By ADAM ZAGORIA
Responding to the Yahoo! story linking him to payments from former NBA agent Andy Miller, former Seton Hall assistant Dwayne “Tiny” Morton denied any wrongdoing or taking any money.
A story posted on ZAGSBLOG on Friday indicated Morton was one of three Adidas AAU directors or trainers on Miller’s payroll. The Yahoo documents show Morton received $9,500 from Miller as of Dec. 31, 2015.
“The Yahoo reports are false about me receiving payments from Andy Miller,” Morton, currently the director of the Juice All-Stars Adidas-sponsored AAU program and the head coach at Lincoln High School, said by text message.
“Furthermore, my relationship with Andy Miller began and ended with Sebastian Telfair. As you are probably aware, [Lance] Stephenson never entertained Andy Miller and I expressed to [Isaiah] Whitehead’s parent that [Jeff Schwartz] would be a better option. I believe there is a misconception regarding me receiving any sort of monetary gains from NBA players or anyone else. As I have stated many times before, I never received a dime from anyone outside of my day job.”
Morton is a math teacher as well as a basketball coach. During his tenure at Lincoln, he coached Stephon Marbury, Telfair, Stephenson and Whitehead, the Brooklyn Nets guard who initially signed with Miller’s ASM Sports but is now with Roc Nation.
Grassroots directors are not permitted to have an “association” with NBA agents, but Morton said he briefly “stepped down” as the Juice All-Stars director “in February 2014.” He officially joined Kevin Willard’s staff at Seton Hall in July 2014 for the 2014-15 season, Whitehead’s freshman season. He left Seton Hall and returned to Lincoln after one season.
Morton is currently the Juice director, though.
“Yes, I’m the director today,” he said.
As for the Yahoo report’s evidence that Whitehead received $37,657 from ASM during his freshman season at Seton Hall, Morton had no comment. He also did not respond to a question asking whether Seton Hall’s staff knew anything about the payments.
Willard said following his team’s win over St. John’s on Saturday at Madison Square Garden that Seton Hall was working with an outside law firm, Jackson Lewis, to investigate the situation.
“The only thing I’ll say is that we’ve already hired an outside law firm to come in and do an investigation,” Willard said. “As a staff and as the head coach, I am looking forward to having them come in. We’re going to be 100 percent open, we’re going to be 100 percent honest, and I have a lot of confidence in my staff and ourselves of what we’ve done in that past. I’m glad the school has moved quickly on this so we can move on.”
Photo: NY Post