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.<\/p>\n
Ben Golliver of cbssports.com has written an interesting piece on Randolph. He starts the article like this:<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
“For Shavlik Randolph, a former McDonald\u2019s 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\u2019t 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\u2019s hype hurricane, in a skier\u2019s 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.”<\/p>\n