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1:05

Billy Preston arrived as

1:07

a freshman on the campus of the University

1:09

of Kansas in the fall of 2017. Billy

1:13

had grown up in Los Angeles, but

1:16

the sleepy college town of Lawrence

1:18

actually felt like a perfect match.

1:20

The vibe that I got, it was more like

1:22

Lawrence was like a mellow scene and that's

1:24

kind of how I am. I'm just,

1:26

you know, like a flat line. I'm never too high,

1:28

never too low. Billy

1:31

was no ordinary college freshman.

1:33

He was a Jayhawk, a player

1:36

on one of the top college basketball

1:38

teams in the country. And on that

1:40

campus, surrounded by Kansas

1:43

corn and soybean fields, he

1:45

was a celebrity. The lob

1:47

inside, Preston. That was

1:49

really good stuff. And

1:52

a timeout for Mark Johnson. You

1:56

know, I was a guy out here. People, you know,

1:59

snapping me, throwing me around. telling me this, you know, you're

2:01

a great basketball player and you're gonna

2:03

be in the NBA one day. I can, you

2:05

know, do something where a lot of people love

2:07

me for

2:08

doing what I do.

2:16

One Saturday in November, Billy

2:18

and his teammate Marcus Garrett decided

2:21

to drive to the mall to buy

2:22

some sneakers. Nike

2:25

was dropping a new edition of Air

2:27

Jordan 11s that day. White

2:29

and navy blue.

2:42

The

2:42

big mall with the exclusive shoes

2:44

was near Kansas City, about 40

2:47

miles away from the campus in Lawrence.

2:50

But Billy was taking his time driving

2:53

on the highway. It was rainy

2:55

and near freezing. I'm not

2:57

finna, you know, be doing nothing

2:59

crazy, like, wow, especially with a teammate

3:02

in a car, you know, while we

3:04

at KU, like, I'm smarter

3:06

than that.

3:07

Billy and Marcus were on a tight

3:09

schedule. They had a team meeting

3:11

that afternoon. Billy got

3:13

his

3:14

Jordans, but the store didn't have Marcus's

3:16

size. It got to, like, a

3:18

point where it's getting close

3:20

to the time. We got to be back for the meeting. So

3:24

I'll tell him, like, Marcus, we got to go, bro. Like,

3:26

you're going to have to get them shoes another time, but

3:28

we got to go, because, you know, if we miss this team meeting,

3:30

like, it's bad. Like, you know Coach Self about to

3:32

be onus.

3:34

Kansas head coach Bill Self had

3:36

already disciplined Billy for a minor

3:39

infraction. He'd missed curfew

3:41

a couple of days earlier, parked his car

3:43

illegally, and skipped class. Self

3:46

had made Billy sit out the Jayhawks season

3:48

opener against Tennessee State because of

3:50

that. So Billy and Marcus

3:52

got back into Billy's Dodge Charger and

3:55

hustled back

3:56

to Lawrence. So, Billy,

3:59

on the way back, we... rushing back, like I'm driving

4:01

back faster, locating what

4:03

I was going there. And

4:05

it was good. It wasn't

4:07

until like we got around the

4:09

corner from the school, like you could really see

4:12

the school right here, the athletic office. And

4:15

like, I don't know what happened, but I literally

4:18

turned the corner, like I make a left. And

4:21

next thing you know, like my back wheel

4:23

just like stopped moving. It just got

4:25

stuck and we start spinning out.

4:30

What Billy couldn't know at the

4:33

time was that this Saturday

4:35

quest for sneakers would end

4:37

up costing him nearly everything

4:40

that mattered to him. He

4:42

was about to get caught up in

4:44

a scandal that rocked

4:47

college athletics.

4:48

Breaking news, a federal probe

4:50

has turned up widespread fraud and corruption

4:53

in college basketball. Federal authorities

4:55

are calling the dark

4:56

underbelly of college basketball.

4:58

Federal investigators say a marketing executive

5:00

for Adidas agreed to funnel as much as $150,000 to

5:03

a high school. It's

5:05

been going on forever. And finally,

5:07

the government put two years wiretaps

5:10

into it. And this is what you get. Why

5:11

do you think there's so much scandal? Because the rules don't

5:13

make sense. Now, there's a lot more at stake.

5:17

Envelopes of cash, gotcha

5:19

style stings, wiretaps,

5:21

the feds, surveillance videos

5:23

in a swank hotel penthouse, a

5:26

two-story yacht, a case

5:28

appealed to the US Supreme Court.

5:31

This scandal would connect coaches

5:34

at Division I schools, executives

5:36

at a sneaker company, and a web

5:38

of agents, runners, and advisors,

5:41

all trying to grab their piece

5:44

of the billion dollar business that is

5:46

college basketball, a business

5:48

in which players were forbidden from

5:51

sharing any of the profits.

5:55

I'm Paula Levine. I'm an investigative

5:57

reporter for ESPN. In

6:00

my 25 years as a journalist,

6:02

I've been in far more courtrooms

6:04

than basketball courts. I've

6:07

been one of the reporters covering this

6:09

story for five years, the biggest

6:11

pay-for-play scandal ever in college

6:13

sports. I've watched

6:16

it in Baroial big-name university

6:18

programs we all thought were untouchable.

6:22

And I've seen it unravel the lives

6:24

of players like Billy Preston.

6:27

But I've always

6:29

wondered, how did all

6:31

this corruption exist for so

6:33

long as an open secret

6:36

throughout college basketball? And

6:40

would the scandal drag it into

6:42

the light and change everything?

6:49

From ESPN and 30 for 30

6:51

podcasts, this is The Bag

6:53

Game. The Bag Game. Episode 1.

6:58

The Making of Billy Preston. Billy

7:12

Preston went from being just a kid

7:14

who loved to play to one of the top

7:17

NBA prospects in the country. He

7:20

was such a valuable commodity

7:22

that sneaker company executives were

7:24

exchanging text messages about him.

7:27

How did that happen? Well,

7:29

hard work, practice, and luck. But

7:33

Billy also had parents so

7:35

committed to his success that

7:37

they were willing to uproot their entire

7:39

lives in pursuit of a dream.

7:42

I think I overcompensated for a lot of things.

7:46

I never told my son no, ever

7:49

in life. I met Billy's

7:52

mom, Nicole Player, back

7:54

in 2019. And she took me to the

7:56

very beginning. She got

7:59

pregnant when she was a kid.

9:59

Then you have myself, I'm a gold in my

10:02

own. TK

10:04

played basketball growing up in LA and

10:06

went to the University of Iowa to play with

10:09

legendary Hawkeyes coach Vivian Stringer.

10:12

The first game that I started, Coach

10:14

Stringer put me at the 1 and she was just like,

10:16

go play. That moment

10:18

right there just made me feel accomplished

10:21

being able to be on the floor and her having that

10:23

confidence in me.

10:24

TK got signed to a team in the WNBA

10:27

in the league's second season. I can

10:29

say that I had on the WNBA jersey.

10:32

I mean, I played for Hall of Fame coaches

10:35

and everything. Like I made it, whether I played

10:37

a day or 10 days. What

10:39

was the pay like in the NBA back

10:42

then? Oh, Paula, we're not talking about that. It

10:44

was non-existent. I mean, literally

10:47

free agents were getting paid $15,000. And

10:51

you know, we played just in the summer. Lupus

10:54

sidelined

10:54

TK's pro career. By 2003,

10:57

she was coaching high school basketball

11:00

in Los Angeles when she met Nicole. Billy

11:03

was five and Nicole says he

11:05

was full of energy. Rambunctious.

11:09

My grandmother would call him, oh boy, oh

11:11

boy. I mean, you look up this kid to be on the roof.

11:14

What are you doing up there? You

11:16

know, Nicole and TK moved in together

11:19

and registered in California as domestic

11:21

partners in 2006.

11:24

Billy called TK his godmother.

11:27

The family moved to Irvine, a small city

11:30

that's been ranked one of the safest places in

11:32

America.

11:33

It was a big change from South

11:35

LA. And as he got

11:37

older, Nicole says Billy

11:40

began to channel his boy energy

11:42

into one activity in particular.

11:45

All he wanted to do was skateboard all day. That's

11:47

all he did

11:47

from growing up in the valley, living in Orange County.

11:50

He just wanted to skateboard

11:53

all day.

11:54

I definitely had goals like being a professional

11:56

skateboarder. You know, I was kind of looking at it like

11:59

I could be like a.

12:00

the next Tony

12:02

Hawk or something like that, because I was

12:04

really good. Yeah, what was it about

12:07

skateboarding that you really liked? The

12:09

falling process, like I had

12:11

times where I was trying to

12:13

jump off six plus

12:15

stairs with my skateboard and

12:18

I'll fall off my skateboard and

12:20

have a bruise or a scar or something and

12:22

I have to get right back up. That's just one thing

12:24

that kind of made me tough. Like you

12:27

damn near fall in love with the ground. Ha

12:30

ha ha.

12:31

Billy may have enjoyed falling,

12:34

but Nicole and TK started to

12:36

worry about his skateboarding

12:37

accidents. When he

12:40

almost got hit by a car, he fell

12:42

off the skateboard, skateboard went into traffic, broken

12:44

pieces. That scared me to death. The

12:47

next one was he had fallen

12:50

and busted his head. He

12:52

needed like 10 staples. TK

12:54

was fed up with Billy's skateboarding,

12:56

so she made

12:58

a decision. One morning I woke

13:01

up, I couldn't find my skateboard like anywhere.

13:03

Like I thought I misplaced it. I

13:06

couldn't find it around the house. I checked outside

13:08

our apartment. It was nowhere to be found. And

13:11

then I went upstairs, I asked my mom, I'm like, yo, where's my

13:13

skateboard? My godmom told me she threw

13:15

it away.

13:16

All right, did you really throw his skateboard away?

13:19

Absolutely. I sure did. I

13:22

sure did. I said, we'll get something else,

13:24

we'll do something else, but this is it for that.

13:28

So at the moment I'm mad,

13:30

I'm very disappointed. Like

13:33

I'm highly upset. And I

13:36

went in my room and closed the door,

13:38

sat in there with an attitude for a minute. She came in there

13:40

and talked to me like, your skateboard not

13:42

going to get you nowhere. That's not something you should

13:45

be doing.

13:46

Instead by middle school, Billy

13:48

found his way to the sport that would define

13:50

his life, basketball. And

13:53

TK was willing to test him out. We

13:56

will watch basketball together and

13:58

then I...

13:59

I've always been coaching. So he

14:02

would come with me to my practices.

14:05

And so he wanted to play. So

14:07

I was like, okay. I was like, I'm gonna be hard on

14:09

you. I was like, if you want to play, there's

14:11

certain things you have to do and you have to be committed.

14:13

So as a young boy, she just started

14:16

training me, like working me out. I started getting in

14:18

the gym more, working on my game. Billy

14:21

had two things going for him at age 12.

14:23

He was tall, like really

14:26

tall, over six feet. And

14:28

he picked up skills quickly.

14:31

But he needed to develop as an overall

14:33

player. Billy was lazy. He

14:36

didn't want to run. He just wanted to

14:38

score points, you know, that was it. And

14:40

I just told him it was very simple. I

14:42

love you to death, but you

14:44

got to work hard. And if you're not gonna work hard, there's

14:47

no exception because we're going home together

14:49

and I love you and I'm raising you. So

14:51

how did he respond to that? Like what did that training look like? Howdy

14:54

at first, because it's like, what?

14:56

This is our team. I'm supposed to be, no, that's

14:58

not how it goes.

15:00

The lesson stuck. Through middle

15:02

school with Nicole's support, TK

15:05

kept training Billy and he kept

15:07

getting better. I started getting good,

15:09

getting better and reps and reps and

15:11

reps every day in the gym. It

15:13

got to a point to where like,

15:15

this is what I want to do. I can

15:17

make money. I can, you

15:19

know, make millions and live a great life by

15:22

just putting the basketball in the bucket.

15:24

By age 15, Billy was getting

15:27

ready for ninth grade and he had

15:29

his pick of high schools. Private

15:32

academies in Los Angeles were throwing

15:34

scholarships at him.

15:36

In December of his freshman year at

15:38

St. John Bosco, Billy had

15:41

his breakout game. His

15:43

team went to play in a national tournament

15:45

called the City of Palms Classic in

15:47

Fort Myers, Florida. This

15:51

was the kind of travel

15:53

that was becoming normal for Billy. This was the world of elite

15:55

youth basketball. and

16:00

his family had entered. But

16:02

for that game, the spotlight wasn't supposed

16:04

to be on Billy. TK remembers

16:07

the focus was on two of his teammates.

16:10

Tyler Dorsey, that was a preseason

16:12

All-American, Daniel Hamilton. So

16:14

you had those two guys being heavily recruited,

16:17

everyone's watching him, and then Billy's just a

16:19

freshman. And I had

16:21

told him to for the game, listen, all the attention

16:24

is gonna be on Tyler and Daniel. I

16:26

said, you gotta show up when it matters.

16:29

Their team lost, but Billy

16:31

ended the game with 21 points and 12 rebounds.

16:35

That made a big impression on

16:37

all the coaches and scouts in the stands.

16:39

From there, that's when the recruiting picked

16:42

up because he was showing he was

16:44

rebounding the ball and pushing

16:47

it. It was just they saw all facets of his

16:49

game and they couldn't believe a kid at 16 could

16:52

handle the ball this way, dribble

16:54

past and shoot. It was like, whoa,

16:56

who was this? And that was his freshman

16:58

year. That's when our phones started blowing

17:00

up. It was crazy. It's

17:03

not unusual for elite players to

17:05

go to a different high school every year, climbing

17:07

the ladder and gaining exposure at each stop.

17:12

Going into

17:13

the 10th grade, Billy

17:15

wanted to switch schools to join

17:17

some former teammates. And

17:20

Billy begged me to go to Redondo

17:21

Union High School. Now

17:23

I told you I never say no. So

17:26

we made that happen. Now, Redondo Union

17:28

High School is a

17:30

public school in the city of Redondo

17:32

Beach, California. But

17:36

Nicole and Billy didn't live in Redondo

17:38

Beach. They lived in

17:40

Irvine about an hour away. To

17:43

enroll Billy in the school, Nicole

17:46

used a false address. So

17:49

how did you end

17:49

up using someone's address? We paid them.

17:52

Yeah. I paid the landlord.

17:55

It was an empty apartment. To be able to... get

18:00

mail there and whatnot. You

18:03

hear about young athletes doing this kind of thing

18:06

all the time. TK told me she

18:08

even did it. Oh, I used an address

18:10

in high school. That's normal. When I

18:12

left from Morningside to Lenwood,

18:15

I lived in Compton with my grandparents,

18:18

and that's out of district. But we

18:20

had a member of our church that went

18:22

to Lenwood. So when it came full

18:24

circle for him, of course,

18:26

if we don't live in the area, we definitely need an

18:29

address.

18:30

Billy had switched schools after his freshman

18:32

year, and halfway through Billy's sophomore

18:34

year, Nicole and TK made

18:36

an even bigger move for Billy's

18:39

future. They picked up from

18:41

Southern California and moved

18:43

to Dallas, Texas. Nicole

18:47

and TK had no connections to Dallas, no

18:49

family or friends there. But Billy

18:52

had an opportunity to play for Prime

18:54

Prep, a private school co-founded

18:56

by former NFL player Deon Sanders that

18:59

would put him on

19:00

a bigger stage. Now

19:03

it's like you turn into a star damn near.

19:06

He was ranked in the top ten in his class

19:09

nationally. His older teammates

19:11

were getting recruited by Division I schools like

19:13

Louisville, Alabama, and Arizona.

19:16

So in Billy's mind, it was all

19:18

leading to the big time.

19:20

You know, it was all just

19:22

to get to the NBA. Like, whatever

19:24

I had to do to advance and

19:26

further my career to get to the NBA, if

19:28

I felt like this was the right move, this is what we

19:30

was going to do.

19:32

Nicole had a different goal

19:34

in mind for Billy. My goal was always

19:37

for Billy just to go to college.

19:39

I had my son at 19, my mother had

19:41

me at 18. I mean, I don't

19:44

think I had NBA dreams because, to

19:46

be honest with you, I didn't think they were real. But

19:49

for Billy, the dream was real. And

19:52

his senior year of high school would be crucial

19:54

for his prospects. He needed to go

19:56

somewhere with a track record of landing players

19:59

in big...

19:59

college programs. Prime

20:02

Prep had folded in a scandal.

20:05

So in 2016, he

20:07

ended up at Oak Hill Academy, a

20:10

small private boarding school in rural

20:12

mouth of Wilson, Virginia, where annual

20:14

tuition was close to $30,000. And

20:18

how did you guys pay for that?

20:20

We didn't. He had a scholarship.

20:24

Yeah, he had a full scholarship. By

20:27

this time, Nicole and TK

20:29

had split up. When Billy went

20:31

to boarding school in Virginia, they agreed

20:33

that Nicole would stay in Dallas and

20:35

TK would move to Charlotte, a couple of

20:37

hours drive from Oak Hill so Billy

20:40

could have a parent nearby.

20:42

I thought he could develop into a really

20:44

good player. Steve Smith

20:46

was the head coach at the school. He

20:48

coached at least 40 future NBA

20:51

players, including Kevin Durant and

20:53

Carmelo Anthony. And when Coach

20:55

Smith looked at Billy, he

20:57

saw another potential top recruit.

21:00

And he was coming in September. So I thought

21:03

by the time December, January rolls around, when you're

21:05

in the meat of your schedule, he's going to be one of

21:07

the best players in the country. And he

21:09

was that.

21:10

In

21:14

the winter of his senior year, Billy

21:16

returned home to Southern California

21:19

to play what was shaping up to be a very

21:21

big game against Chino Hills.

21:24

At the time, Chino Hills was home

21:26

to the famed Ball brothers. Older

21:29

brother Lonzo had already left for UCLA,

21:32

but his siblings, Lamello and Leangelo,

21:34

remained and dominated.

21:36

They play a style

21:39

of basketball that nobody else plays.

21:41

It almost looks like they're playing street ball.

21:43

I mean, they're just flying up and down the floor. They're throwing

21:45

baseball passes, length of the floor, and they catching

21:48

two to three. I mean, it was wild.

21:49

TK remembers this game

21:51

clearly. And they had a very,

21:53

very good team, but it was

21:55

nobody that could guard Billy. And then Coach Smith

21:58

knew how to defend. I mean,

21:59

at 6'10", handling

22:02

the ball, shooting the three, it just was difficult

22:04

to guard him. What were the final

22:06

seconds of that game like? Oh,

22:09

it was tense because I think we were only

22:11

up by three. So

22:13

it was a possession where the whole gym

22:16

was like silent because it was

22:18

like they could hit it through at any time

22:20

and tie the game up. But

22:23

it didn't happen.

22:31

We just proved we the real hill because we just

22:33

beat Chino Hills. So I'm gonna say we the

22:35

real hill. I think the people

22:38

in the gym are kind of shocked that we beat

22:40

them out there. I mean, we have, Oak Hills got

22:42

a

22:42

big name in high school basketball, but when you go

22:44

to California and you're playing Chino Hills,

22:47

you're expected to lose. So

22:49

that was a big game and a big win for us. This

22:53

was the kind of performance that would get

22:56

the attention of college coaches. And

22:58

with that came a

23:00

lot of promises.

23:27

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23:30

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23:32

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Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Call

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or go to State Farm dot com to get a quote

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today.

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Trust member FDIC.

24:11

For top ranked high school basketball players

24:14

like Billy Preston, playing

24:16

at an elite private high school like Oak

24:18

Hill was part of a script. The

24:21

next act, to be

24:23

a one and done, play

24:25

a requisite one year at a division one

24:28

college, then entered the NBA

24:29

draft.

24:32

It felt like a lock. His

24:34

senior year top college coaches were

24:36

always showing up at Billy's games. TK

24:39

would drive up from Charlotte to watch. Every

24:42

game was jam packed. I used to sit in the

24:44

corner because it was nowhere

24:47

literally to sit on the bleacher side.

24:49

You know, you see

24:51

Kansas walking in, you

24:53

see Duke walking in, in college basketball,

24:56

those are the celebrities. Were they

24:58

the head coaches? Absolutely. Head,

25:01

first assistant, sometimes it would

25:03

be all four that would come. I mean,

25:06

if they're seriously recruiting a kid,

25:09

you don't send an assistant.

25:11

So the head coach has to show up. Billy

25:14

was most interested in

25:17

the University of Kansas. Kansas

25:20

has one of the top basketball programs

25:22

in the country. It's one of a handful

25:24

of schools known as Blue Bloods. That

25:27

tradition goes

25:28

back to Kansas' first head coach,

25:30

James Naismith, the guy

25:32

who invented basketball. I

25:34

blew a whistle and the first game of basketball

25:37

began. And what rules did you have for your new

25:39

game, Dr. Naismith?

25:41

Well, I didn't have enough. And that's where I

25:43

made my big mistake. Funny

25:45

thing that people like to talk about, that James

25:48

Naismith is actually the only coach in

25:50

KU basketball history to have a losing record.

25:51

That's Matt Tate, sports

25:54

editor of the Lawrence Journal World newspaper.

25:57

He's been covering University

25:59

of Kansas sports for over a decade.

26:02

And in a town like Lawrence, basketball

26:04

is the beat. Oh, it means everything

26:06

here. I mean, in some ways, the

26:08

entire town revolves around it. It's

26:11

one of those things where if KU's

26:13

playing, the bars are full of people watching,

26:16

the streets are empty. And a lot of people

26:18

tie their happiness to it.

26:20

If the Jayhawks win, people are in a good mood

26:22

the next day. And if they lose, they're a little grumpy. The

26:25

intensity in fog out in the

26:27

field house is almost unmatched in college basketball.

26:29

You can just feel the energy come

26:31

through from the fans to the players. And you can see it

26:33

in the Oklahoma State players' faces, how

26:35

focused they

26:35

are along with the Jayhawks. 60 years

26:39

of college hoops inside this historic

26:41

building. And Jayhawks fans are

26:43

dialed in. So when Billy

26:45

went to Lawrence on his official visit in October 2016,

26:48

the fans knew

26:50

he was coming.

26:51

You know, I just look

26:53

up. And there's people at Ellen Field House yelling my name.

26:56

We want Billy. We want Billy. They

26:58

were excited to see him play. They knew what

27:01

his game was about. You know, they follow the recruiting.

27:04

They follow their high school careers. They want

27:06

to know everything about him because they want to see who's

27:08

our guy here. What's he going to bring to our

27:10

team? The fans were excited about

27:13

Billy coming to Kansas.

27:14

The night Billy visited Kansas, he

27:16

attended the massive pep rally that

27:19

kicks off their season every year called

27:21

Late Night in the Fog.

27:24

The whole atmosphere was crazy. Like

27:26

being in Ellen Field House, I'm having

27:28

good vibes from the coaches, good vibes from the players.

27:30

My mom's having a good time. Like, you

27:33

know, it's just in the moment,

27:35

you just feeling like this is somewhere you would

27:37

want to be. So after he had finished

27:39

his visits, he sat down and was like, okay,

27:43

where you want to go, pros

27:44

and cons and worked it out.

27:48

An announcement from one of the best high school basketball

27:50

players in the country. He's a top 20 recruit.

27:53

Say hello to Billy Preston, who has joined us here on our

27:55

set at ESPN. Billy, say hello to America here.

27:57

About to see a lot more of him coming up now.

27:59

season as he makes his college choice. Without

28:02

further ado, let's have your college choice. Where are you going to school? Next

28:04

year I'll be attending the University of

28:07

Kansas. The Jayhawks

28:10

smiling big right now and their

28:12

head coach Bill Self certainly as well.

28:15

TK remembered what it was like for her

28:17

to show up on a college campus as a freshman

28:20

athlete and she had some advice

28:22

for Billy.

28:23

My advice to him was

28:26

don't lose your

28:28

focus. You cannot

28:31

allow outside

28:32

distractions to keep you from your goals.

28:35

In August 2017 before

28:37

classes started, the Jayhawks

28:40

took a trip to Italy.

28:42

They visited Rome and Milan

28:45

playing local teams. When

28:47

they were in Milan they had a private viewing

28:50

of the Last Supper. Lawrence

28:52

Journal World reporter Matt Tate covered

28:54

the trip. They also did a boat

28:56

tour of Lake Como and they

28:58

got to they got to get out and do

29:01

some shopping and check out

29:03

the Bellagio over there and I remember

29:05

just thinking you know here's this super talented

29:08

dude who's just a kid.

29:09

He brought his mother and I both

29:12

back two gifts and we were so teary-eyed because

29:14

Billy he you know with his own

29:16

money he is never you know never bought us nothing. He's

29:18

you know a kid he's spending his money on his own

29:20

stuff so he went to Italy and he

29:22

had got his mom this really this

29:25

really nice Italian leather purse because

29:27

she you know was into handbags

29:29

and he had gotten me a piece

29:32

of jewelry because he knows that I like jewelry and I was

29:34

like oh it's so thoughtful.

29:36

Around that time Billy got

29:38

a nice gift from his mom as

29:41

well. I got a charger my

29:43

mom said got me a charger a car

29:46

and it was like nothing too crazy

29:48

it was a 2016 SRT or something like that and

29:51

the real regular stock rims was nothing crazy

29:53

gray.

29:54

I'm really just thinking like well I've been

29:57

asking my mom a car for years and she

29:59

finally just waited

29:59

to college to give me one.

30:01

Far away from his own family,

30:04

back in Lawrence, Billy was starting

30:06

to feel like part of the Jayhawks

30:08

family. Head coach Bill

30:10

Self made Billy feel at home.

30:13

Watching games at his house, his wife would cook. What

30:16

was his house like? It was big, super

30:19

big. Coach Self's house is, it's like a mansion.

30:21

I guess you can call it a mansion. Like his house is crazy.

30:23

He got multiple rooms, like a game

30:25

room. You know, one room that was our favorite

30:27

was the theater room, you know. He was in

30:30

there one night watching the draft and it was literally the

30:32

whole team in his house.

30:34

And he was eating, you know, it was this one

30:36

pasta that he has named

30:38

after him.

30:39

It's like Bill Self pasta. It's like macaroni and

30:41

buffalo chicken.

30:43

It was cool. That is the funniest thing about

30:45

having a pasta named after you. Yeah, in

30:48

fact, this is Bill

30:50

Self pasta. It was pretty good too.

30:54

Billy played in a few exhibition games

30:56

before the season started. Kansas

30:59

won all three.

31:01

The lob inside, Preston. That

31:03

was really good stuff. And

31:06

a timeout from Mark Johnson.

31:09

And Billy got to shake off

31:11

some of the nerves he had about playing

31:13

in front of big crowds. It got

31:15

to a point to where like, what's in this

31:17

gym right now, it's not gonna be no less people than this.

31:20

Can you knock my whole stage fright out?

31:23

That was the first place I got to, to where I could

31:25

be in front of millions of people and

31:27

feel comfortable whether I'm doing bad, whether I'm

31:29

doing good.

31:30

I know I could be me.

31:32

But then for the season opener against

31:34

Tennessee State on November 10th, Coach

31:37

Self benched Billy.

31:39

He talked about it in a press conference after

31:41

the game. We've all were kids

31:44

and our parents, I'm sure, said, can you

31:46

believe our kids? I mean, can you believe

31:48

they were, what were they thinking?

31:50

The team's official Twitter

31:52

account noted that Billy had been out

31:54

past curfew the night before, had

31:57

parked illegally and skipped class.

31:59

Asking.

31:59

Did you miss class today? And so he told me

32:02

and I asked him why and he told me. So I mean,

32:04

it wasn't much of a decision to be made. So.

32:08

Can you say this is the one game? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

32:10

Yeah. Yeah. Just just take care of your business.

32:12

So. But he needs to take care of

32:14

his business. Everybody needs to be responsible.

32:21

The next day was Saturday, November

32:23

11th. The day Billy

32:25

and his teammate Marcus drove to the

32:27

mall outside Kansas City

32:29

for those Air Jordans.

32:34

November 11th is Veterans Day. A

32:37

military band marched down Massachusetts

32:40

Street in the cold, rainy drizzle

32:43

on a nearby highway. Rain and

32:45

wet roads contributed to several

32:47

accidents. And with insight

32:50

of the KU campus, Billy

32:52

Preston lost control of his

32:54

brand new Dodge Charger while rushing

32:57

to get back in time for a team meeting. He

33:00

hit a curb, flattening both tires

33:02

on one side

33:03

of the car. Like the tires

33:05

was off of the rim. It was getting

33:07

it up and all type of stuff. It was bad. Soon

33:10

as that happened, we're like me

33:12

and Marcus, we're like looking at each other like, bro,

33:15

like, what just happened? He

33:18

was like, bro, a car coach, our car coach

33:20

tells you and I let him know like we right right

33:23

around the corner from the school, we just got into a wreck.

33:30

Curtis Townsend, the assistant coach,

33:32

picked Billy and Marcus up and called a

33:34

tow truck for the car. Dispatch

33:37

records for that day show that no emergency

33:39

vehicles were called and there was no police

33:42

report. Billy called

33:44

his mom and TK right after the

33:46

accident to let them know what happened and

33:48

that he was OK. What did you

33:50

think the fallout would be to that? Honestly,

33:53

Paul, I didn't think anything, to be

33:55

honest with you. I was more concerned with his

33:57

safety and making sure he was OK.

33:59

didn't think anything past

34:02

that. Just making sure he was fine is where

34:04

I was. But when you are

34:06

an athlete at the University of Kansas, it's

34:09

a whole lot different. After that, I asked

34:11

my coach, I said, what's the process now? Like, what's going

34:13

to happen? Then that's when he told me that he had

34:15

to report it to the NCAA and that something

34:17

happened to a player.

34:19

The accident would be reported to

34:21

the NCAA, the organization

34:24

that rules over eligibility for college

34:26

athletes. If Billy thought

34:28

he'd been in trouble before for missing curfew,

34:31

he hadn't seen anything yet.

34:33

And then Coach Talzin, he

34:37

told me that somebody

34:39

had called the NCAA anonymously

34:42

and told him, like, they should investigate

34:45

me.

34:46

Why would the NCAA

34:48

want to investigate Billy? Well,

34:51

the NCAA was already

34:53

looking into major possible

34:55

eligibility violations in college

34:58

basketball. Those had

35:00

come out earlier in the fall. NCAA

35:03

investigators had prominent college

35:05

basketball programs, like Kansas,

35:08

under a microscope.

35:09

So Billy's

35:11

accident couldn't have come at

35:13

a worse time.

35:19

Coming up in our next episode. The

35:22

first question that comes up is, where

35:24

did you get the charger from? It wasn't a

35:26

bag. It was just an envelope. And

35:29

it was $30,000 cash in there. That's

35:31

next time on The Bag Game.

35:34

The Bag Game is based on reporting

35:37

by me,

35:43

Paula

35:46

Levine and Mark Schleba for

35:48

ESPN's investigative unit. Senior

35:51

producer is Matt Frasica. Senior

35:54

editorial producer is Eve Trowe.

35:56

Line producer is Kath Sankey. Associate

35:59

producer is

35:59

are Gus Navarro and Megan

36:02

Coyle. Production assistants

36:04

are Diamante McElvey and Isabella

36:06

Seaman. Archival producers

36:09

are Megan Coyle and G. Young Park.

36:12

Music by Braxton Cook, with

36:14

additional composition, scoring, and sound

36:16

design by Hannes

36:17

Brown. Music by Braxton Cook,

36:20

with additional composition, scoring,

36:23

and sound design by Hannes Brown.