Wednesday, March 05, 2008

THROWBACK : Dominick Young


About ten years ago, Dominick Young was a really tough point guard playing for the Fresno State University Bulldogs. The Chicago native was a sub-six-foot spitfire and in the Top-10 Assist leaders in the nation as a senior on Jerry Tarkanian's squad of shady ballers. Like many of his Fresno teammates, Young play through a ton of controversy, including several point shaving scandals. The FBI and several local newspaper reporters were hot on the trail of Young and his teammates, however, the mob allegedly wouldn't allow any info to come forward and the story was squashed.

Young left Fresno in 1997. He hoped to join his teammates Rafer "Skip to My Lou" Alston and Chris Herren in the NBA, but he never made the big jump. Directly after college, he went overseas and played in the NIKE Treviso Summer League. He made a stop in Argentina before he began making the rounds in American professional leagues like the ABA and the now defunct (or suspended) IBA and USBL. According to the database site, USBasket.com, Young hasn't played professional ball since he went out for the short-lived Hollywood Fame of the ABA at the start of the 2006-2007 season.


Today on the ABA homepage, Joe Newman announced that Young will be bringing the ABA back to Fresno. A Google search of the name "Dominick Young" produces a slightly more disturbing result.

The site includes links to stories about the point-shaving scandal at Fresno State. Links about Jerry Tarkanian's role in the scandal, as reported by a number of newspapers, as well as a video of him allegedly speaking the truth about the point-shaving allegations that does not appear to exists and if it did would come with a charge of $1.99 per viewing via PayPal. If that's not enough, Young uses his website to peddle everything from a "$1300" Plasma TV to a bunch of Porn for sale at $5 a pop. Probably from Dominick's private collection.