Fred VanVleet, stepfather received $3,000 from agency while at WSU, report says

The names of former Wichita State standout Fred VanVleet and his stepfather, Joe Danforth, are included in federal documents indicating they received impermissible benefits from a sports agency during VanVleet’s senior season with the Shockers, according to a report by Pat Forde and Pete Thamel of Yahoo! Sports published on Friday.

At least 20 schools and more than 25 players, both current and former, are named in the documents seized by federal agents from former NBA agent Andy Miller, his former associate Christian Dawkins, and his agency, ASM Sports. According to the documents, the agency tried to gain the favor of potential pros from major programs like Kansas, Kentucky, Duke, North Carolina, and Michigan State in exchange for loans.

Among the hundreds of pages of documents, VanVleet’s name is included in an ASM Sports expense report that lists accounts updated through 2015. Under the subtitle “Loan to Players,” VanVleet’s name is shown next to $1,070. Later in the document, on an expense sheet from Mar. 2, 2016 to Mar. 25, 2016, Danforth’s name appears in a spreadsheet showing an advance of $2,000.

If the NCAA comes to the conclusion that VanVleet violated its amateurism rule, it’s unknown to what extent it might affect Wichita State. VanVleet averaged 12.2 points and 5.5 assists, won the Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Year award, and led WSU to a 26-9 record during his senior year in 2015-16. Months later he went undrafted in the NBA Draft and signed a free agent contract with the Toronto Raptors.

In the months following, VanVleet signed with ASM Sports and has been represented by ASM agents Brian Jungreis and Stephen Pina. VanVleet, who went undrafted but has made nearly $2 million in two seasons with the Toronto Raptors, is featured on ASM Sports’ web site under “Our NBA Family.”

The document also shows Apples Jones, the mother of former KU player Josh Jackson, received $2,700 and former KU player Elijah Johnson received more than $15,000.

Shortly after the report was published, the NCAA president Mark Emmert published the following statement: “These allegations, if true, point to systematic failures that must be fixed and fixed now if we want college sports in America. Simply put, people who engage in this kind of behavior have no place in college sports. They are an affront to all those who play by the rules. With these latest allegations, it's clear this work is more important now than ever. The Board and I are completely committed to making transformational changes to the game and ensuring all involved in college basketball do so with integrity. We also will continue to cooperate with the efforts of federal prosecutors to identify and punish the unscrupulous parties seeking to exploit the system through criminal acts.”

E-mails reaching out to VanVleet, currently a guard with the Toronto Raptors, and WSU coach Gregg Marshall early Friday were not immediately returned.

“No comment as it’s a pending investigation,” VanVleet said in a text message to Rockford (Ill.) Register Star.

Marshall has been adamant since the news of the federal investigation inside college basketball that he and his staff had not committed any rule violations because they avoid “the slop,” as he phrased it.

“I’d like to see the playing field evened and hopefully this is what we’re trying do,” Marshall said back in October. “Hopefully we’re establishing that the things that have been going on at certain places are no longer acceptable. We’re not going to turn a blind eye and continue to let it negatively affect the state of college basketball.”

This story was originally published February 23, 2018 at 7:43 AM with the headline "Fred VanVleet, stepfather received $3,000 from agency while at WSU, report says."