadn't injured his knee in the workout, Rush would have gone pro, and Kansas may not have won that title.

Bill Self should send Isiah Thomas a thank you card.

One other note from this article -- as you read on, Woj gets into the relationship between the guy running the workouts and an agent from Detroit. Hopefully, that agent didn't pay Rush's way to and from Atlanta (where the workouts were held) because Rush thought for sure he was going to be a pro.