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NEW YORK – A clandestine video broadcast Wednesday in federal court showed convicted Christian Dawkins, a criminal, in a discussion with FBI undercover agents, sharing his belief that the Arizona coach , Sean Miller, had cheated when recruiting players.
"And the thing with (former Arizona assistant) Book (Richardson), Arizona, is like, Sean Miller has to know everything that's going on," said Dawkins during the video capture of the FBI. "I can call Sean and have a conversation like that, that's what's happening, it's like what needs to be done."
Dawkins goes on to say that Miller "would talk on the phone about" illegally recruiting players.
The video was broadcast while the government's key witness, the former disgraced financial adviser, Marty Blazer, continued to be questioned directly by the prosecution. When the video was shot for the jury, with a corresponding transcript to read in the audience room, Blazer was asked what he thought Dawkins was saying while the two were meeting – with d & # 39; 39; others – to discuss business on a yacht in New York on June 6, 2017.
"I understood that he meant that Sean Miller was talking about inappropriate things with recruiting, paying for money and that sort of thing," Blazer said under oath. "Sean Miller took care of everything for Deandre Ayton and her family."
This was Miller's long-awaited entry into this federal exploration of the subtle stomach of university basketball. The Wildcats coach is linked to the academic basketball scandal since an ESPN report in February 2018 was alleged that Miller reportedly talking about paying Ayton on an FBI phone call with Dawkins. Wednesday did not bring any transcripts of this call, but asked Dawkins to expose, through multiple recorded / monitored conversations, how the world of university basketball recruitment works so often.
From South Carolina to Georgia via New York, Dawkins was trapped for years, talking to Blazer and other people who would ultimately threaten him and be convicted of multiple federal crimes in October 2018. This second trial places it again in the federal radar.
To be clear, although Blazer remains under oath – his testimony will continue Thursday – conversations recorded by Dawkins are not subject to the same standard. They could include the truth as easily as they could boast about the bragging of a young man trying to defend himself and defend his nascent business goals.
Prior to Miller's quotes, much of Wednesday's testimony focused on Dawkins and Blazer's relationship with former university basketball assistant Lamont Evans, who was in South Carolina at the time. Evans was billed as the first assistant to receive monthly payments of up to $ 4,500 from Blazer and another financial adviser, Munish Sood, initially charged in this case. However, while Dawkins was working for the ASM sports agency, he had the vision to start his own business: the management of Living Out Your Dream. Or: LOYD, for short.
So it 's Blazer, who was working for the government, who stayed in Dawkins' radius and finally wound up with a pair of angel investors for LOYD in the spring of 2017.
But Dawkins, Sood and other coaches had no idea that these investors were undercover agents. The two FBI infiltrators were the ones who brought the money to the yacht in June 2017 to fund the Dawkins project. It's on this boat that Dawkins, Blazer and Sood have presented their plan: get around the agents, put in the pocket of assistant coaches and attach to a business relationship with NBA prospects. while they were still in high school.
Be the first to become rich later, fill up with professionals while they have reached the peaks of their careers in the NBA.
At first, Evans had been helpful, but Dawkins was using Miller – the all-powerful Arizona coach, along with his assistant Book Richardson – as the ideal target as LOYD was gearing up for an official launch. Dawkins says the following on the yacht video, paraphrasing Miller's first-person narrative during a previous phone call: "I'm taking care of everything myself – I want you to come in. will give everything back to you. "
The appeal apparently related to a scheduled visit to Ayton at the University of Arizona on June 10, 2017.
"If you want to finance that kind of guy, man, we could run university basketball," Dawkins said.
When Miller was introduced to this saga, during the 2017-18 season, he claimed that he had never had such a conversation.
"Let me be very very clear," Miller said. "I have never discussed with Christian Dawkins the payment of Deandre Ayton at the University of Arizona."
At this press conference, which followed Miller's brief suspension following the ESPN report, Miller further belied his story.
"I have never knowingly broken the rules of the NCAA as the head coach of this fantastic program," he said. "I've never paid a recruit or a prospect, nor their family or their representative to come to Arizona, I've never done it and I'll never do it."
While Blazer, sentenced to 67 years in prison for violating the terms of his agreement with the federal government as a cooperating witness, was under oath, the Dawkins quotes took place in the comfortable environment of A yacht while he was getting commercial contracts. He did not know that he was then conducting a federal investigation that was preparing him for two trials featuring an unseen college basketball course.
Blazer's testimony is spread over two days, even occasionally, indiscriminately and without consequence. He is still facing a direct examination of the prosecution. The defense expects that they will need a full day with him and it is unlikely that his time under oath will be up before the end of Friday's sitting. There is still much to discover and reveal – on the part of the prosecution and the defense.
Dawkins' lawyer, Steve Haney, confirmed Wednesday with CBS Sports that, given Miller's pointed reference to the prosecution, he would be pleading for Judge Edgardo Ramos to ask him to reconsider his decision to do so. to appear Miller in this case. Ramos ruled against her Friday, before the start of the trial, but left a possibility of reconsideration.
Wednesday was a long day for Blazer, potentially a good day for defense and at least a troubling day for Miller. The biggest winner could be a Rick Pitino. The Hall of Fame was fired in Louisville after its program, already on probation, was arrested in this case due to the illicit recruitment of former high-profile recruits, Brian Bowen.
But Wednesday, the same Dawkins video that showed him denigrating Miller's recruiting tactics had also defended Pitino.
"Rick Pitino is perhaps the only person who does not know what's going on," said Dawkins on this yacht at Battery Park in New York City on June 6, 2017. "For example, Rick has no idea what's going on in his school, but most of them, they know. "
Miller, potentially, even unexpectedly, is again the main focus for university athletics. An unforeseen gap of five minutes in Blazer's testimony may be enough to change the course of this trial. Maybe an answer to that will come on Thursday.
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