“Alford, of course, is a control freak and he is mad as hell and he wants a meeting with me to know what I am doing with Tony,” Brown says.
“We were having a screaming match, him literally telling me he is not going anywhere, saying ‘What if he doesn’t make it?’ First of all, I have a positive attitude. I am a woman of God. I believe in prayer. I have had (Snell’s) back since day one.… I don’t care if he goes first or second round, or if he goes overseas, we are going to take that chance.”
Brown inferred selfish motives in Alford’s efforts . Alford was the brand-name player, the white All-American with the charmed high school and college careers. He played his senior year at Indiana and ended up getting drafted in the second round.
“I called him a motherfucker at the time,” says Brown.
“My attitude was: I know it’s a gamble, a big gamble, and sometimes you might not make it,” says Brown. “But we were adamant that we were fine with going in the second round or [playing] overseas.”
Snell tried to defuse the tension in the room by agreeing to hold off a week on his decision, so he could listen to five hand-selected NBA contacts of Alford’s appraise his draft value. Ostensibly, this was going to be selective intelligence, but even a couple of Alford’s contacts thought Snell had a shot to be selected in the early second round.
Not long thereafter, Alford took a big pay raise to jump to UCLA. Was Alford interested in Snell’s education and long-term prospects or was he only thinking of himself and his team?
“I have no idea,” says Snell. “That is the question that is going to be unanswered, but he made his move and I wish him the best.” (Through a UCLA spokesman, Alford declined to comment for this story.)
