Remembering Lasege

This past September, the Courier-Journal's Eric Crawford dug up his Dec 15, 2000 story on Muhammad Lasege and re-posted it to his blog with some prefacing comments. If you don't remember the details involved with the Nigerian native's attempts to play college basketball at Louisville, it makes for an interesting read. It's what he's accomplished off the court over the past 10 years, however, that makes Lasege's journey so remarkable:

Crawford: I don't like equating the situation faced a decade ago by University of Louisville player Muhammad Lasege to the one faced now by University of Kentucky freshman Enes Kanter for one main reason. Lasege was a serious student. His intent was to play college basketball and earn a degree. He proved this by his actions. Even when basketball was taken from him, he finished his degree. He then played pro basketball overseas to save up money for graduate school, which he then used to earn an MBA from the prestigious Wharton School of Business at Penn. Earlier this year, Lasege took an executive position with Exxon.