In countless interviews, ex-NBA point guard and Detroit mayoral candidate Dave Bing claimed to have graduated from Syracuse University in 1966 and received a master's in business administration from what was then called the General Motors Institute in Flint, Mich.

In reality, the Detroit Free Press found, Bing never earned an MBA from what is now called Kettering University.

"I felt I had an MBA for the work I had done in the industry I was in," he told The Associated Press. (In an interview with WWJ Newsradio 950 in Detroit, Bing said the Free Press was "trying to make something out of nothing." But Bing then listened to an NBA promotional video in which he said: "I got an MBA from the General Motors Institute," After listening to it, he said that the claim was "not correct.")

The Free Press also found that the 6-foot-3 former Detroit Pistons star was one course shy from graduation at Syracuse after receiving an "incomplete" in a course in 1966 because he had not turned in a paper (Bing claimed he turned in the paper and never heard anything about it). Bing had to write another paper to fulfill the requirement and received his diploma in 1995, almost 30 years after he had left school.

He repeated the same refrain when asked about the Syracuse degree.

"I never heard another thing on graduation or a degree until '95," Bing said. "I wasn't overly concerned about my degree. I felt I had done all I was supposed to do."

Bing, the 65-year-old founder and chairman of the Bing Group, a steel manufacturing operation and auto supplier in Detroit, is trying to fill the seat of former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who was forced to resign and spent four months in jail after admitting he lied under oath about an affair with his ex-chief of staff.