Last week, former 6-foot-8 forward McDonald’s All-American, Waukegan High School, and University of Illinois basketball player was sentenced to three years in prison on felony charges of harassment of a witness for making threatening comments and gestures to a probation officer. The end of Richmond’s meteoric rise and fall in a dramatic four years was more sad than anything else.
Yes, it may be a severely negative example of the perils of offering college scholarships to high school freshman or the problems of an entitlement system for highly sought after recruits. But, at the end of the day, one cannot feel anything but sad for the career of a once promising basketball player and how quickly a career can nosedive.
It seems like only yesterday when Richmond was the prized 2010 Illinois Mr. Basketball recruit for the Illini and expected to help revive Bruce Weber’s program. Richmond was thought by scouts to be a future NBA lottery pick.
However, the promise and potential for Richmond started to unravel during the end of his freshman year for the Illini. First, Richmond missed practices and did not play in a January game against the Wisconsin Badgers. Then, Richmond didn’t play in Illinois’ two NCAA tournament games for violating athletic department rules. Sadly, Illinois could have really used Richmond in their loss against number one Kansas. Illinois stayed with Kansas early, but eventually succumbed to the superior talent on Kansas.
It was still thought that after this maturing first year, Richmond would return in the fall of 2011 as a centerpiece of the rebuilding Illini. Instead, Richmond left the team and declared for the 2011 NBA draft. Instead of fulfilling his promise as an NBA lottery pick, Richmond went undrafted and instead settled to play for the Sauk Valley Predators of the Premier Basketball League.
Personally, in the fall of 2011, Richmond’s life was also rapidly deteriorating. In August 2011, Richmond was arrested for allegedly beating his seventeen-year-old girlfriend and threatening to shoot her. Richmond was accused of testing positive for marijuana after a random drug test in October 2011. In January 2012, he was sentenced to eighteen months probation. In October 2012, Richmond was returned to jail for violating his terms of probation.
Then, in April 2013, Richmond was arrested on new felony charges of witness harassment and disorderly conduct based on a failure to take a drug test with his probation officer. The April incident led to the three-year sentence imposed last week.
Richmond is not the first star athlete to fail to live up to potential and likely will not be the last. However, one hopes that in prison he will finally be able to reflect on how his life could have been lived differently. One hopes that this young man can find a way to be a positive and productive member of society.
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