Being arrested in high school might put a permanent dent in anyone’s reputation. But with Darius Bazley, it turned out to be a funny experience that he can now laugh about. The Utah Jazz power forward was recently on the Run Your Race podcast where he recalled his high school experience.
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Refusing to shy away from details of the incident, the 23-year-old unveiled everything that happened that led to his arrest and how he managed to bounce back from it.
Bazley said, “I was ineligible the first half of the season [freshman year], because I didn’t have any first quarter grades. I didn’t have any first quarter grades, because I got arrested, but I’m not a delinquent.” Following the hilarious opening of the story, all that was left for him to do was to explain the insane turn of events.
The Jazz star clarified that his arrest wasn’t related to something serious. He got arrested for hooping, technically. Bazley said that his middle school and high school were connected, and the cafeteria was beside the gym. So, in hopes of getting to play basketball for a while, he opened the gates and invited some people to play with him on the Labor Day weekend.
He said, “I let people in. We hooped all day. But I invited some of the wrong people, they got hungry, they got thirsty.” Bazley said that people stole snacks and broke locks to steal juice boxes and that’s what caused the arrest because the security caught him on camera.
Bazley unveiled that he didn’t even get in trouble at home because in reality, he did nothing wrong. He said, “My mom was more so just like, ‘What happened?'” But this wasn’t the end of his legal troubles as Bazley was caught in something serious in 2018.
Darius Bazley’s involvement in college basketball corruption case
While his high school arrest experience was a slap on the wrist, Bazley was involved in a serious corruption case that started in 2017. Christian Dawkins, a sports agent was charged with three counts of wire fraud and one count of money-laundering conspiracy and was arrested by the FBI with the same allegations in 2017. Following the investigation in what is now known as the 2017–18 NCAA Division I men’s basketball corruption scandal, Bazley’s name came out.
Collin Sexton played at Alabama and is now with the Cavs, Bowen is in Australia, Darius Bazley is training and Blossomgame is in the G League.
Again, this was a text from Dawkins claiming he had made these payments. https://t.co/aKjX7jkj15
— Adam Zagoria (@AdamZagoria) October 3, 2018
The NBA star’s name was involved, along with several other athletes who were said to have received payments from Dawkins. Following the revelation, Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim asked Bazley to own up to his mistakes and apologize. In addition to that, he was also advised to not play in the G League due to the grave nature of the allegations against him.
