Former Penn State Guard Kanye Clary Sues Program Over NIL, Alleged Unequal Treatment
As news of Kanye Clary’s lawsuit versus essentially every monetary element of the Penn State Basketball program broke Wednesday, I felt a sense of almost inevitability.
Ever since he was dismissed by head coach Mike Rhoades a little over a year ago, it seemed destined to finish this way.
Let’s go back in time 14 months and remember the oddities around what Penn State announced.
The Nittany Lions were dismissing their leading scorer on the team, Kanye Clary, without any more details than conduct detrimental towards the team. While it was clear then that Kanye was unhappy about the way he was treated compared to the other star guard (Ace Baldwin), NIL or lack thereof was assumed to play a large part. And now we know that is the case.
In his lawsuit filed yesterday versus Rhoades, Happy Valley United, and other money-issuing entities, Clary alleged that he was treated differently than other players, specifically Baldwin, for similar infractions. These included handling an injury recovery, missing classes, and grades. Further, and at least financially more importantly, Clary alleged that Rhoades tried to force him to sign a NIL deal less than he felt he deserved.
If this is sounding somewhat familiar, well, it should.
About five years ago, a different disgruntled and already transferred Nittany Lion hooper, Rasir Bolton, came out with allegations against then-head coach Pat Chambers.
While NIL didn’t exist at that time, concerns about fairness and playing time, along with his allegations that Chambers used language he considered to be discriminatory, led to Chambers’s dismissal, despite the fact Bolton had already been gone for a year.
This isn’t to say the same will happen to Rhoades I think this administration has gotten smarter in the last half decade and are less prone to an immediate overreaction. For starters, the timing of this release is far from coincidental, as Clary’s season at Mississippi State is coming to a close.
While it’s likely the Bulldogs will continue onto March Madness, Clary has had minimal impact on their season. He’s played just 7 games, missing a ton of time due to injury, and even when finding the court didn’t have much impact on the game (6.3 points, 2.6 assists in 18 minutes).
Is the idea that Rhoades gave his star guard who came with him from VCU preferential treatment (Baldwin) over Clary? Quite likely, I’d say. Fair or unfair, that makes sense.
Did Clary think he deserved more NIL than he was getting? Sure, but also who doesn’t think that? In this day and age of player empowerment, which we can all agree is a good thing, are lawsuits when the financials don’t go their way really the correct way to go?
Either way, that’s the world we live in and we’ll await more news of Clary v Rhoades in court.
NittanyCentral is his second reporting job following the Men's Basketball program. He co-founded and co-hosts the Shots Gotta Fall - The Penn State Basketball Podcast (the premiere, the best, the only) with Steve Travis.
Smith's most proud moment covering the team was seeing the national No. 9 ranking during Pat Chambers' last year. His most embarrassing moment was spending almost a thousand dollars to travel 2,000 miles in 46 hours to watch the Nittany Lions lose to Temple in the 2011 NCAA Tournament (screw you Juan Fernandez).