Raleigh native Shavlik Randolph has had a rocky basketball career but he did go to Duke and he has made good money in the NBA. His Blue Devil career was limited by a hip injury and mononucleosis and as a result Sports Illustrated writer Seth Davis named Randolph the biggest college basketball recruiting bust of the decade for the 2000s.

Ben Golliver of cbssports.com has written an interesting piece on Randolph. He starts the article like this:

“Professional basketball players on the fringes of the NBA, those without the certainty of a guaranteed multi-year contracts and forced to compete over and over with others to land a coveted roster spot, understand that control gets cede sooner or later, that relentlessly chasing opportunity wherever it may be is the only way to make a living.

“For Shavlik Randolph, a former McDonald’s All-American who battled injury and illness while at Duke, sticking in the NBA has been a whirlwind process, one that began when he wasn’t selected in the 2005 NBA Draft but wound up catching on with the Philadelphia 76ers. The last five years have been a blur of spot minutes, 10-day contracts, try-outs and workouts, but his whirlwind has never spun faster or with more force than the last 12 months. In a year that he won’t soon forget, Randolph found himself in the eye of the Miami Heat’s hype hurricane, in a skier’s paradise rehabilitating alongside a No. 1 overall draft pick, and finally in the Caribbean tropics, where he had a courtside view of one of the most tragic events in basketball in 2011.”

To read more, please click here.