Mayo already making "impact" at USC

[Russ Smith]

Mayo inadvertently hit teammate Daniel Hackett in the jaw with an elbow while pivoting after a rebound. Hackett broke his jaw in 3 places and is out at least 6 weeks. Talk about ironic, 2 years ago the very cocky Hackett pissed of Mayo's best friend Bill Walker in an AAU tournament in Oregon, prompting Walker to sucker punch(semi forearm) Hackett in the face. Hackett went down, Walker got ejected.

The AAU coach then pulled his team off the court and told them he was taking them home if they didn't reinstate Walker, since that included Mayo, the big draw, they huddled and then reinstated Walker and let him go back into the game while the crowd booed. There used to be video of it the incident on the internet, no idea if it's still available. I remember pointing out when Mayo first say he was going to USC I wondered how that would sit with Hackett.

This is apparently an accident by all accounts.

 

[Russ Smith]

Well the rumors swirl that this was actually an intentional punch after the 2 square off in a pickup game. I emailed the guy who wrote the LA Times article about it, he didn't know the AAU background between them but confirmed he has heard rumors it was a punch but that both Hackett(the victim) and Kyle Austin (USC Forward) have told him it was in fact an accident and he's taking their word for it.

If it was a punch not sure why they would make a big deal out of covering it up. One of the better stories from UCLA's runner up finish year was that freshman PG Darren Collison got fed up with Soph PG Jordan Farmar taunting him and playing too physical one day in practice so he punched him in the face. Nobody got hurt but more than one UCLA player said that was the day they realized Collison was going to be a special player up until then there had been questions if he was tough enough.

 

[Russ Smith]

Well per the LA Times UCLA freshman Kevin Love, a good friend of Mayo, essentially called out Mayo for the alleged elbow.

He also promised that he would not be too aggressive in throwing elbows -- or anything else -- in the general area of point guard Darren Collison. USC freshman and fellow high school superstar O.J. Mayo reportedly broke the jaw of Trojans point guard Daniel Hackett with a misplaced elbow during a pickup game last month.

"An elbow, yeah, right," Love said. "Dan's a good friend of mine too. I'm never going to lay a hand or lay a fist or elbow on a teammate like that."

I would say he basically just said Mayo is lying about the elbow and Hackett admitted it to him(love). Hackett and Mayo were teammates on the AAU team in HS when Bill Walker sucker punched Hackett so they know each other quite well.

 

[MaoTosiFanClub]

Good for Kevin Love.

My question is would Mayo and his Dad throw a tantrum and put up bumper stickers all over town endorsing the firing of Tim Floyd if he didn't get enough playing time?

 

[Russ Smith]

Good for Kevin Love.

My question is would Mayo and his Dad throw a tantrum and put up bumper stickers all over town endorsing the firing of Tim Floyd if he didn't get enough playing time?

Kevin Love didn't do that his dad did. And yes it was ridiculous. A 15 year old kid can't exactly stop his former NBA player dad from being a jerk. Note the coach in question was under fire for a lot of reasons that year including one players parents accusing him of racism(not Love's).

http://www.portlandtribune.com/sports/story.php?story_id=24994

You'll get no argument from me about Stan Love though, but his son has yet to injure a teammate with an apparently intentional punch (Scott Wolf is now reporting this rumor too he covers USC for the Daily News).

There are a lot of players who have embarassing parents or stupid trainers who post incredibly dumb things on message boards about players they train and other schools. Sometimes their posts are so inane that even though the board is run by fans of the same team the trainer supports, they delete the posts because it makes them all look dumb for having them on their message boards.

To me what Stan Love did is entirely different than a fairly serious injury occurring as a result of a fight, if that's what happened. Again the part of this story that really puzzles me is if it was intentional why is USC trying so hard to keep that a secret? Hackett hasn't pressed charges or anything like that, about the only thing I can think is maybe since Hackett had to go to the hospital they were concerned that insurance would handle it differently if they knew it was a punch and not an accident?

Or maybe having spent the last 9 months telling us that everything we've heard about Mayo was wrong and he's actually a very polite and mature kid, they don't want to have to explain why he just fractured a teammates jaw with a punch?

 

[Russ Smith]

And the plot thickens, Scott Wolf's story is finally out and he says a USC player confirmed it was a punch.

http://www.dailynews.com/usc/ci_7188818

USC men's basketball coach Floyd told Mayo didn't punch Hackett
BY SCOTT WOLF, Staff Writer
Article Last Updated: 10/15/2007 10:24:39 PM PDT


USC coach Tim Floyd said he met with guards O.J. Mayo and Daniel Hackett over the weekend after multiple sources told the Daily News Mayo punched Hackett during a pickup game last month.

"I brought O.J. into my office and asked him about it and I also spoke to Daniel," Floyd said. "They said it wasn't true."

Hackett said Mayo accidentally threw an elbow after a rebound. Hackett broke his jaw during the incident, and it will be wired shut for at least four more weeks.

Although the incident occurred Sept. 28, Floyd has been out of town for several weeks and did not speak to Mayo about it until Sunday. Several sources, including a member of the basketball team, said Mayo punched Hackett during the game. No coaches were present.

"Yeah, he punched him," a player said. "They changed the story for the media."

Hackett and Mayo denied any punches were thrown.

"No, I didn't punch him," Mayo said.

Said Hackett: "It was a hard elbow."

It would not be the first time Hackett has drawn the ire of a teammate. Hackett got into an altercation with guard Dwight Lewis during practice last season, and had a couple altercations with teammates during pickup games last fall.

Hackett's lost 15 pounds and currently weighs 199. He said he might go down as low as 185 pounds.

Also: Floyd said USC is practicing without guard Marcus Simmons, who suffered a high-ankle sprain, and Lewis, who bruised his thigh.



the significance here that people may miss is there's a very real potential insurance fraud case here if Hackett wrote on insurance forms accidental elbow and now it comes out it was a punch. That's because it wasn't at a practice it was a pickup game so it would be his private insurance which presumably comes from his parents. And if it comes from his dad, a USC employee, you can see there's the potential for an issue there?

 

[abomb]

Awesome.

 

[Russ Smith]

Mayo is who we thought he was!

 

[abomb]

It's working its way through the blogosphere.

http://www.trojannyc.com/2007/10/did-oj-mayo-pun.html

 

[Russ Smith]

It's working its way through the blogosphere.

http://www.trojannyc.com/2007/10/did-oj-mayo-pun.html

It's been in SI, CBSsportline and some other national stuff and I'm told that ESPN is calling LA reporters to fact check so it'll probably hit ESPN eventually.

Floyd got all mad about it yesterday so there's a story in the Press Enterprise today where he says Wolf just said "a player" is that basketball, soccer, football, a womens player? Kevin Love isn't on campus how does he know what happened? When my players tell me different I'll do something, otherwise this is closed.

Which is funny because if you read Wolf's story he very clearly says unnamed basketball player, so soccer and football is irrelevant and I doubt they play pickup games with the womens team?

Who knows if they're telling the truth it's a great us against the world rallying point for SC, if they're lying it's probably already pretty divisive in the locker room. Hackett will probably miss 6 games they say. The next 10 he'll have a protective mask on. He's lost over 15 pounds already so they expect he'll have lost 30 by the time he gets the wire off his jaw. He said they will ease him back in slowly so they don't expect him to be ready to start until late in the conference season, maybe even Pac 10 tourney.

Wolf has been wrong before but he's not the first one to report the rumor he was just the first to cite a member of the team as anonymous source.

 

[Russ Smith]

Really no new information just an extremely funny translation from Italy on the Mayo punching Hackett story. This is from the LA Times.

http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-uschoops9nov09,1,2247822.story?coll=la-headlines-sports

Rumors that freshman guard O.J. Mayo slugged sophomore guard Daniel Hackett during a pickup game in September have sparked a small furor in Hackett's native Italy, where a report in the newspaper Il Resto del Carlino said "the punch was so devastating that the first doctor that saw him said he could not have been playing again."

Readers in a fan forum wrote that Mayo "has a wood head" and implored Hackett not to worry because Mayo would be leaving USC for the NBA draft in June. One reader went so far as to demand an NCAA investigation, claiming that USC coaches were involved in a cover-up.

Hackett and Mayo insist that Hackett's broken jaw resulted from an inadvertent elbow. Hackett is expected to have a wire removed from his jaw today and return later this month.