LEAGUES News
Former Duke forward Wendell Carter's mom compares NCAA rules to slavery
Kylia Carter, the mother of Duke prospect Wendell Carter, compared the NCAA profiting off unpaid athletes to systems of slavery during an impassioned speech before the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics.
"When you remove all the bling and the bells and the sneakers and all that, you've paid for a child to come to your school to do what you wanted them to do for you, for free, and you made a lot of money when he did that, and you've got all these rules in place that say he cannot share in any of that," Carter said, according to ESPN's Heather Dinich.
"The only other time when labor does not get paid but yet someone else gets profits and the labor is black and the profit is white, is in slavery. To be honest with you, it's nauseating."
Carter called for NCAA reform during Monday's meeting, but she suggested that paying players under the current system would not make a substantial impact since it still leaves them unprepared.
"If you pay the players and kept the system like it is, it would still destroy them - it would just destroy them faster. That's not the solution. Don't get me wrong, it helps, but not without educating them on this process. The part that baffles me ... when you leave high school and prepare for college, and then going onto the pros, that whole process is not written down anywhere."
Carter's 19-year-old son Wendell declared for the NBA Draft and is expected to play professional basketball next season.