Ryan James said in a podcast awhile back that he's also not sure why Pitino offered him. They'd been out of contact for awhile apparently and there was a widespread rumor that he was going to commit to Wisconsin, and Pitino was aware of it but decided to give a nominal scholarship offer for some reason anyway. I'm pretty sure he offered a week or less before he publicly committed to Wisconsin.
I think he says it somewhere in here: https://soundcloud.com/the-one-and-done-show/gophers-miss-on-mns-2017s
