Jim Boeheim doubles down on saying Miami bought Final Four team with NIL

Not long after essentially accusing Miami of using NIL to buy its Final Four basketball team, former Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim has doubled down on the accusation, noting only that he used a poor choice of words.

The Hurricanes did well with a number of newcomers, including Kansas State transfer Nijel Pack.

“I tell the truth. And you’re going to get in trouble telling the truth,” Boeheim said recently on an episode of the Field of 68 podcast. “I said Miami bought their team, I should have just said they did great NIL work. So a phrase was wrong, but they did. NIL got them here. Fact. And NIL helped other teams. Period. And I should have just left it at that.”

Pack averaged 13.6 points per game for Miami as it went all the way to the Final Four in this year’s NCAA Tournament.

Coach Jim Larranaga is certainly responsible for a lot of that after doing yet another phenomenal coaching job, but it’s hard to argue that Miami’s talent didn’t also make a big difference.

The Hurricanes have been in the NIL spotlight for quite some time thanks to the presence of billionaire booster John Ruiz, who has been credited with helping Miami land several high-profile athletes while signing them to lucrative NIL deals.

Boeheim thinks the main problem was not what he said but how he said it.

“So sometimes you say one word you shouldn’t,” Boeheim said. “Ten coaches called me and said, ‘Well, you told the truth.’

“You’re always going to — I talk a lot and I say a lot and you’re always going to say something that, at the end of the day when you look back at it was the truth. I told one reporter once, you really can’t always tell the truth. And she didn’t understand, she said, ‘No, you should.’ Well should I tell you that this guy doesn’t work hard, he doesn’t go to class and so that’s why he’s not playing. And that’s not good, you can’t do that, even though it’s the truth. Anyway.”

Whether Miami’s Final Four was largely a product of lucrative NIL deals or not, Boeheim remains firmly behind his early comments.

Boeheim retired this year after 47 years coaching Syracuse.

He had plenty of success during his career and never had any problem being outspoken while doing it. Boeheim won the NCAA title with Syracuse in 2003.

The legendary Syracuse coach reached five Final Fours and won 10 Big East regular season championships, as well as five Big East Tournament titles.

Boeheim was named the Associated Press and Naismith College Coach of the Year in 2010. He was named the Big East Coach of the Year four times, in 1984, 1991, 2000 and 2010.

He was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2005 and the College Basketball Hall of Fame in 2006.