“Bad Sport,” a series of six short documentaries about sports scandals that will stream on Netflix, revisits one of the darkest moments in Arizona State University history, sports-related or otherwise, one the school and its fans would like to forget: the point-shaving scandal involving former player Stevin “Hedake” Smith.
“Hoop Schemes,” directed by Luke Sewell, offers, in addition to interviews with Smith and others involved, a straightforward explanation of how betting lines and point spreads and throwing games works, should you ever be in need of such knowledge.
It’s not overly complex. What makes it dicey is the unpredictability of sports and the fact that throwing games is, you know, illegal. Very.
But no one cuts through the details and gets to the heart of the thing like Isaac “Ice” Burton, another ASU player involved in the scandal, which occurred during the 1994-95 season.
Isaac ‘Ice’ Burton boils the whole point-shaving scandal down
“Oh man,” he recalls thinking when he realized things aren’t going to work out as he’d hoped. “We done f ——-d up.”
Indeed they had. Although Sewell offers Smith, Burton and Joseph Gagliano, who set up the scheme, plenty of time to explain themselves, and they disagree on some of the particulars, no one denies the overall crimes — or Burton’s assessment of them.
Various motives are bandied about, but this, too, can be whittled down to a single word: money.
“Every time you get a paper bag full of hundreds, it’s addictive,” the enigmatic Smith says. “It changed me. It changed me.”
The quick version of what happened is this: ASU was a constant underachiever in basketball. “They were a sleeping giant,” Kent Somers, a columnist for The Arizona Republic who covered the team at the time, says in the film. “And most of us who lived there thought this giant is never going to wake up.”
That changed with a group of elite recruits, including Smith.
Smith, Silman and Gagliano all went to prison
But Smith wound up owing Benny Silman, a student and a bookie at ASU, more than $10,000 in gambling debts. Working with Gagliano, an entrepreneur, they fixed a game against Oregon State. Smith didn’t want the team to lose the game, he told them, but he didn’t have to — ASU could win, but not by more than six points.
Maybe. But it seems more authentic when Smith talks about his mindset while he was working to alter the outcome of games.
“I didn’t think we’d be touched at the time,” he says. “You know, we were superstars.”
His friends and family call him Stevin, he says. Hedake is someone else — a character he played on campus and on the court.
“Hedake got Stevin Smith in trouble,” he says.
Burton is far more convincing as he once again cuts to the chase, encapsulating the whole mess.
“I just wanted some money,” he says, and then repeats: “I just wanted some money.”