New Yahoo! Report on Bam Adebayo’s Alleged Ties to ASM

When the initial Yahoo! bombshell by Pat Forde and Pete Thamel was released weeks ago, Big Blue Nation had cause to worry.

Three Kentucky Wildcats were named in the report: Kevin Knox, Nerlens Noel, and Bam Adebayo.

Since then, Knox has been cleared of anything that would jeopardize his eligibility and Nerlens Noel’s loan offer was after he had already left the University of Kentucky.

The most worrisome item was the report that Adebayo allegedly took a loan upwards of $36,000 from Andy Miller according to expense reports kept by Christian Dawkins.

Now more details have emerged about an alleged meeting between Bam, his former mentor Eric Peartree, and Stephen Pina of ASM at The Melting Pot restaurant in Charlottesville, Virginia.

After reading the latest report I find a whole bunch of nothing there. In fact the report itself states that it’s a whole bunch of nothing:

The significance of this meeting is how seemingly insignificant it was. It was dinner; a good dinner, but not some glitzy wining and dining. There is no evidence of bags of cash or new cars or anything you might see in a movie. There is no suggestion Pina was steering Adebayo to any school (he was uncommitted at the time but later attended the University of Kentucky for the 2016-17 season before becoming a first-round draft pick of the Miami Heat). Adebayo never even signed with ASM.

Justin Rowland summed it up nicely on twitter:

The only thing in this article that may be incriminating at all is the meal. But here is what was said about that:

At the Melting Pot that night, the three, according to the documents, would order three of the limited edition “Summer Seafood Catch Entree,” adding four extra “succulent” crab claws. Someone had a cranberry juice. The bill came to $89.68, and at 9:43 p.m. Pina felt their server, Abbie, had done her job well enough to merit a tip of $18, or just over 20 percent.

Again much ado about nothing. Neither Kentucky nor John Calipari were mentioned so once again there are no direct ties to Kentucky.

It seems to me as if Forde, Thamel, and, in this case, Dan Wetzel decided to release an article just as click bait. And to their credit it worked. But it furthers my opinion that they don’t have anything substantial and they’ll continue to release circumstantial evidence to worry college basketball fans.

The supremely ironic thing is how Forde continues to release this trash leading up to the tournament but he has the gall to call someone else the Grinch of March:

Forde gonna Forde.