"World Wide" Wes, International Man of Mystery

William Wesley (left) with LeBron James


William Wesley (center) sits courtside, with the
son of Detroit Pistons' GM Joe Dumars, at the
Palace in Auburn Hills, MI (photos: AP).


This week, ESPN's Pat Forde wrote an article about college basketball recruiting and the influence wielded by the mysterious William Wesley. The article ran on Monday. I posted a link to Forde's ESPN piece here at Drive & Dish the same day.

Wesley is, no doubt, an intriguing figure.

I've long felt that professional and big time college basketball operates as a shady underworld industry. Fans see the sanitized product on the court, but are largely unaware of the (let's just say) questionable world that exists behind the scenes. Men like Sonny Vaccaro and William Wesley are true power-brokers: their clout allows them to enforce tremendous influence on the games of college and professional basketball.

Wesley's influence often helps determine which college a high school basketball star will attend, and with which agent and shoe company a professional or prospective professional player will sign.

Read all about William "World Wide Wes" Wesley:

ESPN.com -Pat Forde

Wikipedia.org -William Wesley

True Hoop.com -- Gregory Dole: My Summer With William Wesley.

Basketball Voice.ch -World Wide Wes (scroll down the page- William Wesley material is on middle of page)

Edit:

This Drive and Dish post originally appeared on 3/28/07. In the time since it was posted, Drive and Dish has posted more material on William "World Wide Wes" Wesley.

More here. And here (although it doesn't adress "World Wide Wes," the Seattle Post Intelligencer link contains fascinating information on Kurtis Townsend and the influence that he has wielded on the recruiting front).

Update (4/6/08):

The New York Times had an expose on William "World Wide Wes" Wesley on Sunday, April 5, 2008 (I figured that all of those hits that this Drive and Dish post got from the New York Times' office last week couldn't have been completely random).