Wednesday, March 30th, 2011 at 11:25 am  |  24 responses

Tossed Aside

How Nate Miles became a casualty in everyone else’s war.

Nate Miles is not a saint, to be sure. But he isn’t a degenerate, as he was often made out to be. He could harbor a great deal of resentment toward UConn or Nochimson or Calhoun, but he doesn’t. He could be jealous of Kemba Walker, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a bigger Kemba fan; however, Miles still can’t shake the thought of what could have been in his freshman season. The Huskies made the 2009 Final Four without him—what could they have been with him?

“I still root for them to win it all and all that. I have nothing against Connecticut. I wish I could’ve been a part of that,” Miles said. “I think we could have won it all (in 2009). I guess it just wasn’t meant to be. I think about that shit every day.”

Miles is now living in South Toledo, taking care of his two young sons and preparing for a final chance that may or may not come.

“I wanna play ball. I can’t do nothing else, I don’t want to do nothing else,” Miles said. “I want people to give me a fair shot, a fair opportunity to get back to where I was… I think somebody out there will give me a chance.”

The sad part is that Miles is one of many talented players who never made it. UConn goes on, and the system goes on, but what happens to the kids who got chewed up and spit out?

“These kids are commodities. They’re the only people on Earth that you can look and say, ‘There’s an extremely high likelihood that they’re going to be worth huge money, overnight millionaires, in two, three years,’” Wetzel said. “The NBA’s age limit and the NCAA’s amateur rules are trying to stop the wheels of capitalism, and that will never, ever, ever work.

“College basketball, if you don’t have players, you’re done. You lose. You’re not selling out your arena, you’re not making money. So what are you going to do to get players?…It’s ‘Why obey the rules?’ The whole system is a mess.”

Still, Miles doesn’t feel cheated. “I don’t feel betrayed because you got to save your own ass. You have to save your program and the other 11, 12 people on the team, but this (is) somebody’s life, though,” Miles said. “I felt like I was used. I wish I could do it all over again from ninth grade on.”

Miles can’t go back to being a freshman at Libbey, nor can he take back all the things that happened, nor can he erase the poor reputation that’s followed him since UConn. But Miles can still hear Calhoun’s promise. Listen to me and you’ll make it.

“I was doing what (UConn) was telling me to do. Calhoun and everybody on that staff knew Josh was doing that stuff for me. Everybody knew,” Miles said. “They were talking to Josh as much as I was talking to Josh, but at the end of the day, the only ones who lose are me and Josh.”

Josh Nochimson did not respond to calls seeking comment. The University of Connecticut said it would not comment further on the matter after the NCAA’s Investigation concluded in February.

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  • burnt_chicken Posted: Mar.30 at 11:54 am
    wow. great read, fantastic article. Truly enlightening. Is Miles banned from NCAA play now, or can he still be a student athlete in the future?

  • airs Posted: Mar.30 at 12:05 pm
    thats so grimey. i hope dude gets a shot a the league

  • Fennis Dembo Posted: Mar.30 at 12:18 pm
    NCAA is a joke. End of story.

  • Johnny Posted: Mar.30 at 1:04 pm
    What a joke of an article. Nate Miles got expelled because he was on thin ice before he ever got to UConn. He basically had a zero-tolerance policy since he went to at least FIVE high schools, was suspended by one, dismissed by another and a whole bunch of other sketchiness. http://articles.courant.com/2009-03-26/news/timeline0326.art_1_cornerstone-christian-enrolled-jim-calhoun I love how the article left all that out and paints Miles as some tragic figure. He’s not. Calhoun was wrong in this situation, very wrong. But Miles was the problem. UConn handled it wrong. In fact, they really shouldn’t have recruited him at all.

  • Nick_Piotrowicz Posted: Mar.30 at 1:05 pm
    @Burnt_chicken, good question. He can’t play in the NCAA because he entered the NBA Draft, but obviously didn’t get drafted. The NCAA has a rule that says if a student-athlete gets expelled from a school, they must sit out a year before being eligible to play somewhere else. Nate went to a JUCO, then tried at the draft instead.

  • Johnny Posted: Mar.30 at 1:06 pm
    There was also the three counts of disorderly conduct he was charged with at UConn that were not mentioned in this article either.

  • Dave Posted: Mar.30 at 3:05 pm
    Let’s face it, UConn and Tennessee are the faces of cheating in the NCAA. I don’t even see how either of these teams were allowed to play in the tourney.

  • BigErn Posted: Mar.30 at 3:52 pm
    This article is a joke. No disrespect to Nate, who’s had a tough life from day one, but Connecticut’s biggest mistake was taking a flyer on a kid that everyone knew was going to be a problem from the jump. Should have learned their lesson from Antonio Kellogg. Incidentally, if this kid can play in the league, why’d he wash out at Southern Idaho? That was probably Calhoun’s fault, right?

  • GB Posted: Mar.30 at 3:53 pm
    You’ve got to be kidding me with this crap. Nate Miles was a thug, and had numerous charges before he got expelled. I know Ben Spencer and you obvioulsy have no clue what your talking about. Ben’s character should not be put anywhere close to a comparison with Nate Miles. Get some facts before you write this stuff.

  • ta Posted: Mar.30 at 4:05 pm
    Some of you are missing the point of this article. Miles may have had issues and probably should not have been recruited by Calhoun. But, he was. Not because of his wonderful character but because he was a great athlete. He was introduced immediately to an agent associated with the program. The heart of the story is how this relationship was fostered until the story was going to break. Then, and only then, was Miles too high a risk to be a part of the UConn basketball program. Calhoun is as dirty as they come yet he still got just a slap on the wrist.

  • Ben Collins Posted: Mar.30 at 4:39 pm
    Great story. You know it’s a great story when UConn donors are coming out of the woodwork to defend their coach using the, “Well, I’ve met this guy once, so you have to be wrong” defense. I don’t get why you had to start using adjectives. Even if three games is paltry, “pathetic” kind of detracts from your story. The facts are good enough. The program is sketchy and needs to be outed. It’s funded by taxpayer money and he refuses to acknowledge this. He makes $2.6 mill. a year and there are 3.4 million people in Connecticut. That’s a dollar per person going to this guy. If he’s a scumbag, he is. Just use your facts, which you have, and don’t let how you FEEL get in the way, even if it’s right.

  • Enigmatic Posted: Mar.30 at 5:06 pm
    Damn.
    This is DEEP.

  • dave Posted: Mar.30 at 6:38 pm
    Miles was kicked off the UConn campus. Not just the team, the school for violating a restraining order a female student had placed on him. Tough to be too sympathetic when a kid behaves like that.

  • Hursty Posted: Mar.30 at 6:54 pm
    Damn…wow.

  • Stephen Posted: Mar.30 at 6:56 pm
    while this article was OK and had some good facts in it. I find it ridiculous and borderline irresponsible as a “journalist” to call into question a man such as coach Moore I am assuming that you have never met him, and therefore it is impossible for you to judge him. welcome to college sports where unfortunate things like this happen every single day. Nate Miles is not a thug he is a victim of a unfortunate circumstance. while he is not pefect he does not deserve to be called a thug. and while the coaches at Uconn Coach Moore included are not perfect they are not criminals u describe them as

  • Ben Osborne Posted: Mar.30 at 10:53 pm
    Thanks for the article, Nick, and thanks for the comment, Ben Collins.

  • Dan Posted: Mar.30 at 11:04 pm
    Piotrowski got sold a load of goods on this one, and he didn’t do his research. He didn’t even bother to read the stories in the Hartford Courant where Miles admitted physically assaulting the girl. He said he was playing rough with her, that he did dig his hands into her arms and demand sex even though she kept saying no. That was totally left out the story. Do better research Nick, this is an embarrassment from you. The phone records thing didn’t even come up until much later after Miles had been expelled.

  • Dan Posted: Mar.30 at 11:13 pm
    “The records Yahoo! obtained showed that Nochimson paid for meals and housing for Miles, and even went so far as paying for foot surgery for Miles before he was on campus—something Calhoun not only knew about but encouraged.” This is an outright lie. Piotrowski is a liary and I’d like to see him sued for slander. There are no records at all showing what this claims to show. And the lies go over the top with Miles claiming that Nochimson paid with Rip’s cards. Unless Rip is totally stupid, he found out about Nochimson in 2007. So you’re telling me he didn’t cancel his credit cards? Yeah right. And the doctor who performed the surgery is PRECISE as to how he was paid, and it wasn’t in credit cards.

  • blakos Posted: Mar.31 at 3:20 am
    Coming from NZ my knowledge of the college scene is limited. I found it a good read, but man Nick you are getting seriously called out in the comments section. Please defend your professional integrity.

  • arthur Posted: Mar.31 at 3:39 am
    Great piece.

  • The Philosopher Posted: Mar.31 at 10:02 am
    Calhoun is a “company guy”.
    You know?

  • sam Posted: Mar.31 at 3:35 pm
    what a joke! are we talking about college basketball or the d-league? this kid playing for a college is the funniest thing i ever heard. 5 schools in 4 years and he was never at one long enough to complete an entire class, just enought to be eligible to play, so the uil is a joke too. if he is so great than make a d-league team but dont pretend to be a student/athlete. should have never been allowed to play high school basketball because he was always living with one coach or another and just moved in, was recruited into, high school districts for the sole purpose of playing basketball, breaking uil rules. i know this kid from aau basketball, “he’s no saint” is an understatement. his life is where it should be, he has never followed the rules once.

  • Polow Da Jon Posted: Mar.31 at 7:43 pm
    Reading this article, I feel torn. I have personally met both Coach Calhoun and Coach Moore, yet I am not naive enough to believe that this is the not uncommon on every campus. Being a lifelong Husky fan and living in the state, the perception was that while he may have had a rough upbringing, Calhoun believed Miles was worth the proverbial risk. Sometimes mortgaging your future on players with unstable foundations does not tarnish or harm a coach’s legacy or program, sometimes it does. Nate Miles’ is unfortunately just a casualty of the “game”. Miles’ situation is more the rule than the exception.

  • Patti Posted: Apr.2 at 11:11 am
    Ok. So I’ve read the article and then the comments. To say that many of you are misinformed is the “understatement”. This kid and his family were guided by someone who claimed to have Nate’s best interest at heart. It is now clear that this was not the case. This person lead the public to believe that his parents were not active in his life. This was wrong. His father was not absent and his mother was not the “missing alcoholic” that he told everyone they were. They made mistakes and are not faultless in this. But no matter how hard they tried to stay prevelent in the decisions of his future, the people giving him everything he wanted even in high school were the ones that ultimately became the ones he listened to. Even in high school, they were fixing his grades and absences. He was never made to be responsible for his actions. I see some of you want to call people liars or not believe the things that are being said about highly respected people, well I’m here to tell you that it is absolutely true. I am someone who is closer than any of you claim to be to this “situation”. While Miles definately has fault in this mess, so do the others mentioned. I mean come on, he doesn’t have enough power to make any of this happen all on his own.

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