I know I’m about a day late on this, but just in case anyone hadn’t heard, there was a minor kerfluffle over Ed Davis potentially having already hired an agent. To quote The Dagger:
Chicago-based PTA Sports Management briefly had Davis listed among its basketball clients on its Web site early Thursday morning, but founder Vincent Porter insists his agency has no written or oral agreement with the sophomore forward.
Instead Porter suggested that someone with knowledge that he was interested in signing Davis hacked into his agency’s web site and planted the North Carolina star’s name among the list of clients with a link to bio information lifted from Wikipedia.
It’s basically impossible to decipher what is really going on here, as the possibility of someone hacking PTA’s site to put Ed Davis on there somehow sounds simultaneously ridiculous and entirely plausible - anything is possible in the age of the internets, I suppose. The bottom line is that after a quick round of questions, it has already been determined that Davis hasn’t signed and so UNC has no need of anything as serious as an NCAA investigation.
The bigger issue is whether or not Davis has already made up his mind about leaving Carolina after this year - while PTA hasn’t currently signed him, they did confirm that they have been in touch with his family, which probably isn’t out of the norm for a player like Ed who’s spending the rest of his season weighing his options for the future rather than focusing on what’s going on on the court. Roy Williams says he always helps his players make the decision he believes is ultimately the best for them, and it’s hard to argue that Ed Davis would be better served by another year in college. Sure, his game needs a LOT of work, but if scouts are totally oblivious to that fact and he’s somehow still projected as a top-10 or even top-5 pick, why wouldn’t he leave?
UNC is mostly getting help next year on the perimeter, but should still be set up fairly well if Davis is gone: assuming Henson and the Wear twins take somewhat of a leap forward, and Zeller manages to finally stay healthy, the Heels still have some frontcourt depth. Admittedly, it would be much nicer if this whole thing is a bizarre hoax and Davis stays on, giving the Heels another blue-chip player in the rotation - but where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire. We’ll see what happens.
