Max Krupnick in Harvard Magazine:
With one minute left in Harvard’s last men’s basketball game of the 2023-2024 season, sophomore Chisom Okpara drove toward the basket, leaped, and released the ball. It clanked off the rim back into his hands. On the second attempt, he made the shot, his twenty-fifth point of the game. He did not know that would be his final Crimson bucket.
Okpara was happy with his team, academics, and social life. But in April, star first-year point guard Malik Mack entered the transfer portal, which allowed coaches from other schools to recruit him. Soon after, fellow Ivy League sophomores Danny Wolf (Yale) and Kalu Anya (Brown) followed suit. Anya, a childhood friend, counseled Okpara to “just enter your name,” Okpara recalls. “You don’t know what’s going to happen. You can always come back.” Once Okpara entered the transfer portal, schools ranging from Auburn and Texas to Stanford and Vanderbilt pursued him. These schools, he said, told him he could make between $200,000 and $500,000 by playing for their basketball team. On May 22, he committed to Stanford, where he will play against stronger competitors while earning a significant amount of money.
More here.
Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.