But not from Duke.
Former Duke star Carlos Boozer said that he received money and vehicle offers from multiple schools as a recruit, but turned them down to go to Duke.
Talking on
Sports Illustrated’s HOLDAT Nation podcast, Boozer said that the offers “turned him off,” while Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski’s promise of competition made him excited to attend school in Durham.
"I’m going to be honest, I was a kid that turned it down. I was raised by my mom and dad—shout out Renee and Carlos Sr.—when I was getting recruited, and you probably went through this too Nate. I was one of the top players in my class and had a lot of schools coming after me. Obviously I’m not going to out anybody on this show, but I had a lot of schools coming out for me. I had schools telling me that if you come to my school you’ll start right away, we’ll give you a Jeep Cherokee, which at that time was one of the hottest whips out, we’ll give you $1,000 a month, you don’t have to go to class, you just gotta come play ball for us.
"And that turned me off because I wasn’t used to getting handouts. I was used to working for everything I ever got. That’s how my mom and dad worked; my mom and dad had two jobs each. They were busting their chops making sure they could feed all five mouths they had, they had five kids so they were trying to make sure that we could all eat. And so I’m used to seeing my parents as an example—don’t take no handouts, you gotta work for everything you get. So I told these universities no and I ended up going to Duke. They didn’t offer me nothing. Coach K sat in my living room in Alaska and was like, ‘You’re the top player in your class, but I can’t even promise you you’re going to start at this school. You’re going to have to earn it. We’ve got seven All-Americans coming in, you’re one of them if you decide to come here.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, you’re challenging me. I like that. I need a challenge.'
"So for me, that turned me on. That made me excited to have to go work for what I wanted, where I had other schools—again, they’ll remain nameless—telling me you don’t have to worry about class, you can be a dumb jock, we’ll pay you to come to our school $1,000 a month, which to me is a lot of bread. I wasn’t used to getting no money a month. So that was a big deal for me. But I didn’t want to owe nobody nothing, I wanted to be able to work for everything I got and be able to look back and be like, ‘I did it the right way and I don’t owe nobody nothing but my mom and my dad and the people that supported me—my sisters, my brothers’. I’ve been blessed with great siblings to be my support system. I didn’t want to owe nobody nothing so I turned that stuff down, went to Duke and worked my butt off and became a starter as a freshman. That was challenge enough for me."
