Were LiAngelo Ball, Cody Riley & Jalen Hill Headed for 10 Years in Jail?

Yesterday, prior to the UCLA press conference in which freshmen basketball players LiAngelo Ball, Cody Riley and Jalen Hill admitted to shoplifting during last week's trip to China, President Trump used Twitter to effectively request an expression of gratitude from the three Bruins:

Do you think the three UCLA Basketball Players will say thank you President Trump? They were headed for 10 years in jail!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 15, 2017

As Bruins Nation painstakingly noted in its summary of the press conference, each of the players included the president among the collection of people and entities they thanked.

Although Donald Trump's wish to be thanked publicly for his intervention on behalf of the players was unusual, the fascinating part of his tweet was the final sentence:

"They were headed for 10 years in jail!"

Trump's claim that the players' sentence had already been determined struck me as being at odds with the bits of information that we were getting throughout the ordeal from what seemed to be reliable sources.

One of those sources of information was Arash Markazi. Markazi writes for ESPN and has been involved in reporting on this incident from the beginning. Therefore, it was noteworthy that Markazi responded to the president's tweet with this:

I was told 1-2 weeks by multiple sources involved. https://t.co/xxElqeBW2e

— Arash Markazi (@ArashMarkazi) November 15, 2017

SB Nation's James Dator weighed in on the matter as well:

Despite Trump's assertion that the UCLA players were "headed for 10 years in jail," in an effort to maximize the appearance of his efforts, legal experts never believed the trio faced any serious repercussions. Chinese shoplifting law is based on the province and value of goods stolen, however even the high-end sunglasses the UCLA players were alleged to have taken could have likely fallen under the lowest threshold of punishment.

Furthermore, legal experts believed the political ramifications of punishing the players far exceeded the likelihood they would be imprisoned.

"Whatever the legal issues are, they are trumped by the politics," Stanley Rosen, a professor of political science at USC specializing in Chinese politics and society, wrote in an email. "China does not want anything to detract from the warm welcome they have planned for the American president, so they will solve this problem as quickly as possible, which would include having the young men leave the country — after a suitable apology — as quickly as possible."

While it's possible the players could have faced a 10-year sentence, no legal expert believed that was a remote possibility — despite President Trump portraying his role in speaking to Chinese officials as saving them.

At the moment, given the absence of information from Chinese authorities, it's impossible to know definitively if Ball, Riley and Hill were heading for prison terms of 10 years. Under the circumstances, I suspect we will never know for sure. However, given that the relationship between the United States and China would be seriously strained if sentences of 10 years were handed down to three American student-athletes for shoplifting, and given that the president's claim appears to be self-serving, it seems highly unlikely that Ball, Riley and Hill were "headed for 10 years in jail."

In any case, these three Bruins are very fortunate to have been given a relatively soft landing in spite of incredibly stupid and reckless behavior. These student-athletes shouldn't be thinking about basketball now. As Coach Wooden said, "What you are as a person is far more important than what you are as a basketball player." LiAngelo Ball, Cody Riley and Jalen Hill need to focus on the important things, and that starts with being good students and good citizens.

Steve Alford and Dan Guerrero mentioned at yesterday's press conference that these three student-athletes must "regain the trust of this athletic department and this university." That's a process that isn't measured in games or weeks. If by magical coincidence the process of restoring trust is complete by the start of conference play, then we will know that the insistence on restoring trust as a prerequisite to rejoining the team was a sham.

Let's hope that Steve Alford and Dan Guerrero have the fortitude to put the best interests of these three student-athletes ahead of the short term interests of Alford's basketball program. I don't want to see the reputation of UCLA basketball further tarnished.

Go BRUINS!