BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) \u2014 RJ Luis Jr., a former St. John\u2019s standout who recently signed with LSU after spending time with two NBA clubs, was cleared by a court Monday evening to start practicing and potentially play for the Tigers this season.<\/p>\n
Luis, who briefly was under contract with the Utah Jazz and Boston Celtics but never played in an NBA game, hugged LSU coach Will Wade after the ruling by East Baton Rouge Parish District Court judge Ronald R. Johnson.<\/p>\n
After a five-hour hearing, Johnson granted the player\u2019s request for a preliminary injunction against the NCAA, which had argued Luis was unlikely to win reinstatement after leaving college to turn pro in 2025.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is precedent. It\u2019s monumental,\u201d said Baton Rouge-based attorney Tony Clayton, who represented Luis along with Elliot Abrams of Raleigh, North Carolina. \u201cThis allows him to go practice, go play and we\u2019ll let the legal process work itself out.\u201d<\/p>\n
The timeline for that process was not immediately clear.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know, but there\u2019s a lot of discovery that Elliot and I have to obtain,\u201d Clayton said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got a lot of questions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Luis\u2019 attorneys noted that the NCAA had granted exceptions allowing numerous players from overseas professional leagues to join college basketball programs, and argued that American players must be afforded the same opportunity.<\/p>\n
They stressed that Luis not only had never played in an NBA game, but also had not played for the Celtics\u2019 G League affiliate because of an injury, and had far less of a professional basketball resume than numerous college players who\u2019d been recruited from abroad.<\/p>\n
NCAA attorney Taylor Askew argued that Luis\u2019 situation was not comparable to those who played for the developmental squads of pro organizations overseas because Luis chose to leave college for the NBA.<\/p>\n
Askew noted that the only player in a similar situation to Luis was Alabama\u2019s Charles Bediako, who won a temporary retraining order allowing him to play five games for Alabama last season before an Alabama judge ultimately sided with NCAA assertions that he was ineligible.<\/p>\n
\u201cI understand Mr. Luis is disappointed that he was not drafted and did not play in the NBA as much as he would have liked,\u201d Askew said. \u201cActions have consequences. Decisions have outcomes and they\u2019re not always the right ones or the ones that you want.\u201d<\/p>\n
As he made his ruling, Johnson said, \u201cIn the court\u2019s mind, (Luis) did not actually play professional basketball,\u201d and that whether Luis was properly advised of his options at the time he left college \u201clingers heavily before this court.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) \u2014 RJ Luis Jr., a former St. John\u2019s standout who recently signed with LSU…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":826022,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99],"class_list":["post-826021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=826021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/826022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=826021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=826021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=826021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}