Dwane Casey was a fast-rising assistant coach with the University of Kentucky when his world came to a screeching halt.
He was 30 years old in the summer of 1988 when an envelope containing a videotape of UK recruit Chris Mills needed to be returned to the recruit’s father in California.
It was sent by courier, at Casey’s request, but it was opened accidentally in transit and $1,000 was discovered in the package.
It was a massive scandal. Casey’s boss, Eddie Sutton, eventually resigned and Kentucky was put on probation for three years.
Casey, a UK alum, was initially barred from NCAA coaching for five years. He thought his career was over.
It wasn’t, as we know. He had to disappear to Japan to keep coaching for a few years; he eventually become one of the NBA’s leading assistant coaches, working for George Karl in Seattle and winning an NBA title in Dallas alongside Rick Carlisle.
And this season is his sixth as the head coach of the Toronto Raptors, where he holds every significant coaching record the franchise has.
Eventually Casey was cleared of any wrongdoing in the Mills case. It was proven he was on the road recruiting when the envelope was sent and he had nothing to with it other than ordering the videotape be returned; it was clear he was a fall guy. He sued the courier company for $5.9-million and reportedly won a seven-figure settlement.
But no one ever disputed that there was $1,000 in that envelope and that it was addressed to a prized recruit’s father.
All of which is relevant considering the news that broke Tuesday that an FBI investigation had nabbed four NCAA Division I assistant coaches, a former agent, a money manager and an executive with Adidas. It was a scheme where coaches used money provided by Adidas to bribe players to come to their schools and in turn used their influence with players and their families to direct them to certain agents and financial managers and ultimately sign with Adidas.
It’s a scandal that promises to be far-reaching in scope and repercussions.
Already Rick Pitino has been “effectively fired” from the University of Louisville where it’s alleged his assistant coach arranged for a $100,000 payment to a player’s family so he would play for Pitino. Reports Wednesday were that employees with sportswear giant Nike who run the Elite Youth Basketball League (EYBL) – a summer loop where several top Canadian NBA prospects have burnished their reputations – have been subpoenaed.
But while the FBI using undercover agents, cooperating witnesses and phone-tapping are new developments, the allegations themselves?
Old as the hills.
Casey has commented on his own history in the past but didn’t want to talk about it after he presided over the second day of Raptors training camp at the University of Victoria, although his raised eyebrows and knowing look suggested he was less than shocked at the news.
Similarly, Kyle Lowry – one of four Raptors represented by agent Andy Miller, whose offices were raided by the FBI and whose computer was seized – wasn’t interested in discussing it.
But DeMar DeRozan, who went to USC for one year – the year before the program was put on probation for three years after it turned out former USC star O.J. Mayo was found to have taken $30,000 from an agent – didn’t seem shocked.
“The world has heard that speculation since college basketball existed. For them to put them out like something new that’s just now going on? That’d be a lie,” he said. “It’s crazy to see it unfold but it sucks for a lot of the players who are looking for an opportunity to make it in life.”
As one long-time agent – who didn’t want to be named – put it to me:
“It’s insane, but it’s real. It is what it is. It’s life. It’s greed. Where there’s money, there’s opportunity and demand. This is how it goes and it’s been going on for years.”
Black markets exist either because there is demand for products or services that are illegal or the transaction between parties for goods and services that are otherwise legal are conducted in a prohibited manner. In either case, there is a market demand that can’t be met legitimately.
That the FBI has uncovered corruption, fraud, money laundering and bribery at the highest levels of NCAA basketball only makes sense.
The basketball industry is swimming in money. The basketball shoe business is worth about $3 billion annually, based on industry reports. The NCAA itself is in the midst of a nearly $20-billion television deal for the rights to broadcast March Madness. Then there are the TV deals the individual conferences strike. The NBA, which benefits from the marketing push top incoming stars get during their one – or sometimes two – seasons of college basketball was an $8-billion business last season and has nearly doubled its revenues in five years. About half that money goes to player salaries and a percentage of that goes to agents.
But with all the money flying around the only people who can’t officially access it are the ones that generate most of it in the first place – elite high-school-age players who are bound for the NBA but need to spend at least one year in college before they are eligible for the NBA Draft.
The NCAA has a complex set of rules to ensure its athletes remain amateur – which hardly matters if you’re running cross-country at Dartmouth – but seems absurd when there are billions being made on the talents of the best teenage basketball players on the planet, who work largely for free.
In that light, it’s curious why the FBI chose to get involved. You could make the case that an assistant coach using his trust to steer a given player to a given agent is unseemly, but given the assistant may have earned that trust by funnelling thousands of dollars to the players’ family, it’s hard to imagine there are too many people on either side of the transaction who are completely innocent.
“Who is the victim here?” said one agent I spoke with. “People will try to make it out that it’s the kids or the families, but that’s BS. There is so much money in the industry and families see coaches getting paid, schools making money, the shoe companies making money and the agents making money. The families feel exploited so [some] of them want to get their share, too. There are a lot of stakeholders in this thing.”
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