Kemba Walker AP Tim Layden's cover story in this week's Sports Illustrated, about UConn's National Championship last Monday revealed this interesting nugget about the star of the tournament, junior guard Kemba Walker.

(Pointed out by @SIPabloTorre in case you missed it:)

"And in his travel pack is a copy of New York Times columnist William C. Rhoden's Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete, a book that Crump encouraged Walker to read as part of an independent study class on racism in sports. Before the Final Four, Crump suggested that Rhoden's book would be the first that Walker had ever made it through cover-to-cover. After the win over Kentucky, Walker confirmed this. "That's true," he said. "You can write that. It is the first book I've ever read."

The anecdote was told as part of a story about Walker's commitment to graduate early from Connecticut (which he is on schedule to do.) It's a remarkable achievement and one we don't mean to disparage, but ....

How does anyone graduate from a Division I university — in three years, no less! — without ever finishing a single book in his life?

We haven't read Rhoden's book, ourselves, but we bet there's a chapter about that.