You typically hear these types of stories during the Little League World Series. A kid will pose as a 12 year old when he’s really 15. Then it makes all the sense in the world why he’s 3 feet taller than everyone else. But you typically don’t hear this in collegiate athletics.
Standout UCLA freshman, Shabazz Muhammad was believed all along to have been 19 years old. However, it was revealed today that he’s actually 20. That’s right, both he and his father purposely misrepresented his age, according to the LA Times, who broke the story.
But a copy of Shabazz Nagee Muhammad’s birth certificate on file with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health shows that he was born at Long Beach Memorial Hospital exactly one year earlier, making him 20 years old — not 19 as widely reported.
How and when he lost a year of his life are unclear. But competing against younger, smaller athletes, particularly in the fast-growing years of early adolescence, can be “a huge edge,” said Eddie Bonine, executive director of the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Assn. “People naturally look at the big, strong kids.”
Asked about the discrepancy, Holmes insisted his son was 19 and born in Nevada. “It must be a mistake,” he said.
Several minutes later, he changed his account, saying that his son is, in fact, 20 and was born in Long Beach.
Holmes expressed concern about disclosure of his son’s true age and his own criminal record and questioned whether either was newsworthy. He followed up with a text message.
“Bazz is going to blow up in the NBA lets team up and blow this thing up!!!” Holmes wrote to this reporter. “I’m going to need a publicist anyway why shouldn’t it be you. We can do some big things together.”
At the end of the day, I’m not sure this should be that huge of a deal. It’s not as if he’s really 30, or that he lied about having a dead girlfriend.
For a team that may be thinking about drafting him, they only thing to consider is the whether or not he played well enough at UCLA as a 20 year old. If yes, draft him. If not, dont.
