The Scheme — Sports

By Connor Buestad | Connor@Section925.com

Directed by Pat Kondelis, HBO’s new documentary titled “The Scheme” tells (former) basketball agent Christian Dawkins’ side of the 2017 college basketball corruption scandal investigated by the FBI. The two-hour doc is very well-made, engaging and entertaining, giving the viewer a unique perspective of how the bribery business of college basketball gets done. Certainly, it seems impossible for Dawkins to be as innocent of all wrongdoing as he is portrayed in the film, but that doesn’t mean Dawkins isn’t a great narrator for even a better story.

Dawkins’ business model of how to profit off high school and college basketball players is ultimately simple. First, do the research of what players have a legitimate shot of being a first-round pick in the NBA Draft, pay said players to help them out financially and win over their loyalty, then represent those players as their agent when it comes time for them to be paid millions by the NBA.

Of course, this agency business isn’t exactly the most honest line of work, but Dawkins doesn’t seem to mind. He hates everything the NCAA stands for and has no problem breaking all their rules to profit from holes in their system.

The film highlights how the FBI used gobs of taxpayer money to expose the fraud in College Basketball, but ultimately did a sloppy job of achieving their goal, resorting to the arrests of low hanging fruit and watching the big fish swim away scot free. In the end, the investigation does a solid job of exposing College Basketball for what it currently is (a cutthroat, big money business) and a poor job fixing the problem in any tangible way for the future.

Perhaps the most fascinating section of the film comes toward the end when two big time college coaches, LSU’s Will Wade and Arizona’s Sean Miller, are caught speaking with Dawkins on FBI wiretapped phone calls. Both Wade and Miller have vehemently denied any association with Dawkins during “how-dare-you-question-me” type press conferences on their campuses. Yet, here they were on the phone with Dawkins, clearly talking about how much it costs to get players to come play for their schools.

“Do you think you’ll get Naz Reid?” Dawkins asks Miller over a wiretapped phone. Naz Reid being a 5-start recruit in his senior season at a New Jersey high school. “No, he’s going to LSU,” explains Miller. “He’s not even visiting us, that’s all bullshit. All that fucking hype shit on the phone, it’s stupid. He just probably said ‘you know what, fuck you I don’t want 75(k) I want 120(k), I may go to Arizona.’ That’s all that was,” says Miller.

“We could compensate him better than the rookie minimum,” Wade tells Dawkins over the phone discussing a different player, laughing. “We’d give him more than the D-League.” Wade moves to another player with the following quote, “What do you think? ‘Cause I went to him with a fucking strong ass offer about a month ago. Fucking strong. I’ve made deals for as good a players as him that were fucking a lot simpler than this.”

Any credibility that you may have held onto for LSU or Arizona basketball flies straight out the window when you hear these conversations straight from the mouths of the coaches themselves. Laughably, the head coaches discussing these payments to players still happily hold their multi-million dollar jobs, while the assistant coaches below them face criminal charges.

In the end, it’s hard to trust anyone’s side of the story in this riveting documentary, whether you’re talking about the coaches, the agents, the lawyers or even the filmmaker. The more you learn about any side, the more you realize you still have yet to learn. Just about the only thing you can fully trust in the “The Scheme” is the wiretapped conversations. And thank god they’re there, because with a story that has this many twists and turns, it’s nice to have something to hold onto that you know is real.