Rodney Guillory Better Hang Tight to O.J. Mayo

It seems likely that Rodney Guillory saw himself as a future player. Someone who might become a sort of kingmaker or force in basketball behind-the-scenes. That or someone who figured he could at least make a lot of money glomming onto teenage boys and running as the middleman for agents.

At this rate, he'll be lucky to avoid jail and O.J. Mayo kicking him out of his entourage.

Not only does it seem that he was operating a fake charity as a front, but other people past and future are talking about him. And not in a good way.

There was a former Fresno State and Houston Rockets basketball player, Tito Maddox, who recalls when Guillory came calling as a runner for Ron and Ken Delpit of Franchise Sports.
Considering where he was as a prospect for the NBA versus a sure-thing like Mayo, Maddox didn't do too badly.

Maddox said a family member of the Delpits delivered Gloria Maddox a newer-model Nissan Altima during the 2000-01 school year, and that he received a 1997 Ford Explorer.

Cash payments were delivered in envelopes to him at Fresno State, Maddox said, and to his mother -- sometimes hand-delivered by Guillory -- at her home.

"Rodney was the middleman," Maddox said. "We'd get $1,500 every month for about a year and a half. Almost $30,000."

Now, the next great USC recruit (for now) DeMar DeRozan has detailed his own dealings with Guillory.

[DeMar's father,] Frank DeRozan said Guillory once attempted to recruit DeMar to play for his Amateur Athletic Union team, and when his advances were rebuffed, Guillory told other AAU coaches that DeMar was 15 years old when in fact he was 13.

The family then had to go to some lengths to straighten out the discrepancy.

"He was real mad because DeMar wouldn't play on his team," Frank DeRozan said of Guillory. "He went out and lied to a couple of other AAU coaches and said DeMar was older than he was. I said [to Guillory], 'You can't say nothing else to me.' "

With all of this stuff coming out, the fiction of USC and Coach Tim Floyd having no inclination that there was anything shady with Mayo and Guillory looks shakier and shakier. No wonder DeRozan's family is talking about getting DeMar out of his National Letter of Intent to USC.