Detroit's Antoine Davis eyes records after NIL offers of 'like a million'

DETROIT — Mike Davis Sr. did the math. If Antoine Davis, the son of the Detroit men’s basketball coach and the team’s star guard, averages 26 points per game as a fifth-year senior in the upcoming season, then he’ll surpass LSU’s “Pistol Pete” Maravich as the NCAA’s all-time leading scorer in Division I men’s basketball.

26 points multiplied by 36 games equals 936 points.

Davis, with 2,734 points in his career, is 933 shy of Maravich’s 3,667 career point total. He currently ranks 22nd in career scoring.

Detroit has 31 regular-season games on its 2022-23 schedule.

Eight years ago, Mike Davis sat in the media room inside Indiana’s Assembly Hall, where Davis returned with his Texas Southern team to the school he once led to a national runner-up finish in 2002. Davis said he hoped Antoine, then a freshman in high school, might someday be recruited by one of the Big Ten’s biggest basketball brands.

Instead, Detroit and the Horizon League might produce the sport’s all-time leading scorer.

“It’d mean I’d be in the record books for forever,” Antoine Davis said. “That’s something that lasts a long time, something I could tell my kids about when I get older and stuff. So, you know, it’s a big deal. It’s exciting.

“But, yeah, I mean it’s not anything I’m really mainly focused on. I’m more worried about winning and doing stuff for the team and whatever I need to do, so if it follows up and leads to that, then that’s what it’s going to be.”

As a head coach, Mike Davis has made nine NCAA tournament appearances during his coaching tenures at Indiana, UAB and Texas Southern. Antoine Davis was along for the ride each time, traveling and warming up with the team, and sitting on the bench or right behind it.

The Davis family is still searching for its first NCAA tournament appearance at Detroit. Mike Davis said that is the Titans’ goal for the 2023 season, with a Final Four appearance as the ultimate prize.

“What a beautiful story that would be,” Mike Davis said.

However, there was no guarantee all three of the Davises — Mike Davis Jr. is also on staff as an assistant coach — would be at Detroit in the 2022-23 season.

Transfer Portal offers for Antoine Davis

Antoine Davis entered the Transfer Portal in the spring. He said after averaging 23.9 points per game last season, the three options he ultimately decided between was a return to Detroit or transferring to BYU or Kansas State.

Davis said at one point he was “really leaning towards” one of the latter two.

“He never really visited anyone in high school. He just committed to Houston like immediately,” Mike Davis said, snapping his fingers for effect. “So he never got the chance to go on official visits. So when he did his official visits, he was excited.”

“I think,” his father joked, “he wanted to commit to everybody the first one he went to.”

It was a new recruiting experience for Antoine Davis, who ranked third nationally in scoring as a college freshman, junior and senior, and fourth as a sophomore. In October 2020, the NCAA Division I Council extended the eligibility by one season for athletes who competed in winter sports in the 2020-21 academic year.

Not only has Davis’ profile changed significantly since high school, but so has the nature of college recruiting with the addition of the Transfer Portal, one-time transfer exception and permissibility of NIL deals.

“There was a lot of money thrown out, you know, these NILs [deals] are, like, amazing, what some schools are doing,” Mike Davis said.

How much money could be available to a prized player on the other side of the Transfer Portal?

“There was one place that he could’ve got like a million dollars to go,” Mike Davis said. “You know, one place got $700,000. One place, $4[00,000], $500,000, so the money was great. That money was right there. Really, really crazy.”

Just as Mike Davis did the math on the pace of his son’s scoring in pursuit of Maravich, others did the math regarding Antoine Davis’ offseason options.

“Like, ‘Well, maybe you should just go there and invest your money, save your money,’ but, you know, he wanted to be here,” Mike Davis said. “And like I said, he’s got a chance to something special that’s really priceless from a basketball career standpoint and he’s most comfortable here.”

Antoine Davis has NIL deals for basketballs, chocolate

If you sit on one of the brown, leather couches in Mike Davis’ office, you’ll see the product — literally — of Antoine Davis’ NIL deals.

There’s a box with deflated indoor/outdoor glow-in-the-dark basketballs, wrapped in plastic, that feature Davis’ likeness and jersey number, No. 0, that a Chinese manufacturer produced.

Make sure to take a picture of them with the flash on, Mike Davis said.

“They have one [deal] with Stephon Marbury,” Antoine Davis said. “His was just like a regular [ball] but it shines and the material is a little slippery so we wanted to make something where I could play with it and it would glow and it would also be able to be used indoor, outdoor. So that ball is regulation. It’s like a 29.5 [inch] so you can play open gym with it, do whatever you please to do with this.”

One of Marbury’s glow-in-the-dark basketballs sits on the top shelf above Mike Davis’ desk. Stadium’s Jeff Goodman reported Antoine Davis’ NIL deal “could be worth in excess of six figures.”

Davis also has a line of glow-in-the-dark hoodies that were produced in China.

When asked about his experience of hearing the offseason rumors regarding NIL compensation for men’s basketball players who transferred, Davis said they provided reference points for his potential NIL market value, especially at a time when he considered transferring.

“At the time, I was thinking, ‘Well, if they’re making money from this, me being top-five in the country [in scoring] every year in college basketball, I think I deserve some type of money like that,'” Davis said. “And that’s what I thought throughout that Transfer Portal process a little bit, too.

“That was like, if some certain people average, like, not even 10 points a game, 15 points a game, are getting $500[,000] to $600[,000], I feel like I can touch something along those lines, especially throughout what I’ve done in college basketball.”

A Cleveland-based company created chocolates that also feature Davis’ likeness and jersey number, plus his nickname, “TOINE.” The middle of the “O” is a basketball.

Davis also has an NIL deal with a dribbling vest company whose vests provides data, such as how strong a player is dribbling. Like other high-profile athletes, he hopes to use part of his NIL earnings to give back to his teammates.

“This is like my first time with NIL stuff so I never had a deal,” Davis said, “so I know most of them don’t have them, either.”

Antoine Davis’ NIL deals involve ‘no upfront money’

As the Davises explain the nature of his NIL deals, the shooting guard truly has to earn his compensation.

“All of Antoine’s NIL deals is no upfront money,” Mike Davis said. “It’s sell, sell, sell. He has a dribbling vest, he has chocolate and he has glow ball, and so all three of those, you have to get out and hustle and sell and sell merchandise.

“I want him to be in that situation where he has to sell for himself because that could lead on to something special later on in life if you know how to market yourself and get out there and sell.”

Antoine Davis gets a percentage of his sales. Mike Davis estimates his son has sold roughly 200 glow-in-the-dark basketballs so far. They hope the start of the basketball season will spur more sales, too. Antoine Davis cites his Instagram account, where he has nearly 18,000 followers, as a good source to promote his products.

“I would be down to do meet and greets and stuff, sign autographs, sit out there all day to do whatever I have to do to sell the ball or the chocolate,” Davis said.

Davis is a communications major whose list of potential post-basketball career interests includes coaching or player development, fashion, modeling and photography. He cited the sales aspect of his NIL deals as the biggest life skill that he has learned so far.

“Just being able to push it out more and being able to speak up a little more about it, because you know, you go to talk in order to make your sales,” Davis said. “So just being a little bit out of my comfort zone.”

‘Why was it going to be a million at this place[?]’

Mike Davis Jr. walked into his father’s office as the conversation turned to the NIL deals that Mike Davis Sr. said Antoine could’ve received if he had transferred. As Mike Davis Jr. tells it, in addition to Antoine’s talent, his career accolades and his NIL market value are linked.

Davis has scored in double figures in all 111 games of his college career, four behind La Salle‘s Lionel Simmons and Campbell‘s Chris Clemons, who share the Division I record. Davis has scored 10 points in a game just twice and 40-plus four times.

He has made 429 3-pointers in his career — 80 behind the all-time record set by Wofford‘s Fletcher McGee.

“You gotta give him some context,” Mike Davis Jr. said. “Why was it going to be a million at this place and $700,000 one place? What is the thing that they can cash out on? Like they said, he’s going to be the all-time consecutive double-digit scorer. People want to have their name tied to something like that. You know, the all-time 3-point shooter. People want to have their name tied to that.”

Antoine Davis’ goals for 2023

How did Antoine Davis weigh the allure of NIL deals worth up to roughly $1 million, according to his father, compared to the draw of finishing his career at Detroit while playing for a coaching staff that includes both his father and brother?

“Money wasn’t the most important thing for me when it came to transferring,” Davis said. “It came down to putting myself out there a little more, playing on a Power 5 stage. It wasn’t even thinking about the money. Money came along with it but I knew I could make money playing basketball regardless, even if it would’ve been next year. Like I would’ve been OK with just whatever amount they would’ve gave me. Would it have been $100,000, whatever? I would’ve been OK with it. So it wasn’t really even about that. Just wanted to know that when I leave here and being somewhere else and being in the right situation.

“Ultimately, I just wanted to come back here and finish everything out and end it out on a good note.”

Davis said making the NCAA tournament at Detroit would be the perfect ending to his college career.

His goals for 2023?

“Definitely win the conference,” he said. “Win the conference tournament. Playing in the NCAA tournament, then winning some games. We have enough talent on our team to be a Sweet 16-caliber team. I feel like we can do that so that’s a goal I think everybody has in mind.”