Ex-Kansas basketball player makes claim coaches KNEW about payments from Adidas in FBI probe

Former University of Kansas basketball player Billy Preston has dropped allegations that the school and staff were aware of payments Adidas made to his mother.

While Kansas tried to recruit Preston, Adidas employee TJ Gassnola tried to influence his recruitment by paying Preston’s mother, Nicole Player.

This was all the subject of a 2018 FBI investigation into college basketball corruption. Gassnola said during that investigation that he paid Player “about $89,000.”

On an episode of ESPN’s 30 for 30 podcast series titled “The Bag Game,” Preston said Kansas staff knew about Gassnola’s payments.

“They weren’t blind to that,” Preston said. “They weren’t blind to that at all.”

Kansas was in the crosshairs of an FBI investigation into college basketball corruption

During testimony in 2018, Gassnola said he “made sure” Kansas was unaware of the payments. The university released a statement in 2020 saying ‘the university was a victim of Gassnola and [Adidas executive James Gatto’s] crimes.’

Preston argued against the idea of ​​KU being a “victim” in this, saying the school helped set up a meeting.

“They are not victims. They also knew what was going on,” Preston said. “They put everything together. They set it up. For example, KU was the whole reason we met.”

Player went on to question Kansas’s memory of the events, saying her family were the “victims” of this incident.

‘Victim? If anyone was the victim, it was the family that Adidas hunted,” she said on the podcast.

“We left the school and weathered the storm and not once did I come out and say we were victims.

“If the reality is that if anyone is a victim here, we are a victim of a corrupt system. We are victims of college corruption, corruption that has existed for decades before us and will continue for decades after us.”

In the trial that resulted from this investigation, Gatto, former Adidas consultant Merl Code and former sports agent Christian Dawkins were found guilty of a total of seven counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Preston claims Kansas officials and staffers helped set up a meeting with Adidas executives

Kansas is still litigating their case with the NCAA. The collegiate sports board found in 2019 that the school had committed five Level I violations – the most serious level of violations in the NCAA.

The NCAA’s Independent Accountability Resolution Process (IARP) is still on the case — Sports Illustrated’s Pat Forde reported that KU had one of its hearings this past weekend.

Kansas head basketball coach Bill Self and assistant coach Kurtis Townsend were handed a four-game suspension at the start of the 2022–23 season based on some findings.

The school has also imposed a number of sanctions on itself, including restrictions on recruiting for both the past season and the upcoming season. Adidas remains the school’s athletic supplier for its Division-I programs.

Even with the ongoing investigation, Adidas is still the official sports supplier of Kansas

Preston signed up with Kansas in 2017 but left in January 2018 after sitting out at the start of the season following a car accident. Questions were raised about his ownership of the vehicle he was driving and the NCAA wanted a clearer financial picture of the situation. He had played only two exhibition games for the Jayhawks and never got into the regular season.

After leaving the program, he went abroad to play basketball in Bosnia to fulfill his requirement to be a year away from high school before entering the NBA Draft.

Preston was not selected in the NBA Draft in 2018, but he did sign with the Cleveland Cavaliers for their summer league team – and played for the team’s G-League affiliate, the Canton Charge.

He went on to play for two other G-League teams – the Erie BayHawks and the Texas Legends – before eventually continuing his career in Australia, the Dominican Republic and South Africa.