Bad Sport (2021) s01e01 Episode Script
Hoop Schemes
- [crowd cheering]
- [whistle blowing]
[man] The game of basketball
just made me really dream big.
I was just a young kid in the ghetto,
playing a game that I loved.
I had no idea what it could do.
But then I realized I could go places
I never thought I would go before.
You just gotta go for it.
[commentator] Hedake, end to end.
[announcer] Hedake Smith!
- [commentator] Oh, my. Oh, my.
- [comm 2] Hedake.
[comm 3] There's your leader right there,
Stevin "Hedake" Smith.
Hedake, doing it with one. Count it!
A spectacular performance by Stevin Smith.
[crowd cheering]
[inhales]
Could you excuse me for a moment, please?
To be honest with you, it's like
I can't even find the words to explain
the feeling, you know? Of what I lost.
[man 1] This is one
of the most significant
sports conspiracies
involving college athletes in the country.
[man 2] It was a huge scandal
on a scale that hadn't been seen
in college basketball
in a long, long time, if ever.
[commentator] Hedake going for the record.
My personal reaction is, "How could you
do this? Why would you do this?"
[man] Rumors started spreading
around the town
like they had some sort
of inside information.
They've all assured me
that there's no involvement on their part,
and I believe 'em.
Oh, shit.
[commentator] There it is.
Oh. Oh, two misses!
My goodness.
[man] I'm thinking,
"What's going on with these guys?"
"Are we on the same team right now?"
[commentator]
Arizona State is doing everything it can
to throw this game away.
[man] We're talking about students
who are running operations in the tens
and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And that's when I saw the big picture.
There was people behind the scenes
who'd ruined everything.
[theme music playing]
[crowd cheering]
[man] Having been a sports columnist
at the Arizona Republic
for almost 35 years,
I've pretty much lived my life
as a reporter covering
the Arizona State college teams.
I started covering Sun Devil basketball
in the early '90s,
um, when Bill Frieder became head coach.
[indistinct chatter]
[man] It's a fabulous school,
tremendous facilities, super campus.
Uh, you know,
the weather today is 75 degrees.
[Kent] At that time, Arizona State
was a college that had a lot going for it.
It was a popular school with a mixture
of kids from different backgrounds.
But they had one of the worst
basketball programs in the country.
They hadn't been to the NCAA tournament
since the early '80s.
They were a sleeping giant
and most of us who lived there thought,
"This giant is never going to wake up."
[upbeat music playing]
But Friedman made an immediate impact
recruiting the most talented
players available.
I mean, highly-ranked guys,
and those of us covering the team
were like, "How did he get these people?"
[commentator] Over the head they go. Oh!
- [indistinct chattering]
- [crowd cheering]
Suddenly, the atmosphere at the arena
changed dramatically.
[man] It was awesome,
being a member of the ASU teams,
especially in those years
when we were a pretty good team.
We had highly-touted players.
There was Isaac Burton,
Mario Bennett,
Ryan Riley.
We were a unit, working together.
[commentator] This team lives and dies
with the man who has the ball,
Hedake Smith.
[comm 2]
Oh, what a heads-up play by Hedake Smith.
[comm 1] He's just been unstoppable.
[Dwayne]
And then there was the main attraction.
Hedake was unbelievably talented.
[commentator] side, at 60, 4.6 left.
Here comes Stevin Smith.
- Pulls up from about 40.
- [buzzer sounding]
It's good! He made it!
Can you believe it? Stevin Smith
We was like fuckin' top rock stars.
I mean, it was amazing.
[announcer] Point for Hedake Smith!
Oh, my goodness.
We got star-studded treatment.
Like, everywhere you go,
pretty much somebody knew you.
But Hedake was definitely the man.
And to see the way he was getting treated
everywhere we went and stuff like this,
I was like, "This is amazing.
Like, wow. They love Hedake."
[commentator] The key to Arizona State
is Stevin "Hedake" Smith
and believe me,
he becomes a headache for the opposition.
[Dwayne] Hedake could
absolutely dictate the outcome of a game.
So, coming into the '93 season,
I had high expectations for our team.
And I knew that he wouldn't let us down.
[commentator] Oh, my goodness!
[crowd cheering]
[Kent] There was absolutely real pressure
on this team, especially on Hedake Smith,
because college basketball's
a huge business.
The coaches make a ton of money,
a successful program
can bring in millions to a school,
um
and Arizona State probably felt like,
"We've got all the pieces here
to contend for a conference title,
and anything less than that
would be a big disappointment."
I mean
we were making the school all that money
and we didn't get compensated at all.
[commentator] Smith. Whoa.
[Hedake] They were the ones
who was behind the scenes
with millions of dollars.
[crowd cheering]
We were the ones out there on the court.
We all came from humble backgrounds,
and we were all there
on basketball scholarships.
You know, my first two years
living in a dorm,
I got a check for $130 dollars a month.
You know? And how can you live on that?
There was times I didn't eat.
I'm not making this up.
I would sit in that room hungry,
bunch of times.
I would walk to other people's dorms
and ask for something to eat.
I mean, that was real.
But, going into my senior year,
you know, I knew I had a good chance
of making it to the NBA.
And that's when I could start
making big money.
But what happened was, uh
I hooked up with a guy
that I had been knowing
ever since my freshman year.
Uh, a guy by the name of Benny Silman.
He was the campus bookie.
You know, he introduced me to gambling
and that
That kinda changed everything.
[Mozart's "Requiem in D minor" playing]
[man] It was January, 1994.
I was trading bond futures
at the board of trade in Chicago.
Um
Twenty-two, 23 years old,
living in a nice high-rise building,
making an absurd amount of money
at a young age.
[phone ringing]
[beep]
And I remember my phone ringing,
and it was Benny.
Benny Silman.
I had met Benny through my brother
at Arizona State University,
and, um, he knew I gambled
since I was a kid,
so I ended up establishing
a bookmaking account with him,
and we developed kind of a friendship.
All of a sudden, he starts talking about,
"Joe, I got a fix."
"Joe, I got a fix."
And I shrug it off, like
I didn't really absorb
what he was saying at first.
And then finally he spelled it out.
He spells F-I-X.
And I said, "Oh, wow."
And it clicked with me all of a sudden.
"Are you crazy?
Man, I'm not into that stuff."
"That's wrong. I want no part of it."
[phone beeps]
Someone with a moral compass
woulda hung up
but I didn't have that compass in place.
And then Benny said,
"Did you ever hear of Hedake Smith?"
I said, "No idea."
He said, "Hedake's the point guard
for the ASU basketball team."
"He's an absolute basketball stud."
"He dictates everything on the court.
And I got him."
"I got him."
He said, "He's a gambler."
"And he's into my bookmaking operation
for about $10,000 bucks."
"And he's got no way to pay me right now."
And so, I concocted this plan
that the only way he could pay his debt
is to fix a game.
He said, "Joe, we can make some money."
I said, "You know what, Benny?"
"If I'm going to put dollars
in this thing,
I wanna verify and validate this thing."
"I gotta talk to this kid."
[phone ringing]
[phone ringing]
[phone ringing]
[phone ringing]
I remember being on the phone
with Hedake and thinking
he was afraid.
I could almost hear his voice trembling.
Oh, yeah, of course I was nervous
going into it, you know, but
at the same time, I owed Benny some money.
So, ain't no turning back.
He says to me, "I'll do this
but I don't wanna lose."
I said, "Man, you don't have to lose."
"Just don't win
by more than I'm gonna tell you to."
I go, "Really?"
"So, you're telling me we can win the game
and I can make money?"
Yeah.
[chuckles]
Fucking no-brainer.
[Joe] But, to his credit, he said,
"I only wanna do two games."
He said, "Because then I'm gonna have
to turn my game up for the NBA scouts."
Um, "It's real important that
I get drafted for my family and I."
I said, "Okay."
I said, "I'll tell you what,
Benny and I are gonna give you
$20,000 bucks a game."
[Hedake laughing]
Excuse me.
I mean, oh, man.
[Joe] I could tell that was
a boatload of money to him.
I said, "Listen, if you want to bring on
any other players on the team,
that's up to you to do,
but I'm not paying
more than $20,000 dollars."
That was, you know, it was a no-brainer.
I knew exactly who I could go to.
Isaac Burton was, like,
a real special person to me, you know.
He was real cool.
He was Ice.
Isaac Burton. Ice, Ice, Baby. That's me.
[commentator]
Burton, in and on the floor. Look out.
Oh, he is the man.
Wild and crazy. Wild and crazy.
I didn't do anything to hurt people,
like violence or nothing like that,
but doing silly stuff like kids do,
that was all me.
[crowd cheering]
[Ice]
Hedake's like a true friend, teammate.
We loved and respected each other.
And, we all
That's how we treated each other.
I was his Robin, he was Batman.
[Hedake] So, I drove over to the dorm
and called him down,
you know, to my truck,
and I was like, "Hey, young fella,
got a way, you know, make you some cash."
He said,
"I need you to do a favor for me."
I'm like, "What?"
I'm thinking, "What you need from me?"
He said, "I'm gonna need you to miss
some shots. You know, fix the game."
And I was like, "No, no, no."
"I'm not gonna do nothing crazy,
silly like that."
But I knew that he could benefit,
you know, financially.
Then I got a envelope,
right then and there.
I got a envelope full of hundreds.
I was like, "Yo."
Next thing you know, he-he was all in.
So, now I was like,
"Well, what do I gotta do?"
And he started explaining to me
what point shaving is.
[Joe] Like I said to Hedake,
fixing an outcome of a basketball game,
it's all about betting lines.
A betting line is established on a game
with the simplicity of knowing
that there's a favorite and an underdog.
So, for example,
if you're gonna bet the favorite
on a line established around 12 points,
the favorite needs to win
by more than that number.
If you're gonna bet the underdog,
the underdog could lose the game outright,
but they cannot lose
by more than what the line is,
what the betting line is.
What I did was I took the underdog.
That's because it's easier
for the favorite to win a game by less.
It's all about little subtleties
that a player can do.
Maybe there's a bad pass.
Maybe it's bricking a few free throws
down the stretch.
Just control the game enough
where your team is not gonna win
by more than X amount of points.
That's how a fix is done.
This is known as point shaving.
Point shaving.
So, I ended up, uh,
looking at the remaining schedule.
And I saw, in about two weeks' time,
there were games coming up
against Oregon State and Oregon.
Two home games on a Thursday
and on a Saturday
where ASU would be favored.
Where Hedake and Isaac
could better control the game.
So, I took Oregon State, the underdog.
That's the side that I was on.
That's the side that my money was on.
So, those factors in my mind,
I went to the bank the next morning,
pulled out my entire trader's savings.
I managed to put together
a little over $500,000 in cash.
So, the only place to bet money like that
would be Vegas.
[car horn honking]
[upbeat music playing]
[siren wailing]
I remember thinking to myself,
"Vegas is the betting capital
of the world."
"It's gonna be easy to bet 500,000 bucks
on a game."
I'm telling you, it's not. It's not.
These large corporations
are as greedy as can be.
They don't want to lose money to you.
It felt like eyeballs were on me
and people were watching me.
The risk involved was
creating the red flags
that other people would get wind
of what I was doing.
And the biggest way to do that would be
to create what's known as a CTR,
which is a currency transaction report.
These are generated by casinos
when you're betting over 10,000 in cash.
So, you had all this money you had to bet,
but you did not want to do it
in any increment north of 9,900,
because that's when
the questions are asked.
And so, I ended up giving my dad,
who was living in Las Vegas, 100,000.
Ended up giving
two of his friends 100,000.
And we went to over 20 hotels.
Didn't make any bets over 9,900,
and we ended up getting all the money off.
So, at the end of the day,
if everything went well
I'm gonna win a little under
$1.1 million on game one.
Welcome to Tempe, everyone.
I'm Tim Healey, along with Gil Tyree.
Glad you joined us this evening.
Keys to Victory tonight for ASU.
Well, let's open it up and unlock it.
The first thing is the Stevin Watch.
We wanna make sure
he'll have a big night against Oregon.
[Ice] So, before the game, I was worried.
'Cause I didn't wanna lose.
I hate losing.
But Hedake came up to me
in the locker room and he said,
"We don't have to lose,
we just have to win
by a certain amount of points."
So, I said,
"How do we know what the point is?"
He said, "Don't worry about that,
I'll tell you."
I would always get a phone call
before the game.
They would give me a number.
In game one, ASU was a far superior team
than Oregon State.
[Joe] On paper, they were
a 12 and a half or 13 point better team.
That's the reality,
but I was on a mission,
and my mission was to secure
the money that I had in play.
So, I gave Hedake and Isaac
a lower number to protect myself.
For the first game, Hedake told me
that the number was six.
That's what we had to win by.
Six or less.
[crowd cheering]
[commentator]
Crowd starting to get into it,
trying to fire the Sun Devils up here.
They're ready to go
as Mario Bennett jumps center,
and it will go to Oregon State.
[Joe] We ended up going to the sports book
with my dad and his two friends
and myself.
We were gonna watch the game, but, um
it wasn't even on TV.
It wasn't on TV, so we were sitting there
every five, ten, fifteen minutes,
waiting for the score
to come across the ticker.
And, I'll tell you what,
it didn't start off too good.
[commentator] Devils in transition,
Hedake leads the fast break.
Pulls up to the trey. That's in there.
So, in the first half,
against Oregon State,
Hedake go off.
Hedake Smith knocks down the three.
Puts up the shot, hits the bullseye.
Hedake pulls the trigger Count it!
[crowd cheering]
Hedake has 16 points tonight,
four three-point buckets.
It was unbelievable.
It was shocking. Um
ASU went up by 13,
and I thought
maybe he had a moment of clarity
in his conscience
saying that,
"What I got myself involved with
was maybe not a good idea."
[commentator] Hedake. Hedake. Hedake!
[crowd cheering]
Hedake stealing it.
A spectacular performance by Stevin Smith!
I mean, just three after three
after three after three after three,
and I'm like, "Oh, man.
We're gonna win by too much."
[commentator] As Hedake comes up with
his second steal and another easy lay-up.
And it is a 15-point ASU lead.
You start thinking,
"Gosh, what am I doing?"
Here I am holding tickets that
with Oregon State
that are all gonna be losers.
[producer] Were you thinking,
"Has he changed his mind?"
No, he just said, he said,
"Burton, I got it. I got it."
[commentator]
ASU should be able to build on this lead.
But instead, there's Hedake
with a personal foul.
Now Oregon State has it once again.
Suddenly, their confidence builds.
But then,
when the second half rolled around,
literally the magic started happening.
[commentator] Three on two.
Result: an easy basket
to Stephane Brown. Score.
ASU should be dominating, but instead
they're letting this lead slip away.
[Dwayne] Oregon State comin' back
on us like that and I'm thinking,
"Maybe I'm stinking it up out here. Maybe
Mario, maybe Isaac or Ron,
maybe they're stinking it up.
"But it's not Hedake."
He's out here to win tonight.
[commentator] Hedake. Yes!
[crowd cheering]
Hedake bullseye on the three.
The Sun Devils lead by six.
[Ice] I was always looking
at the scoreboard.
I would keep looking up at the scoreboard.
That's the only thing I was worried about.
Remember, I was the point guard.
Point guard is the main player.
The one to bring the ball up the court.
Point guard is the quarterback,
the pitcher.
So, I was in control.
[commentator]
Poor passing right there. Very sloppy.
[Hedake] I had different techniques.
You can take your time, walk the ball
up the court, shot clock going down.
Start the offense late.
I knew what situation
to put certain players in
so they couldn't score.
[commentator] Riley launches the three
and has it go off the rim.
It has been a sloppy performance tonight
by ASU with the exception of Hedake Smith.
- Brown puts it up.
- [buzzer sounding]
And there's the buzzer, ending the play.
Hedake Smith
with a monster performance tonight.
Thirty-nine points.
Finally, the final score
with the big F next to it
scrolled across the ticker.
[commentator]
Final score of 88 to 82.
And sure enough, they won by six.
Exactly what I told Hedake
it needed to be.
I mean, was I shocked? Hell yeah.
I mean, I could not even fathom
the thought that Hedake would be able
to get that game to land right on six.
But this guy had enough skill
to make it happen.
Not gonna lie, a million dollars in cash?
Yeah, it's-it's intoxicating.
Twenty thousand, as a college kid?
Oh, man. Fucking amazing.
[laughing]
I mean, it was for me
I was like, "Man, this is Woo-hoo!"
"This is the life," 'cause it was easy.
It was easy. That was an easy payday.
Well, congratulations, 39 points.
You have to feel good.
[laughing]
I just scored 39 points,
and we won the game.
Just all about winning.
Long as you winnin'
nobody ever suspect nothing.
[crickets chirping]
[Joe] The day after game one,
I woke up bright and early
and hit the streets in Vegas, again.
I knew I only had one game left.
So, my mindset
was to maximize the money that I had.
How do I take my 1.2
and get the biggest bang for that buck?
How can I do it better?
Bigger, better and smarter.
[fast-paced jazz music playing]
By a stroke of luck,
it just happened to be the day before
the gambler's biggest holy day there is,
which is Super Bowl Sunday.
[cheering, whooping]
Vegas was an absolute madhouse.
The Dallas Cowboys
were playing the Buffalo Bills
and there was just a lot of money in town.
To my knowledge, we were completely
flying under the radar.
And between the help of my dad
and his two friends,
I ended up successfully getting off
about $1.2 million in bets
on Oregon.
Line opened up about 12, 12 and a half,
but once again, I spoke with Hedake
and once again, I gave him a lower number
as my margin of error.
I said, "I don't care what you do,
how you do it."
"You could lose the game for all I care,
but if you win the game
- just don't win by more than"
- Six.
The magic number was six.
Let's go.
[commentator] Crowd of seven to 8,000
here at the Activity Center on their feet
cheering the introduction
of the Arizona State Sun Devils.
Certain that
they will have to play a lot better
than they did the other night.
For the Oregon game, I could honestly say
thoughts of concern went through my mind.
"Oh, my gosh.
What if Hedake has a bad day?"
And so, I told Benny to go to the game
and sit right behind the ASU bench.
Just to act as a constant reminder
so Hedake could understand
that he had to perform.
But once again,
it didn't start out very well.
[commentator]
Fontana now goes baseline and scores.
- Fontana the lob to Mario
- [whistle blows]
Mario said, "Look what I found."
And Riley for three.
[crowd cheering]
[Dwayne] We're up 15 points,
and our leading scorer
hasn't scored one point.
He's not the usual aggressive Hedake.
[commentator] Hedake.
- [crowd ooh's]
- [commentator] Can't get it to fall.
[Hedake] Problem was Mario Bennett,
Dwayne Fontana, Ron Riley,
they was playing well,
and it was just hard to control the game.
[Joe] At that point,
it didn't look promising.
ASU had a double-digit lead.
[commentator]
The Arizona State lead now 18.
[Hedake] In my mind,
I'm thinking enough is enough.
It's time to, you know, turn it around.
[commentator]
Hedake being hounded this half by Parker.
And Oregon almost forces a steal there
and Hedake
- [whistle blowing]
- Uh-oh.
Oh, my goodness.
[Joe] And then it got a lot worse.
[commentator] Hedake Smith is down.
Hedake, what looked to be pretty severely,
twisted his ankle.
And he was taken out of the game.
[commentator]
Let's take a look at that play.
[Hedake] That was a freak accident.
I mean, as you saw,
my ankle buckled and I went down.
It was a lot of pain.
And, in my mind, I'm thinking,
"It's off, the fix off."
I can't play.
[commentator]
Hedake heads to the dressing room.
[Joe] So, was I nervous about the bet?
You better believe I am.
Without Hedake on the court,
the other players for ASU
could just start ripping it up
and beat the snot out of 'em that night.
That's when I got nervous.
That's when I got really nervous.
'Cause, okay, now it's my time.
You know, it's my time to do it,
if it comes down to it.
[producer] Did you want to do it?
No.
That was
That's when I really got worried,
because I told them,
"It's the last game.
You know, I know what's at stake."
[comm] Bennett with the follow.
I got to get back out there,
I gotta control the game.
[commentator] We have good news to report.
Hedake's ankle has been heavily taped.
He has put on a new pair
of high-top sneakers,
and there you see Stevin Smith,
back to give it a try in the second half.
[Hedake] Growing up in the ghetto,
you have to be able to survive
where you at, you know.
I'm not gonna say I was no damn hit man
or no, you know, big time fighter,
but I had survival skills.
And so, we went out the second half
and did what we had to do.
[commentator] That pass for Smith
stolen by Darryl Parker.
Who finishes with a flourish.
[Joe] Hedake and Isaac were still fighting
to protect what they had promised to do
- and what they were getting paid to do.
- [comm] Hedake.
- Oh! No basket.
- [crowd ooh's]
Orlando Williams. That's a two-pointer.
Darryl Parker. Hit the three.
Parker. And he hits again.
Out of nowhere,
the Ducks have ripped off ten points.
It was It was a relief, you know.
We was gonna do this, and then it's over.
[commentator]
Hedake getting it to Fontana Yes!
Once again, landed on six.
So, I ended up cashing the tickets,
and it was about a little north
of two and a half million bucks,
all in, by the time game two finished.
Once again, you know, I was 20,000 richer.
After we did it,
I got paid again that night.
I was up. Up, up, up.
I would just wake up in the morning
and go shop.
Cell phone, clothes, earrings,
food for everybody.
My car, I hooked my car up.
That green Toyota Tercel.
It went from nothing to limo tint,
alarm, music, rims, everything.
I didn't save a dime. I spent all of it.
And I started buying all type of shoes,
had big rope chains,
you had big old watch,
bought me two big old diamonds.
Put a payment down on a GMC Typhoon.
That was like a $30,000 car.
[Ice] It was dark gray and it faded
to a light gray. Triple gold Daytons,
and then it came with a chip in it
where the tires don't screech.
- [engine revs]
- It just takes off.
Great times at Arizona State. Great times.
[producer]
Did you basically spend all of the money?
[laughs]
[Dwayne] I never asked any questions.
I think we drew our own conclusions.
I believed it was
because of a sports agent
advancing him some money.
Did I feel like
I could be, you know, be caught?
I didn't think I'd be touched at the time.
You know, we were superstars.
- [producer] So, you had no worries?
- Not at all.
[birds chirping]
[Kent] It was around the time
of that Oregon game.
Maybe a couple of days afterwards.
I received a message.
And it said something like, you know,
"You might wanna check out Hedake Smith."
"There's something going on
at Arizona State."
"He's all of a sudden flush with cash,
driving a nice car."
You know. And I think he made a reference
to point shaving.
I just thought,
"Wow. Why would Hedake do this
when he's a shoo-in for the NBA?"
It didn't make a lot of sense.
But I started thinking as a reporter if
You know, "If this is true, this is huge."
Massive story.
[Joe]
After game two, I flew back to Chicago.
I'm back inside my life,
and, um, I truly believed,
with every fiber of my body,
I was done.
It's what Hedake and I talked about
on the initial call,
two games and I'm done,
it's what I believed.
[phone ringing]
[Joe] Until one day, I get a phone call.
And it's Hedake Smith.
I'm like, "What the heck?"
And he caught me off guard.
I didn't even know he knew my number.
He said, "Hey, we're playing UCLA
tomorrow night,
and I wanna bet on myself. Can you do it?"
I said, "Are you serious?"
I said, "How much you looking
to put down on yourself?"
He said, "I wanna bet 20,000 on myself."
I said, "Do you have the money
to pay me if you lose?"
And he said to me immediately,
"I'm not gonna lose."
But I knew in my gut:
the guy spent all his money.
And if UCLA wins that game
his only way to repay me
is to perform for the USC game
that's coming up two days later.
[producer] Fix another game?
So, I said, "Okay. Fair enough."
"You got ASU plus four
tomorrow night for 22,000."
"You lose, I'll talk to you later."
That was the end of the conversation.
[phone beeps]
Man, that's a bunch of bullshit.
- [producer] Really?
- Really. Big facts.
[Joe] Hedake has denied the bet
all the way through,
but, um
it happened.
It happened.
[Joe] I think UCLA at the time was
one of the best teams in the nation.
They were absolute studs.
But I knew Hedake
was playing for survival.
Playing for survival, betting on himself.
For Hedake's bet,
UCLA was favored by four points.
That means Arizona State
could win the game outright
and eke out a winner no matter what,
but if they did lose the game,
just don't lose by more than four.
So, if they lost by one, two or three,
he would be a winner.
[Hedake] UCLA was always tough.
You know, they had one of the top coaches
and some damn good players.
So, it was a dogfight.
Look, this was a taste
of what NBA would be like.
And I was gonna take them down.
[comm 1] Here comes Hedake.
- [comm 2] Hedake.
- Here's the lob to Bennett
- [comm 2] Hello.
- Yes.
[announcer] Hedake Smith!
[Ice] Before UCLA,
I asked him, "Can I do it?"
"You gonna do it this game?"
He said, "No."
He ain't doing it.
Like, okay.
[comm 1] Smith.
[comm 2] You could tell when he got it
in his hand he was gonna let it fly.
- Bye-bye.
- [comm 1] Three in a row
Yes, indeed!
[cheering]
- [comm 2] Bring out the Aspirin.
- [comm 1] He's got 22 points.
Hedake, he played his ass off.
He played a phenomenal game.
It was pretty much a tie game
back and forth the entire game.
[comm 1] Brewer.
[Joe] Now remember, Hedake's out there
trying not to lose by more than four.
[comm 1] We're tied at 70!
[comm 2] Oh, it's heating up now.
[Joe] The last minute or two of the game,
UCLA went up by two.
[comm 1] Dollar. Two points.
Ed O'Bannon. Yes.
[Joe] And then by four.
[comm 1] Zidek, he had one there earlier.
He does it again!
Six point game now. UCLA's up by six.
And, oh, by the way,
there's one second left on the clock.
The game's over. No ma
There's no six point field goal
that's gonna tie the game.
So, the only player
out of those ten people
on the court that was motivated,
was Hedake.
Now all of a sudden,
Hedake really asking for the ball.
Like maybe wanting to get another shot up.
At-at that moment,
all I want to do is just get one score.
That's all I wanted to do.
[Joe] And with that,
Hedake sprints up the court.
[Ice] I mean, he dribbled hard and fast.
And I'm thinking,
"Huh? It's already a loss."
[Joe] Hedake plants
behind the three point line
and fires a three-pointer.
- [buzzer sounding]
- [comm 1] Hedake takes the last shot
as UCLA comes up with a 76-70 victory.
[Joe] And you see Hedake
just absolutely dejected.
He seemed distraught about it.
Like, who cares, Hedake?
Like, we wouldn't have won
if you made the shot.
Now, to everyone else, who the heck cares?
Because the game would've went
from six to three.
But if ASU would've only lost by three,
Hedake doesn't lose $22,000.
Everybody knew me as Hedake.
But my mom, people that really know me,
my church members, they knew Stevin Smith.
Pretty much, Hedake was a character.
Basketball player.
College superstar.
Hedake got Stevin Smith in trouble.
[Joe] At that moment in time,
I look at Hedake
and it's just everything changed with him.
His shoulders slumped.
The look of dejection on his face,
'cause now he knows that Benny and I
have got him for the game on Saturday.
He's ours for Saturday.
[commentator] An obvious carry violation.
[Kent] I started calling
people I knew connected to the program,
people at the school,
anybody I could find
and kind of run this
call behind them, say,
"Hey, I got this-this tip."
"I'm hearing Hedake
might be involved with point shaving."
"What's going on?"
Um, but I could just
never nail anything down.
It just came up empty at every turn.
[Joe] It was Saturday,
the date of the USC game.
I'm back in Vegas,
I got Hedake completely locked in.
But I knew I had my work cut out for me.
Because this time,
there was no Super Bowl to back me up,
no big money in town.
How do I not get caught?
How do I stay under the radar?
But I had
two and half million bucks with me
to bet on USC.
I also knew the betting line
that I was gonna bet on
was right around 11.
So, there was no way not to move that line
betting that kind of money.
That's because when a massive
amount of money is put on one side,
the line changes.
So, when I bet that money,
I moved that betting line down to six.
That was the first time
I felt I attracted attention.
I felt like with that line movement,
with the questions that were being asked
every time I walked up
to a sports book counter to make a bet,
um, I felt there was some exposure there.
[Ice] Against USC, Hedake told me
that we was point shaving again.
I said, "Okay. I'm doing this."
"Let's get some more money."
[comm] Here comes Hedake Smith.
And Isaac Burton brings it across
and SC with a steal.
[Joe] I really didn't care
if Arizona State lost,
as long as they didn't win
by six points or more.
That's where I needed to be.
[comm] Harris has three.
Harris is gonna have to do something here.
Nice dish.
Look at that crash!
[laughing] Oh, Jones.
SC has a ten-point lead.
I remember that game just being terrible.
It was an awful game,
was a stinker of all stinks.
And Hedake really didn't play well.
[commentator]
Another bad pass.
[Hedake] USC, they just kicked our ass.
They came out, you know,
it was one of them days
where you can't buy a bucket.
[comm] Hedake Smith.
Hedake Smith has not scored yet.
[fans chanting]
[Ice] Whenever your point guard,
he's not playing well,
your team is going to suffer.
and if your point guard is point shaving,
your team is really gonna suffer.
It's just simple as that.
[whistle blows]
[comm] And a charge on Hedake Smith!
And he is gone.
[Dwayne] It definitely feels at this point
that the team is fractured.
And that really hurt me
because of the effort that I put forth
every night.
And at this point, I'm thinking,
"Why do I do this to myself?
Nobody else cares."
[Joe] I don't know if it was Hedake
having a bad day
or Hedake taking the easy way out,
but USC won the game outright.
So, it didn't matter
what the betting line was.
The underdog had won,
and I had another winner.
[Hedake]
I've never liked losing, you know.
But every time you get a paper bag
full of hundreds, it's addictive.
It changed me.
It changed me.
[producer] Did you ever feel, like,
"Maybe we should stop now"?
I mean, we only had a couple games
left in the season. [chuckles]
If you look at it,
it was at the end of the season.
[Joe] I was completely convinced
at that point
that this-this-this party's over.
I had five million bucks
in a safe deposit box,
twenty-three years old.
What else could I possibly need
or want at that point?
[phone ringing]
A week later, um, I get a call from Benny.
He said, "Joe, I'm in trouble."
I said, "What do you mean?"
He said, "There's a guy out here
by the name of Big Red."
"He's about 550, 600 pounds with red hair,
and he's a drug dealer out here
and he's a bookmaker."
"He found out what I was doing,
and he wants in."
"He wants in on another game."
"And we think the Washington game
coming up is the next game to do it."
I said,
"Benny, you're-you're playing with fire."
"You have no idea of the challenges
and what you're up against."
"You're gonna mess it up."
But then I ended up thinking,
"Okay, these guys are gonna do this
with or without me."
"And if they do it without me
and get caught, I'm screwed."
And in my mind there was no way
in the world I could let that happen.
[fast-paced music playing]
So, the next morning, bright and early,
I flew out from Chicago to Vegas.
I didn't really want to be there.
But then I rationalized it by saying,
"Ten million dollars in cash
sounded so much better than five million."
[Hedake] For the Washington game,
the stakes changed.
Benny told me
he was gonna take the $20,000 dollars
that he was gonna pay me
and put it on the game.
That way, you know, we could make 40.
[Joe] I start going
to the same 20 different casinos,
but this time it just felt different.
Because there was supposedly
some heavy betting going on.
I was at the Mirage, um
making a bet for 9,900 on Washington,
and the ticket writer says to me,
"Hey, Joe,
there was just some big 600-pound guy
in here with red hair
that just bet on Washington, too."
"Plus, there's kids all around town
with ASU shirts
that are betting $20 bills
like they know the final score."
And at the point I knew.
The cat was out of the bag.
I'm in trouble.
[Hedake]
He would normally call me and give me,
you know, the number before the game.
But this time, he kept moving:
eight, seven, six, five.
[Joe] Laying off that money
was a monumental task.
I ended up getting off
three million bucks,
but moved the line significantly.
It started out at 12.
And it kept moving down.
I had the bulk of the money bet
on Washington as a seven-point underdog.
But at the end of the day,
that line ended up dropping down to three.
So, a nine-point movement in one day,
um, in a few hours
I knew was not good.
Typically, a line changes maybe ten times
before the game is played.
But before the Washington game,
the line changed 44 times.
That alerted the authorities.
There's something wrong.
This is unusual, something's going on.
Now, they didn't know what it was,
nobody knew what it was.
Um, but it alerted the authorities
and the Nevada Gaming Commission
then contacted the FBI,
said, "Hey, there's something screwy
going on here."
"Why don't you take a look at it."
[somber music playing]
[comm] Let's talk about Arizona State.
What has happened to the Sun Devils
the last couple of weeks?
Through injuries, poor shooting,
I don't know, turnovers,
the team hasn't been the same.
[Ice] That Washington game,
I wasn't even involved.
Hedake didn't say nothing about it.
He never mentioned it, not one time.
[Joe] For the Washington game,
I only had Hedake,
and that scared the heck out of me.
Because if Arizona State
played up to their ability,
they could easily win
by more than seven.
So, once again, I wanted to have a cushion
for Hedake's margin of error.
So, probably a couple hours
before the game,
I made it clear to him,
in no uncertain terms, what he had to do.
"We've both got a lot of money at stake,
you have to make this game land on three."
[Hedake] At that moment,
there was no turning back.
Hedake didn't know when to say,
you know, enough is enough.
Hedake felt he was untouchable.
Felt like he was bigger than the law.
[loud tapping on ball]
[crowd cheering]
[commentator] All right.
So, here we go. Washington in purple,
Arizona State in yellow.
And Stevin Smith is the major star
for the Sun Devils, keep your eye on him.
[Joe] After all the bets were made,
I was just mentally
and physically fatigued.
So, I went up to the hotel room,
and I turned on the ASU game.
And it was the perfect scenario.
[commentator] Washington has
the early lead. Backdoor, Tyrus, nice.
Jumper. Good!
Nice move. Maurice Woods, softly done.
Early on, it appears that Washington
has more energy than Arizona State.
[Dwayne]
The first half was a total let down.
Total disaster.
I remember getting down big, early.
And nothing was falling,
uh, it was just a terrible,
terrible performance in the first half.
[commentator] Fontana. No bucket.
Isaac Burton. Stops. In and out.
Hedake. NBA. Too long.
So far, nothing has gone right
for Arizona State.
[crowd booing]
So, the fans are booing the Sun Devils.
Losing to Washington in the first half?
It was fucking terrible.
But $40,000 dollars,
that's a lot of damn money.
[whistle blowing]
[commentator] And that is
an offensive foul by Hedake Smith.
Fifteen to six, Washington is up.
[Joe] As long as that game stayed
as Washington winning
or stayed within six points,
I knew I would be okay.
And so, I'm sitting on the bed,
I'm thinking through these scenarios,
and I just literally start falling asleep.
[muffled commentary]
I couldn't keep my eyes open.
Getting accepted to a major university
could come down to who gets
the highest score on the SAT.
Up Your Grades
can make that high score a reality.
Woke up three, four hours later.
And there was an infomercial
playing on the TV.
[TV] by Dr. Gary Gruber.
[Joe] I had no idea who won the game.
Remember, this is 1994.
There's no sports sites
that I could log onto and get a score.
Um
So, I threw on a
shirt and baseball hat
and walked down to the sports book.
Being involved in trading,
I was already used to taking risks.
I knew that some of your trades
are gonna go bad.
Hopefully,
the majority of your trades go good.
But I felt good
the way the game had been flowing.
It looked like ASU was just quitting.
It looked like they had no heart,
it looked like Washington
was gonna run all over 'em.
So, I felt my money was good.
And I remember
walking into that sports book
and looking for the ASU score.
And waiting for updates
to come across the ticker.
In my mind, this was a done deal.
[commentator]
And that's the end of the first half.
Arizona State is doing everything it can
to throw this game away.
We had a terrible first half.
A terrible first half.
We was getting booed by our own fans.
[Dwayne] So, now, going into half time,
we're in the locker room
and Coach Frieder, he tears into us.
He came in, cussing and shouting at me,
telling me we had a couple
NBA scouts there that
they wasn't gonna look at me
because I'm playing like shit,
and, "You're gonna mess up your career."
That's when he said it.
"We received a call from the FBI."
"They said this game
is under investigation."
"Anybody have"
I remember Bill Frieder saying,
"Anybody have anything to do with it,
they better let me know now."
"You better let me know now."
Oh, shit. We done fucked up.
[Hedake] The second half
was a terrifying moment,
you know,
and I didn't want it to leak out.
I just felt that I needed to do what I,
you know, had to do.
That way, wouldn't be no speculations
about me being involved in anything.
[commentator]
Stevin Smith, number 44 with the ball.
[Hedake] I'm thinking,
"Let's just win this game
and we'll deal
with the consequences later."
[commentator] Hedake
- Got it!
- [crowd cheering]
Stevin Smith. Here he goes.
Oh, great tip.
Arizona State starting to come alive here,
and the passion is back.
[Joe] That's when I found out
that ASU and Hedake
just stepped on 'em in the second half.
He just sucked it up and played hard.
[commentator] Hedake. Got it!
[crowd cheering]
- [buzzer sounding]
- And that's the end of the game.
Arizona State,
a very impressive second half.
[Joe] Hedake ended up
winning the game by 18 points.
Which meant for me,
that every bet I had made was a loser.
I just lost millions of dollars.
And, oh, by the way,
now
the worst case scenario with red flags
and attention is gonna happen.
[thrilling music playing]
Sure enough,
starting that Monday,
there were a lot of stories about
the unusual betting that occurred
on the ASU/Washington game.
We're not talking about people
taking two dollar bets.
We're talking about students
who are running operations in the tens
and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
[reporter] Have you talked
to your players about this?
- [Frieder] Yeah.
- What's the feeling?
They're-they're very upset about it,
they seem to be very upset,
concerned, and
they've all assured me
that there's no involvement on their part.
And I believe 'em.
It was out now.
The season was over, and it was out.
So, people would come up,
"Are you point shaving?"
"No I didn't do that."
Of course, I'm gonna say no.
I wasn't paying attention to the news,
but I'm done with it. [chuckles]
It was behind me then.
After the season finished, I head home.
I withdrew from all my classes and left,
so I didn't graduate.
But I felt like I had reached the top.
I was the highest scorer
in Arizona State history.
I won Male Athlete of the Year.
So, I just knew I'd get drafted.
[man] Welcome to the 1994 NBA Draft
at the Hoosier Dome.
[crowd cheering]
[Dwayne] The NBA Draft
is when the NBA teams,
they select the best
college basketball players in the country
to come be on their team.
So, we're all watching
'cause, you know, Hedake's our guy.
We wanna see him get drafted.
I watched it at home.
Back at home, me and my mother's house
back in Dallas.
I had, you know, a lot of my friends over.
We had balloons, food over there, music.
This was gonna be the dream come true.
Stay focused
it was about to happen.
With the first pick in the 1994 NBA Draft,
the Milwaukee Bucks select
Glenn Robinson from Purdue University.
[crowd cheering]
Jason Kidd, Grant Hill, Donyell Marshall,
Juwan Howard, Sharone Wright,
Lamond Murray,
from the University of California.
This concludes the draft.
So, I'd like you to join me in welcoming
[sighs]
When I hadn't got drafted, you know,
a lot of things
started going through my head.
Like, you know,
do they really know that it was me?
Do they really know
what I had got caught up in?
Do I think I got away with it
at that point?
I was really just hoping
that everyone would stay quiet.
Nothing would come out of it.
Um
And hoping that it would just die down
as a rumor and speculation.
[phone ringing]
[phone ringing]
[phone ringing]
But then, one day, I get a phone call.
And it's the FBI.
They told me I was the subject
and a target of a criminal prosecution
regarding the ASU matter.
The FBI tracked down the money trail,
and we were able to determine
that there was $8.7 million
bet in fixed games.
Joe Gagliano
absolutely knew what he was doing.
And to put the effort in
to go to 15, 16 casinos,
know how much money you had to lay down
and how much you couldn't lay down,
it was very sophisticated.
So, we knew he was the linchpin.
We could prove his involvement,
but then there were clearly
money transfers to Stevin "Hedake" Smith.
- [man 1] Stevin Smith
- [man 2] Stevin Smith
[woman] Stevin "Hedake" Smith
[man 3] committed the cardinal sin
of college sports.
[man 4] the fixing of a basketball game.
[Dwayne] I'm thinking,
"How could he do this?"
"Why would he do this?"
You know, we went to war together,
we were we were comrades.
We were We grew up together.
He let us down.
I'm sure he knows that he let us down.
Stevin Smith agreed to fix
basketball games for Benny Silman
and the other people named
in today's indictment.
Everything finally caught up with us.
And it was the
as they say, the judgment day.
It was time to pay the consequences.
[Joe Lodge]
Isaac got three years probation,
two-hundred hours of community service
and an $8,000 fine.
I wish I didn't do it.
At the time, I didn't know though.
I mean, if I had knew what was going on
and chose to do it, then yeah,
I deserve all that,
but I didn't even know.
I just wanted some money.
Just wanted some money.
[Lodge] Joe Gagliano
got 15 months in prison,
three years supervised release
and a fine.
[Joe] The judge
um
I remember him distinctly saying that
I destroyed the fabric
and the trust of college athletics.
[Lodge] Hedake Smith
received a year and a day in prison
- [camera shutters clicking]
- an $8,000 fine
and 200 hours of community service.
[Hedake] I fucked up.
My dream ever since I started playing
was to make it big
and get the fuck outta the ghetto.
But now, it was over.
[Kent] The cost
of the point shaving scandal
was tremendous
for Hedake Smith.
You know, it probably affected his chances
of making it in the NBA.
And he ended up
playing in the minor league.
Isaac Burton bounced around overseas.
Not a glamorous existence.
ASU's reputation was severely damaged,
and it cost Bill Frieder
his college basketball coaching career.
But, for me,
the biggest realization was
I realized how easy it is to shave points.
To get to a to get to a kid
and to have him affect a basketball game.
When you're an 18, 19, 20-year-old
college kid that's fighting and clawing
and worrying about where
your next meal's gonna come from
and you're gonna throw money
in front of 'em?
It's very easy to get tempted.
[Ice] That's why they need
to start paying the college kids.
They have to.
Because gonna happen again.
It's gonna happen again.
Always, you know,
preaching to the younger kids,
younger generations about,
do the right thing, don't get caught up.
You know,
don't betray the game that you love.
Because if you do
it's something you'll have to live with
for the rest of your life.
- [whistle blowing]
[man] The game of basketball
just made me really dream big.
I was just a young kid in the ghetto,
playing a game that I loved.
I had no idea what it could do.
But then I realized I could go places
I never thought I would go before.
You just gotta go for it.
[commentator] Hedake, end to end.
[announcer] Hedake Smith!
- [commentator] Oh, my. Oh, my.
- [comm 2] Hedake.
[comm 3] There's your leader right there,
Stevin "Hedake" Smith.
Hedake, doing it with one. Count it!
A spectacular performance by Stevin Smith.
[crowd cheering]
[inhales]
Could you excuse me for a moment, please?
To be honest with you, it's like
I can't even find the words to explain
the feeling, you know? Of what I lost.
[man 1] This is one
of the most significant
sports conspiracies
involving college athletes in the country.
[man 2] It was a huge scandal
on a scale that hadn't been seen
in college basketball
in a long, long time, if ever.
[commentator] Hedake going for the record.
My personal reaction is, "How could you
do this? Why would you do this?"
[man] Rumors started spreading
around the town
like they had some sort
of inside information.
They've all assured me
that there's no involvement on their part,
and I believe 'em.
Oh, shit.
[commentator] There it is.
Oh. Oh, two misses!
My goodness.
[man] I'm thinking,
"What's going on with these guys?"
"Are we on the same team right now?"
[commentator]
Arizona State is doing everything it can
to throw this game away.
[man] We're talking about students
who are running operations in the tens
and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And that's when I saw the big picture.
There was people behind the scenes
who'd ruined everything.
[theme music playing]
[crowd cheering]
[man] Having been a sports columnist
at the Arizona Republic
for almost 35 years,
I've pretty much lived my life
as a reporter covering
the Arizona State college teams.
I started covering Sun Devil basketball
in the early '90s,
um, when Bill Frieder became head coach.
[indistinct chatter]
[man] It's a fabulous school,
tremendous facilities, super campus.
Uh, you know,
the weather today is 75 degrees.
[Kent] At that time, Arizona State
was a college that had a lot going for it.
It was a popular school with a mixture
of kids from different backgrounds.
But they had one of the worst
basketball programs in the country.
They hadn't been to the NCAA tournament
since the early '80s.
They were a sleeping giant
and most of us who lived there thought,
"This giant is never going to wake up."
[upbeat music playing]
But Friedman made an immediate impact
recruiting the most talented
players available.
I mean, highly-ranked guys,
and those of us covering the team
were like, "How did he get these people?"
[commentator] Over the head they go. Oh!
- [indistinct chattering]
- [crowd cheering]
Suddenly, the atmosphere at the arena
changed dramatically.
[man] It was awesome,
being a member of the ASU teams,
especially in those years
when we were a pretty good team.
We had highly-touted players.
There was Isaac Burton,
Mario Bennett,
Ryan Riley.
We were a unit, working together.
[commentator] This team lives and dies
with the man who has the ball,
Hedake Smith.
[comm 2]
Oh, what a heads-up play by Hedake Smith.
[comm 1] He's just been unstoppable.
[Dwayne]
And then there was the main attraction.
Hedake was unbelievably talented.
[commentator] side, at 60, 4.6 left.
Here comes Stevin Smith.
- Pulls up from about 40.
- [buzzer sounding]
It's good! He made it!
Can you believe it? Stevin Smith
We was like fuckin' top rock stars.
I mean, it was amazing.
[announcer] Point for Hedake Smith!
Oh, my goodness.
We got star-studded treatment.
Like, everywhere you go,
pretty much somebody knew you.
But Hedake was definitely the man.
And to see the way he was getting treated
everywhere we went and stuff like this,
I was like, "This is amazing.
Like, wow. They love Hedake."
[commentator] The key to Arizona State
is Stevin "Hedake" Smith
and believe me,
he becomes a headache for the opposition.
[Dwayne] Hedake could
absolutely dictate the outcome of a game.
So, coming into the '93 season,
I had high expectations for our team.
And I knew that he wouldn't let us down.
[commentator] Oh, my goodness!
[crowd cheering]
[Kent] There was absolutely real pressure
on this team, especially on Hedake Smith,
because college basketball's
a huge business.
The coaches make a ton of money,
a successful program
can bring in millions to a school,
um
and Arizona State probably felt like,
"We've got all the pieces here
to contend for a conference title,
and anything less than that
would be a big disappointment."
I mean
we were making the school all that money
and we didn't get compensated at all.
[commentator] Smith. Whoa.
[Hedake] They were the ones
who was behind the scenes
with millions of dollars.
[crowd cheering]
We were the ones out there on the court.
We all came from humble backgrounds,
and we were all there
on basketball scholarships.
You know, my first two years
living in a dorm,
I got a check for $130 dollars a month.
You know? And how can you live on that?
There was times I didn't eat.
I'm not making this up.
I would sit in that room hungry,
bunch of times.
I would walk to other people's dorms
and ask for something to eat.
I mean, that was real.
But, going into my senior year,
you know, I knew I had a good chance
of making it to the NBA.
And that's when I could start
making big money.
But what happened was, uh
I hooked up with a guy
that I had been knowing
ever since my freshman year.
Uh, a guy by the name of Benny Silman.
He was the campus bookie.
You know, he introduced me to gambling
and that
That kinda changed everything.
[Mozart's "Requiem in D minor" playing]
[man] It was January, 1994.
I was trading bond futures
at the board of trade in Chicago.
Um
Twenty-two, 23 years old,
living in a nice high-rise building,
making an absurd amount of money
at a young age.
[phone ringing]
[beep]
And I remember my phone ringing,
and it was Benny.
Benny Silman.
I had met Benny through my brother
at Arizona State University,
and, um, he knew I gambled
since I was a kid,
so I ended up establishing
a bookmaking account with him,
and we developed kind of a friendship.
All of a sudden, he starts talking about,
"Joe, I got a fix."
"Joe, I got a fix."
And I shrug it off, like
I didn't really absorb
what he was saying at first.
And then finally he spelled it out.
He spells F-I-X.
And I said, "Oh, wow."
And it clicked with me all of a sudden.
"Are you crazy?
Man, I'm not into that stuff."
"That's wrong. I want no part of it."
[phone beeps]
Someone with a moral compass
woulda hung up
but I didn't have that compass in place.
And then Benny said,
"Did you ever hear of Hedake Smith?"
I said, "No idea."
He said, "Hedake's the point guard
for the ASU basketball team."
"He's an absolute basketball stud."
"He dictates everything on the court.
And I got him."
"I got him."
He said, "He's a gambler."
"And he's into my bookmaking operation
for about $10,000 bucks."
"And he's got no way to pay me right now."
And so, I concocted this plan
that the only way he could pay his debt
is to fix a game.
He said, "Joe, we can make some money."
I said, "You know what, Benny?"
"If I'm going to put dollars
in this thing,
I wanna verify and validate this thing."
"I gotta talk to this kid."
[phone ringing]
[phone ringing]
[phone ringing]
[phone ringing]
I remember being on the phone
with Hedake and thinking
he was afraid.
I could almost hear his voice trembling.
Oh, yeah, of course I was nervous
going into it, you know, but
at the same time, I owed Benny some money.
So, ain't no turning back.
He says to me, "I'll do this
but I don't wanna lose."
I said, "Man, you don't have to lose."
"Just don't win
by more than I'm gonna tell you to."
I go, "Really?"
"So, you're telling me we can win the game
and I can make money?"
Yeah.
[chuckles]
Fucking no-brainer.
[Joe] But, to his credit, he said,
"I only wanna do two games."
He said, "Because then I'm gonna have
to turn my game up for the NBA scouts."
Um, "It's real important that
I get drafted for my family and I."
I said, "Okay."
I said, "I'll tell you what,
Benny and I are gonna give you
$20,000 bucks a game."
[Hedake laughing]
Excuse me.
I mean, oh, man.
[Joe] I could tell that was
a boatload of money to him.
I said, "Listen, if you want to bring on
any other players on the team,
that's up to you to do,
but I'm not paying
more than $20,000 dollars."
That was, you know, it was a no-brainer.
I knew exactly who I could go to.
Isaac Burton was, like,
a real special person to me, you know.
He was real cool.
He was Ice.
Isaac Burton. Ice, Ice, Baby. That's me.
[commentator]
Burton, in and on the floor. Look out.
Oh, he is the man.
Wild and crazy. Wild and crazy.
I didn't do anything to hurt people,
like violence or nothing like that,
but doing silly stuff like kids do,
that was all me.
[crowd cheering]
[Ice]
Hedake's like a true friend, teammate.
We loved and respected each other.
And, we all
That's how we treated each other.
I was his Robin, he was Batman.
[Hedake] So, I drove over to the dorm
and called him down,
you know, to my truck,
and I was like, "Hey, young fella,
got a way, you know, make you some cash."
He said,
"I need you to do a favor for me."
I'm like, "What?"
I'm thinking, "What you need from me?"
He said, "I'm gonna need you to miss
some shots. You know, fix the game."
And I was like, "No, no, no."
"I'm not gonna do nothing crazy,
silly like that."
But I knew that he could benefit,
you know, financially.
Then I got a envelope,
right then and there.
I got a envelope full of hundreds.
I was like, "Yo."
Next thing you know, he-he was all in.
So, now I was like,
"Well, what do I gotta do?"
And he started explaining to me
what point shaving is.
[Joe] Like I said to Hedake,
fixing an outcome of a basketball game,
it's all about betting lines.
A betting line is established on a game
with the simplicity of knowing
that there's a favorite and an underdog.
So, for example,
if you're gonna bet the favorite
on a line established around 12 points,
the favorite needs to win
by more than that number.
If you're gonna bet the underdog,
the underdog could lose the game outright,
but they cannot lose
by more than what the line is,
what the betting line is.
What I did was I took the underdog.
That's because it's easier
for the favorite to win a game by less.
It's all about little subtleties
that a player can do.
Maybe there's a bad pass.
Maybe it's bricking a few free throws
down the stretch.
Just control the game enough
where your team is not gonna win
by more than X amount of points.
That's how a fix is done.
This is known as point shaving.
Point shaving.
So, I ended up, uh,
looking at the remaining schedule.
And I saw, in about two weeks' time,
there were games coming up
against Oregon State and Oregon.
Two home games on a Thursday
and on a Saturday
where ASU would be favored.
Where Hedake and Isaac
could better control the game.
So, I took Oregon State, the underdog.
That's the side that I was on.
That's the side that my money was on.
So, those factors in my mind,
I went to the bank the next morning,
pulled out my entire trader's savings.
I managed to put together
a little over $500,000 in cash.
So, the only place to bet money like that
would be Vegas.
[car horn honking]
[upbeat music playing]
[siren wailing]
I remember thinking to myself,
"Vegas is the betting capital
of the world."
"It's gonna be easy to bet 500,000 bucks
on a game."
I'm telling you, it's not. It's not.
These large corporations
are as greedy as can be.
They don't want to lose money to you.
It felt like eyeballs were on me
and people were watching me.
The risk involved was
creating the red flags
that other people would get wind
of what I was doing.
And the biggest way to do that would be
to create what's known as a CTR,
which is a currency transaction report.
These are generated by casinos
when you're betting over 10,000 in cash.
So, you had all this money you had to bet,
but you did not want to do it
in any increment north of 9,900,
because that's when
the questions are asked.
And so, I ended up giving my dad,
who was living in Las Vegas, 100,000.
Ended up giving
two of his friends 100,000.
And we went to over 20 hotels.
Didn't make any bets over 9,900,
and we ended up getting all the money off.
So, at the end of the day,
if everything went well
I'm gonna win a little under
$1.1 million on game one.
Welcome to Tempe, everyone.
I'm Tim Healey, along with Gil Tyree.
Glad you joined us this evening.
Keys to Victory tonight for ASU.
Well, let's open it up and unlock it.
The first thing is the Stevin Watch.
We wanna make sure
he'll have a big night against Oregon.
[Ice] So, before the game, I was worried.
'Cause I didn't wanna lose.
I hate losing.
But Hedake came up to me
in the locker room and he said,
"We don't have to lose,
we just have to win
by a certain amount of points."
So, I said,
"How do we know what the point is?"
He said, "Don't worry about that,
I'll tell you."
I would always get a phone call
before the game.
They would give me a number.
In game one, ASU was a far superior team
than Oregon State.
[Joe] On paper, they were
a 12 and a half or 13 point better team.
That's the reality,
but I was on a mission,
and my mission was to secure
the money that I had in play.
So, I gave Hedake and Isaac
a lower number to protect myself.
For the first game, Hedake told me
that the number was six.
That's what we had to win by.
Six or less.
[crowd cheering]
[commentator]
Crowd starting to get into it,
trying to fire the Sun Devils up here.
They're ready to go
as Mario Bennett jumps center,
and it will go to Oregon State.
[Joe] We ended up going to the sports book
with my dad and his two friends
and myself.
We were gonna watch the game, but, um
it wasn't even on TV.
It wasn't on TV, so we were sitting there
every five, ten, fifteen minutes,
waiting for the score
to come across the ticker.
And, I'll tell you what,
it didn't start off too good.
[commentator] Devils in transition,
Hedake leads the fast break.
Pulls up to the trey. That's in there.
So, in the first half,
against Oregon State,
Hedake go off.
Hedake Smith knocks down the three.
Puts up the shot, hits the bullseye.
Hedake pulls the trigger Count it!
[crowd cheering]
Hedake has 16 points tonight,
four three-point buckets.
It was unbelievable.
It was shocking. Um
ASU went up by 13,
and I thought
maybe he had a moment of clarity
in his conscience
saying that,
"What I got myself involved with
was maybe not a good idea."
[commentator] Hedake. Hedake. Hedake!
[crowd cheering]
Hedake stealing it.
A spectacular performance by Stevin Smith!
I mean, just three after three
after three after three after three,
and I'm like, "Oh, man.
We're gonna win by too much."
[commentator] As Hedake comes up with
his second steal and another easy lay-up.
And it is a 15-point ASU lead.
You start thinking,
"Gosh, what am I doing?"
Here I am holding tickets that
with Oregon State
that are all gonna be losers.
[producer] Were you thinking,
"Has he changed his mind?"
No, he just said, he said,
"Burton, I got it. I got it."
[commentator]
ASU should be able to build on this lead.
But instead, there's Hedake
with a personal foul.
Now Oregon State has it once again.
Suddenly, their confidence builds.
But then,
when the second half rolled around,
literally the magic started happening.
[commentator] Three on two.
Result: an easy basket
to Stephane Brown. Score.
ASU should be dominating, but instead
they're letting this lead slip away.
[Dwayne] Oregon State comin' back
on us like that and I'm thinking,
"Maybe I'm stinking it up out here. Maybe
Mario, maybe Isaac or Ron,
maybe they're stinking it up.
"But it's not Hedake."
He's out here to win tonight.
[commentator] Hedake. Yes!
[crowd cheering]
Hedake bullseye on the three.
The Sun Devils lead by six.
[Ice] I was always looking
at the scoreboard.
I would keep looking up at the scoreboard.
That's the only thing I was worried about.
Remember, I was the point guard.
Point guard is the main player.
The one to bring the ball up the court.
Point guard is the quarterback,
the pitcher.
So, I was in control.
[commentator]
Poor passing right there. Very sloppy.
[Hedake] I had different techniques.
You can take your time, walk the ball
up the court, shot clock going down.
Start the offense late.
I knew what situation
to put certain players in
so they couldn't score.
[commentator] Riley launches the three
and has it go off the rim.
It has been a sloppy performance tonight
by ASU with the exception of Hedake Smith.
- Brown puts it up.
- [buzzer sounding]
And there's the buzzer, ending the play.
Hedake Smith
with a monster performance tonight.
Thirty-nine points.
Finally, the final score
with the big F next to it
scrolled across the ticker.
[commentator]
Final score of 88 to 82.
And sure enough, they won by six.
Exactly what I told Hedake
it needed to be.
I mean, was I shocked? Hell yeah.
I mean, I could not even fathom
the thought that Hedake would be able
to get that game to land right on six.
But this guy had enough skill
to make it happen.
Not gonna lie, a million dollars in cash?
Yeah, it's-it's intoxicating.
Twenty thousand, as a college kid?
Oh, man. Fucking amazing.
[laughing]
I mean, it was for me
I was like, "Man, this is Woo-hoo!"
"This is the life," 'cause it was easy.
It was easy. That was an easy payday.
Well, congratulations, 39 points.
You have to feel good.
[laughing]
I just scored 39 points,
and we won the game.
Just all about winning.
Long as you winnin'
nobody ever suspect nothing.
[crickets chirping]
[Joe] The day after game one,
I woke up bright and early
and hit the streets in Vegas, again.
I knew I only had one game left.
So, my mindset
was to maximize the money that I had.
How do I take my 1.2
and get the biggest bang for that buck?
How can I do it better?
Bigger, better and smarter.
[fast-paced jazz music playing]
By a stroke of luck,
it just happened to be the day before
the gambler's biggest holy day there is,
which is Super Bowl Sunday.
[cheering, whooping]
Vegas was an absolute madhouse.
The Dallas Cowboys
were playing the Buffalo Bills
and there was just a lot of money in town.
To my knowledge, we were completely
flying under the radar.
And between the help of my dad
and his two friends,
I ended up successfully getting off
about $1.2 million in bets
on Oregon.
Line opened up about 12, 12 and a half,
but once again, I spoke with Hedake
and once again, I gave him a lower number
as my margin of error.
I said, "I don't care what you do,
how you do it."
"You could lose the game for all I care,
but if you win the game
- just don't win by more than"
- Six.
The magic number was six.
Let's go.
[commentator] Crowd of seven to 8,000
here at the Activity Center on their feet
cheering the introduction
of the Arizona State Sun Devils.
Certain that
they will have to play a lot better
than they did the other night.
For the Oregon game, I could honestly say
thoughts of concern went through my mind.
"Oh, my gosh.
What if Hedake has a bad day?"
And so, I told Benny to go to the game
and sit right behind the ASU bench.
Just to act as a constant reminder
so Hedake could understand
that he had to perform.
But once again,
it didn't start out very well.
[commentator]
Fontana now goes baseline and scores.
- Fontana the lob to Mario
- [whistle blows]
Mario said, "Look what I found."
And Riley for three.
[crowd cheering]
[Dwayne] We're up 15 points,
and our leading scorer
hasn't scored one point.
He's not the usual aggressive Hedake.
[commentator] Hedake.
- [crowd ooh's]
- [commentator] Can't get it to fall.
[Hedake] Problem was Mario Bennett,
Dwayne Fontana, Ron Riley,
they was playing well,
and it was just hard to control the game.
[Joe] At that point,
it didn't look promising.
ASU had a double-digit lead.
[commentator]
The Arizona State lead now 18.
[Hedake] In my mind,
I'm thinking enough is enough.
It's time to, you know, turn it around.
[commentator]
Hedake being hounded this half by Parker.
And Oregon almost forces a steal there
and Hedake
- [whistle blowing]
- Uh-oh.
Oh, my goodness.
[Joe] And then it got a lot worse.
[commentator] Hedake Smith is down.
Hedake, what looked to be pretty severely,
twisted his ankle.
And he was taken out of the game.
[commentator]
Let's take a look at that play.
[Hedake] That was a freak accident.
I mean, as you saw,
my ankle buckled and I went down.
It was a lot of pain.
And, in my mind, I'm thinking,
"It's off, the fix off."
I can't play.
[commentator]
Hedake heads to the dressing room.
[Joe] So, was I nervous about the bet?
You better believe I am.
Without Hedake on the court,
the other players for ASU
could just start ripping it up
and beat the snot out of 'em that night.
That's when I got nervous.
That's when I got really nervous.
'Cause, okay, now it's my time.
You know, it's my time to do it,
if it comes down to it.
[producer] Did you want to do it?
No.
That was
That's when I really got worried,
because I told them,
"It's the last game.
You know, I know what's at stake."
[comm] Bennett with the follow.
I got to get back out there,
I gotta control the game.
[commentator] We have good news to report.
Hedake's ankle has been heavily taped.
He has put on a new pair
of high-top sneakers,
and there you see Stevin Smith,
back to give it a try in the second half.
[Hedake] Growing up in the ghetto,
you have to be able to survive
where you at, you know.
I'm not gonna say I was no damn hit man
or no, you know, big time fighter,
but I had survival skills.
And so, we went out the second half
and did what we had to do.
[commentator] That pass for Smith
stolen by Darryl Parker.
Who finishes with a flourish.
[Joe] Hedake and Isaac were still fighting
to protect what they had promised to do
- and what they were getting paid to do.
- [comm] Hedake.
- Oh! No basket.
- [crowd ooh's]
Orlando Williams. That's a two-pointer.
Darryl Parker. Hit the three.
Parker. And he hits again.
Out of nowhere,
the Ducks have ripped off ten points.
It was It was a relief, you know.
We was gonna do this, and then it's over.
[commentator]
Hedake getting it to Fontana Yes!
Once again, landed on six.
So, I ended up cashing the tickets,
and it was about a little north
of two and a half million bucks,
all in, by the time game two finished.
Once again, you know, I was 20,000 richer.
After we did it,
I got paid again that night.
I was up. Up, up, up.
I would just wake up in the morning
and go shop.
Cell phone, clothes, earrings,
food for everybody.
My car, I hooked my car up.
That green Toyota Tercel.
It went from nothing to limo tint,
alarm, music, rims, everything.
I didn't save a dime. I spent all of it.
And I started buying all type of shoes,
had big rope chains,
you had big old watch,
bought me two big old diamonds.
Put a payment down on a GMC Typhoon.
That was like a $30,000 car.
[Ice] It was dark gray and it faded
to a light gray. Triple gold Daytons,
and then it came with a chip in it
where the tires don't screech.
- [engine revs]
- It just takes off.
Great times at Arizona State. Great times.
[producer]
Did you basically spend all of the money?
[laughs]
[Dwayne] I never asked any questions.
I think we drew our own conclusions.
I believed it was
because of a sports agent
advancing him some money.
Did I feel like
I could be, you know, be caught?
I didn't think I'd be touched at the time.
You know, we were superstars.
- [producer] So, you had no worries?
- Not at all.
[birds chirping]
[Kent] It was around the time
of that Oregon game.
Maybe a couple of days afterwards.
I received a message.
And it said something like, you know,
"You might wanna check out Hedake Smith."
"There's something going on
at Arizona State."
"He's all of a sudden flush with cash,
driving a nice car."
You know. And I think he made a reference
to point shaving.
I just thought,
"Wow. Why would Hedake do this
when he's a shoo-in for the NBA?"
It didn't make a lot of sense.
But I started thinking as a reporter if
You know, "If this is true, this is huge."
Massive story.
[Joe]
After game two, I flew back to Chicago.
I'm back inside my life,
and, um, I truly believed,
with every fiber of my body,
I was done.
It's what Hedake and I talked about
on the initial call,
two games and I'm done,
it's what I believed.
[phone ringing]
[Joe] Until one day, I get a phone call.
And it's Hedake Smith.
I'm like, "What the heck?"
And he caught me off guard.
I didn't even know he knew my number.
He said, "Hey, we're playing UCLA
tomorrow night,
and I wanna bet on myself. Can you do it?"
I said, "Are you serious?"
I said, "How much you looking
to put down on yourself?"
He said, "I wanna bet 20,000 on myself."
I said, "Do you have the money
to pay me if you lose?"
And he said to me immediately,
"I'm not gonna lose."
But I knew in my gut:
the guy spent all his money.
And if UCLA wins that game
his only way to repay me
is to perform for the USC game
that's coming up two days later.
[producer] Fix another game?
So, I said, "Okay. Fair enough."
"You got ASU plus four
tomorrow night for 22,000."
"You lose, I'll talk to you later."
That was the end of the conversation.
[phone beeps]
Man, that's a bunch of bullshit.
- [producer] Really?
- Really. Big facts.
[Joe] Hedake has denied the bet
all the way through,
but, um
it happened.
It happened.
[Joe] I think UCLA at the time was
one of the best teams in the nation.
They were absolute studs.
But I knew Hedake
was playing for survival.
Playing for survival, betting on himself.
For Hedake's bet,
UCLA was favored by four points.
That means Arizona State
could win the game outright
and eke out a winner no matter what,
but if they did lose the game,
just don't lose by more than four.
So, if they lost by one, two or three,
he would be a winner.
[Hedake] UCLA was always tough.
You know, they had one of the top coaches
and some damn good players.
So, it was a dogfight.
Look, this was a taste
of what NBA would be like.
And I was gonna take them down.
[comm 1] Here comes Hedake.
- [comm 2] Hedake.
- Here's the lob to Bennett
- [comm 2] Hello.
- Yes.
[announcer] Hedake Smith!
[Ice] Before UCLA,
I asked him, "Can I do it?"
"You gonna do it this game?"
He said, "No."
He ain't doing it.
Like, okay.
[comm 1] Smith.
[comm 2] You could tell when he got it
in his hand he was gonna let it fly.
- Bye-bye.
- [comm 1] Three in a row
Yes, indeed!
[cheering]
- [comm 2] Bring out the Aspirin.
- [comm 1] He's got 22 points.
Hedake, he played his ass off.
He played a phenomenal game.
It was pretty much a tie game
back and forth the entire game.
[comm 1] Brewer.
[Joe] Now remember, Hedake's out there
trying not to lose by more than four.
[comm 1] We're tied at 70!
[comm 2] Oh, it's heating up now.
[Joe] The last minute or two of the game,
UCLA went up by two.
[comm 1] Dollar. Two points.
Ed O'Bannon. Yes.
[Joe] And then by four.
[comm 1] Zidek, he had one there earlier.
He does it again!
Six point game now. UCLA's up by six.
And, oh, by the way,
there's one second left on the clock.
The game's over. No ma
There's no six point field goal
that's gonna tie the game.
So, the only player
out of those ten people
on the court that was motivated,
was Hedake.
Now all of a sudden,
Hedake really asking for the ball.
Like maybe wanting to get another shot up.
At-at that moment,
all I want to do is just get one score.
That's all I wanted to do.
[Joe] And with that,
Hedake sprints up the court.
[Ice] I mean, he dribbled hard and fast.
And I'm thinking,
"Huh? It's already a loss."
[Joe] Hedake plants
behind the three point line
and fires a three-pointer.
- [buzzer sounding]
- [comm 1] Hedake takes the last shot
as UCLA comes up with a 76-70 victory.
[Joe] And you see Hedake
just absolutely dejected.
He seemed distraught about it.
Like, who cares, Hedake?
Like, we wouldn't have won
if you made the shot.
Now, to everyone else, who the heck cares?
Because the game would've went
from six to three.
But if ASU would've only lost by three,
Hedake doesn't lose $22,000.
Everybody knew me as Hedake.
But my mom, people that really know me,
my church members, they knew Stevin Smith.
Pretty much, Hedake was a character.
Basketball player.
College superstar.
Hedake got Stevin Smith in trouble.
[Joe] At that moment in time,
I look at Hedake
and it's just everything changed with him.
His shoulders slumped.
The look of dejection on his face,
'cause now he knows that Benny and I
have got him for the game on Saturday.
He's ours for Saturday.
[commentator] An obvious carry violation.
[Kent] I started calling
people I knew connected to the program,
people at the school,
anybody I could find
and kind of run this
call behind them, say,
"Hey, I got this-this tip."
"I'm hearing Hedake
might be involved with point shaving."
"What's going on?"
Um, but I could just
never nail anything down.
It just came up empty at every turn.
[Joe] It was Saturday,
the date of the USC game.
I'm back in Vegas,
I got Hedake completely locked in.
But I knew I had my work cut out for me.
Because this time,
there was no Super Bowl to back me up,
no big money in town.
How do I not get caught?
How do I stay under the radar?
But I had
two and half million bucks with me
to bet on USC.
I also knew the betting line
that I was gonna bet on
was right around 11.
So, there was no way not to move that line
betting that kind of money.
That's because when a massive
amount of money is put on one side,
the line changes.
So, when I bet that money,
I moved that betting line down to six.
That was the first time
I felt I attracted attention.
I felt like with that line movement,
with the questions that were being asked
every time I walked up
to a sports book counter to make a bet,
um, I felt there was some exposure there.
[Ice] Against USC, Hedake told me
that we was point shaving again.
I said, "Okay. I'm doing this."
"Let's get some more money."
[comm] Here comes Hedake Smith.
And Isaac Burton brings it across
and SC with a steal.
[Joe] I really didn't care
if Arizona State lost,
as long as they didn't win
by six points or more.
That's where I needed to be.
[comm] Harris has three.
Harris is gonna have to do something here.
Nice dish.
Look at that crash!
[laughing] Oh, Jones.
SC has a ten-point lead.
I remember that game just being terrible.
It was an awful game,
was a stinker of all stinks.
And Hedake really didn't play well.
[commentator]
Another bad pass.
[Hedake] USC, they just kicked our ass.
They came out, you know,
it was one of them days
where you can't buy a bucket.
[comm] Hedake Smith.
Hedake Smith has not scored yet.
[fans chanting]
[Ice] Whenever your point guard,
he's not playing well,
your team is going to suffer.
and if your point guard is point shaving,
your team is really gonna suffer.
It's just simple as that.
[whistle blows]
[comm] And a charge on Hedake Smith!
And he is gone.
[Dwayne] It definitely feels at this point
that the team is fractured.
And that really hurt me
because of the effort that I put forth
every night.
And at this point, I'm thinking,
"Why do I do this to myself?
Nobody else cares."
[Joe] I don't know if it was Hedake
having a bad day
or Hedake taking the easy way out,
but USC won the game outright.
So, it didn't matter
what the betting line was.
The underdog had won,
and I had another winner.
[Hedake]
I've never liked losing, you know.
But every time you get a paper bag
full of hundreds, it's addictive.
It changed me.
It changed me.
[producer] Did you ever feel, like,
"Maybe we should stop now"?
I mean, we only had a couple games
left in the season. [chuckles]
If you look at it,
it was at the end of the season.
[Joe] I was completely convinced
at that point
that this-this-this party's over.
I had five million bucks
in a safe deposit box,
twenty-three years old.
What else could I possibly need
or want at that point?
[phone ringing]
A week later, um, I get a call from Benny.
He said, "Joe, I'm in trouble."
I said, "What do you mean?"
He said, "There's a guy out here
by the name of Big Red."
"He's about 550, 600 pounds with red hair,
and he's a drug dealer out here
and he's a bookmaker."
"He found out what I was doing,
and he wants in."
"He wants in on another game."
"And we think the Washington game
coming up is the next game to do it."
I said,
"Benny, you're-you're playing with fire."
"You have no idea of the challenges
and what you're up against."
"You're gonna mess it up."
But then I ended up thinking,
"Okay, these guys are gonna do this
with or without me."
"And if they do it without me
and get caught, I'm screwed."
And in my mind there was no way
in the world I could let that happen.
[fast-paced music playing]
So, the next morning, bright and early,
I flew out from Chicago to Vegas.
I didn't really want to be there.
But then I rationalized it by saying,
"Ten million dollars in cash
sounded so much better than five million."
[Hedake] For the Washington game,
the stakes changed.
Benny told me
he was gonna take the $20,000 dollars
that he was gonna pay me
and put it on the game.
That way, you know, we could make 40.
[Joe] I start going
to the same 20 different casinos,
but this time it just felt different.
Because there was supposedly
some heavy betting going on.
I was at the Mirage, um
making a bet for 9,900 on Washington,
and the ticket writer says to me,
"Hey, Joe,
there was just some big 600-pound guy
in here with red hair
that just bet on Washington, too."
"Plus, there's kids all around town
with ASU shirts
that are betting $20 bills
like they know the final score."
And at the point I knew.
The cat was out of the bag.
I'm in trouble.
[Hedake]
He would normally call me and give me,
you know, the number before the game.
But this time, he kept moving:
eight, seven, six, five.
[Joe] Laying off that money
was a monumental task.
I ended up getting off
three million bucks,
but moved the line significantly.
It started out at 12.
And it kept moving down.
I had the bulk of the money bet
on Washington as a seven-point underdog.
But at the end of the day,
that line ended up dropping down to three.
So, a nine-point movement in one day,
um, in a few hours
I knew was not good.
Typically, a line changes maybe ten times
before the game is played.
But before the Washington game,
the line changed 44 times.
That alerted the authorities.
There's something wrong.
This is unusual, something's going on.
Now, they didn't know what it was,
nobody knew what it was.
Um, but it alerted the authorities
and the Nevada Gaming Commission
then contacted the FBI,
said, "Hey, there's something screwy
going on here."
"Why don't you take a look at it."
[somber music playing]
[comm] Let's talk about Arizona State.
What has happened to the Sun Devils
the last couple of weeks?
Through injuries, poor shooting,
I don't know, turnovers,
the team hasn't been the same.
[Ice] That Washington game,
I wasn't even involved.
Hedake didn't say nothing about it.
He never mentioned it, not one time.
[Joe] For the Washington game,
I only had Hedake,
and that scared the heck out of me.
Because if Arizona State
played up to their ability,
they could easily win
by more than seven.
So, once again, I wanted to have a cushion
for Hedake's margin of error.
So, probably a couple hours
before the game,
I made it clear to him,
in no uncertain terms, what he had to do.
"We've both got a lot of money at stake,
you have to make this game land on three."
[Hedake] At that moment,
there was no turning back.
Hedake didn't know when to say,
you know, enough is enough.
Hedake felt he was untouchable.
Felt like he was bigger than the law.
[loud tapping on ball]
[crowd cheering]
[commentator] All right.
So, here we go. Washington in purple,
Arizona State in yellow.
And Stevin Smith is the major star
for the Sun Devils, keep your eye on him.
[Joe] After all the bets were made,
I was just mentally
and physically fatigued.
So, I went up to the hotel room,
and I turned on the ASU game.
And it was the perfect scenario.
[commentator] Washington has
the early lead. Backdoor, Tyrus, nice.
Jumper. Good!
Nice move. Maurice Woods, softly done.
Early on, it appears that Washington
has more energy than Arizona State.
[Dwayne]
The first half was a total let down.
Total disaster.
I remember getting down big, early.
And nothing was falling,
uh, it was just a terrible,
terrible performance in the first half.
[commentator] Fontana. No bucket.
Isaac Burton. Stops. In and out.
Hedake. NBA. Too long.
So far, nothing has gone right
for Arizona State.
[crowd booing]
So, the fans are booing the Sun Devils.
Losing to Washington in the first half?
It was fucking terrible.
But $40,000 dollars,
that's a lot of damn money.
[whistle blowing]
[commentator] And that is
an offensive foul by Hedake Smith.
Fifteen to six, Washington is up.
[Joe] As long as that game stayed
as Washington winning
or stayed within six points,
I knew I would be okay.
And so, I'm sitting on the bed,
I'm thinking through these scenarios,
and I just literally start falling asleep.
[muffled commentary]
I couldn't keep my eyes open.
Getting accepted to a major university
could come down to who gets
the highest score on the SAT.
Up Your Grades
can make that high score a reality.
Woke up three, four hours later.
And there was an infomercial
playing on the TV.
[TV] by Dr. Gary Gruber.
[Joe] I had no idea who won the game.
Remember, this is 1994.
There's no sports sites
that I could log onto and get a score.
Um
So, I threw on a
shirt and baseball hat
and walked down to the sports book.
Being involved in trading,
I was already used to taking risks.
I knew that some of your trades
are gonna go bad.
Hopefully,
the majority of your trades go good.
But I felt good
the way the game had been flowing.
It looked like ASU was just quitting.
It looked like they had no heart,
it looked like Washington
was gonna run all over 'em.
So, I felt my money was good.
And I remember
walking into that sports book
and looking for the ASU score.
And waiting for updates
to come across the ticker.
In my mind, this was a done deal.
[commentator]
And that's the end of the first half.
Arizona State is doing everything it can
to throw this game away.
We had a terrible first half.
A terrible first half.
We was getting booed by our own fans.
[Dwayne] So, now, going into half time,
we're in the locker room
and Coach Frieder, he tears into us.
He came in, cussing and shouting at me,
telling me we had a couple
NBA scouts there that
they wasn't gonna look at me
because I'm playing like shit,
and, "You're gonna mess up your career."
That's when he said it.
"We received a call from the FBI."
"They said this game
is under investigation."
"Anybody have"
I remember Bill Frieder saying,
"Anybody have anything to do with it,
they better let me know now."
"You better let me know now."
Oh, shit. We done fucked up.
[Hedake] The second half
was a terrifying moment,
you know,
and I didn't want it to leak out.
I just felt that I needed to do what I,
you know, had to do.
That way, wouldn't be no speculations
about me being involved in anything.
[commentator]
Stevin Smith, number 44 with the ball.
[Hedake] I'm thinking,
"Let's just win this game
and we'll deal
with the consequences later."
[commentator] Hedake
- Got it!
- [crowd cheering]
Stevin Smith. Here he goes.
Oh, great tip.
Arizona State starting to come alive here,
and the passion is back.
[Joe] That's when I found out
that ASU and Hedake
just stepped on 'em in the second half.
He just sucked it up and played hard.
[commentator] Hedake. Got it!
[crowd cheering]
- [buzzer sounding]
- And that's the end of the game.
Arizona State,
a very impressive second half.
[Joe] Hedake ended up
winning the game by 18 points.
Which meant for me,
that every bet I had made was a loser.
I just lost millions of dollars.
And, oh, by the way,
now
the worst case scenario with red flags
and attention is gonna happen.
[thrilling music playing]
Sure enough,
starting that Monday,
there were a lot of stories about
the unusual betting that occurred
on the ASU/Washington game.
We're not talking about people
taking two dollar bets.
We're talking about students
who are running operations in the tens
and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
[reporter] Have you talked
to your players about this?
- [Frieder] Yeah.
- What's the feeling?
They're-they're very upset about it,
they seem to be very upset,
concerned, and
they've all assured me
that there's no involvement on their part.
And I believe 'em.
It was out now.
The season was over, and it was out.
So, people would come up,
"Are you point shaving?"
"No I didn't do that."
Of course, I'm gonna say no.
I wasn't paying attention to the news,
but I'm done with it. [chuckles]
It was behind me then.
After the season finished, I head home.
I withdrew from all my classes and left,
so I didn't graduate.
But I felt like I had reached the top.
I was the highest scorer
in Arizona State history.
I won Male Athlete of the Year.
So, I just knew I'd get drafted.
[man] Welcome to the 1994 NBA Draft
at the Hoosier Dome.
[crowd cheering]
[Dwayne] The NBA Draft
is when the NBA teams,
they select the best
college basketball players in the country
to come be on their team.
So, we're all watching
'cause, you know, Hedake's our guy.
We wanna see him get drafted.
I watched it at home.
Back at home, me and my mother's house
back in Dallas.
I had, you know, a lot of my friends over.
We had balloons, food over there, music.
This was gonna be the dream come true.
Stay focused
it was about to happen.
With the first pick in the 1994 NBA Draft,
the Milwaukee Bucks select
Glenn Robinson from Purdue University.
[crowd cheering]
Jason Kidd, Grant Hill, Donyell Marshall,
Juwan Howard, Sharone Wright,
Lamond Murray,
from the University of California.
This concludes the draft.
So, I'd like you to join me in welcoming
[sighs]
When I hadn't got drafted, you know,
a lot of things
started going through my head.
Like, you know,
do they really know that it was me?
Do they really know
what I had got caught up in?
Do I think I got away with it
at that point?
I was really just hoping
that everyone would stay quiet.
Nothing would come out of it.
Um
And hoping that it would just die down
as a rumor and speculation.
[phone ringing]
[phone ringing]
[phone ringing]
But then, one day, I get a phone call.
And it's the FBI.
They told me I was the subject
and a target of a criminal prosecution
regarding the ASU matter.
The FBI tracked down the money trail,
and we were able to determine
that there was $8.7 million
bet in fixed games.
Joe Gagliano
absolutely knew what he was doing.
And to put the effort in
to go to 15, 16 casinos,
know how much money you had to lay down
and how much you couldn't lay down,
it was very sophisticated.
So, we knew he was the linchpin.
We could prove his involvement,
but then there were clearly
money transfers to Stevin "Hedake" Smith.
- [man 1] Stevin Smith
- [man 2] Stevin Smith
[woman] Stevin "Hedake" Smith
[man 3] committed the cardinal sin
of college sports.
[man 4] the fixing of a basketball game.
[Dwayne] I'm thinking,
"How could he do this?"
"Why would he do this?"
You know, we went to war together,
we were we were comrades.
We were We grew up together.
He let us down.
I'm sure he knows that he let us down.
Stevin Smith agreed to fix
basketball games for Benny Silman
and the other people named
in today's indictment.
Everything finally caught up with us.
And it was the
as they say, the judgment day.
It was time to pay the consequences.
[Joe Lodge]
Isaac got three years probation,
two-hundred hours of community service
and an $8,000 fine.
I wish I didn't do it.
At the time, I didn't know though.
I mean, if I had knew what was going on
and chose to do it, then yeah,
I deserve all that,
but I didn't even know.
I just wanted some money.
Just wanted some money.
[Lodge] Joe Gagliano
got 15 months in prison,
three years supervised release
and a fine.
[Joe] The judge
um
I remember him distinctly saying that
I destroyed the fabric
and the trust of college athletics.
[Lodge] Hedake Smith
received a year and a day in prison
- [camera shutters clicking]
- an $8,000 fine
and 200 hours of community service.
[Hedake] I fucked up.
My dream ever since I started playing
was to make it big
and get the fuck outta the ghetto.
But now, it was over.
[Kent] The cost
of the point shaving scandal
was tremendous
for Hedake Smith.
You know, it probably affected his chances
of making it in the NBA.
And he ended up
playing in the minor league.
Isaac Burton bounced around overseas.
Not a glamorous existence.
ASU's reputation was severely damaged,
and it cost Bill Frieder
his college basketball coaching career.
But, for me,
the biggest realization was
I realized how easy it is to shave points.
To get to a to get to a kid
and to have him affect a basketball game.
When you're an 18, 19, 20-year-old
college kid that's fighting and clawing
and worrying about where
your next meal's gonna come from
and you're gonna throw money
in front of 'em?
It's very easy to get tempted.
[Ice] That's why they need
to start paying the college kids.
They have to.
Because gonna happen again.
It's gonna happen again.
Always, you know,
preaching to the younger kids,
younger generations about,
do the right thing, don't get caught up.
You know,
don't betray the game that you love.
Because if you do
it's something you'll have to live with
for the rest of your life.