WASHINGTON — Sonny Vaccaro, a former sports marketing executive, said he was well aware of Curtis Malone’s checkered past when the two reached a sponsorship deal in 1993.

In his role with Adidas, Vaccaro was responsible for making sure that many of the country’s top young basketball players were outfitted in his company’s gear. As the coach of D.C. Assault, a high-octane Amateur Athletic Union team based in Washington, Malone was suddenly the man to know. Malone had served a prison sentence in 1991 after he pleaded guilty to drug charges, but he assured Vaccaro that those days were over.

“I got a good vibe from him,” Vaccaro said. “He convinced me that he was going to make this thing really big, and I believed him.”

Malone’s team made good on Vaccaro’s investment by emerging as one of the country’s most successful A.A.U. programs. In the coming years, as D.C. Assault collected titles, it became a magnet for college coaches. Dozens of the team’s best players earned scholarships to elite college programs like Illinois, Villanova and Georgetown.