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Report ties players at top college basketball programs to illicit payments

Documents uncovered in a federal investigation indicate that college basketball players for several of the country’s most prominent programs — including Duke, North Carolina, Kentucky and Michigan State — received financial and other benefits that could violate NCAA rules, according to Yahoo Sports.

Christian Dawkins, a former employee of the agency, ASM Sports, is one of the defendants in the federal prosecutors’ case. A complaint released in September accused him of helping to facilitate payments from Adidas to a high school prospect to get the prospect to go to Louisville and later sign with Adidas.

The prospect involved with the Louisville case, Brian Bowen, is named in the documents, which include a balance sheet from the end of 2015 listing loans to dozens of players, many of whom were in college.

Other players identified in the documents include former college players like North Carolina State’s Dennis Smith Jr., Maryland’s Diamond Stone, Virginia’s Malcolm Brogdon and Washington’s Markelle Fultz, last year’s No. 1 overall NBA draft pick, according to Yahoo Sports. Current players mentioned in the documents include Michigan State sophomore Miles Bridges and Duke freshman Wendell Carter Jr.

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The documents do not appear to indicate that the colleges were involved with or knew of the payments.

Several schools said they were looking into the report and pledged full cooperation. Duke’s athletic director, Kevin White, said that Carter had no eligibility issues related to the report.

Andy Miller, ASM Sports’ former president, was not one of the defendants, but he gave up his accreditation as an NBA agent in December. The office of ASM Sports was raided in September, shortly after the complaints were released, and Miller’s computer was seized.

Miller was a longtime agent whose past clients included stars like Kevin Garnett and Chauncey Billups. More recent clients included the Toronto Raptors’ Kyle Lowry (whose name appears in the documents) and the New York Knicks’ Kristaps Porzingis.

In the schemes outlined by federal officials, top high school basketball players were virtually for sale to the highest bidder, namely, teams backed by shoe companies. The process required fake purchase orders, coaches’ assents — and, crucially, middlemen like youth-league coaches, money managers and agents. Dawkins, who was Miller’s employee, was a particularly eager facilitator, according to federal investigators.

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Dawkins’s lawyer was not immediately available to comment Friday. Dawkins argued in a court filing that the case against him wrongly depicted what might be NCAA violations as lawbreaking, saying that an indictment “seeks to criminalize purported violations of the rules of a private, voluntary association.”

Earlier this week, three of the case’s 10 defendants, including Dawkins, lost on a motion to dismiss the case; they had contended that what they were accused of doing did not constitute a federal crime. Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal reported that an undercover agent who had worked the investigation had been accused of misappropriating funds, threatening his ability to serve as a witness.

It is not clear how teams will respond to Friday’s report. Under NCAA rules, they are supposed to hold out players whom they suspect of being ineligible. Michigan State may feel compelled not to play Bridges, the Spartans’ best player, when it enters next week’s Big Ten tournament as a national title contender.

Michigan State coach Tom Izzo said in a statement that he had no reason to believe anyone in the program had committed violations.

The bracket for the NCAA tournament will be released in a little more than two weeks, with the games themselves commencing a few days later. It is unclear what impact Friday’s news will have on that event, perhaps the most prominent on the college sports calendar and the one that is indispensable to the NCAA's finances.

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“These allegations, if true, point to systematic failures that must be fixed and fixed now if we want college sports in America,” Mark Emmert, president of the NCAA, said in a statement released Friday.

In September, federal prosecutors in the U.S. Southern District of New York revealed three complaints painting a portrait of widespread corruption in the nebulous marketplace of college basketball recruiting.

Four assistant coaches at high-major programs were said to have taken bribes to persuade players to sign with an agent or money manager upon reaching the NBA.

In another complaint, unnamed coaches, an Adidas executive and others were accused of attempting to funnel money to recruits in exchange for their commitments to teams sponsored by Adidas and for pledges to sign with the apparel company later on.

Prosecutors said the defendants had violated federal law. But it is also likely that, if the allegations are true, their programs would have violated NCAA rules, which bar teams from paying players beyond a scholarship and related costs; from offering recruits inducements beyond ones strictly delineated in the NCAA rule book; and from playing athletes who were ineligible because, for example, they accepted illicit money.

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The scandal cost several coaches their jobs and could affect the eligibility of current players. It also felled Rick Pitino, the Hall of Fame coach at Louisville, Kentucky, who according to someone familiar with the complaint was said to have spoken to the Adidas executive about securing the commitment of a top prospect. Pitino has vigorously denied any involvement or knowledge of the scheme.

Last year, in response to the federal probe, Emmert convened an NCAA commission to examine men’s basketball. It is chaired by the former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

MARC TRACY © 2018 The New York Times

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