A trove of documents were submitted by defense lawyers this week to Judge Lewis Kaplan ahead of the sentencing of three men found guilty of conspiracy in the federal trial of corruption in college basketball. The filings include sheafs of letters vouching for the character of former Adidas executive James Gatto, Adidas consultant Merl Code Jr. and aspiring agent Christian Dawkins – standard fare in an attempt to gain sentencing leniency from the court. But the filings also include snippets of evidence entered at trial, some of which revive an old, dormant question in the 16-month-old case.

Did other shoe companies beyond Adidas also buy players for their flagship schools?

Code, who worked for 14 years at industry leader Nike before moving to Adidas, said his former employer was in the business of brokering deals between basketball programs and recruits. “Nike schools pay too,” Code said in a conversation recorded by federal investigators on June 20, 2017. In the same conversation, Code names several of the most prominent programs in the country that are outfitted by Nike.

“It’s a corrupt space as it is and cheating is cheating,” Code is quoted as saying in the transcript. “Whether I give you a dollar, 100,000, or I get your mom and dad jobs, it’s cheating. … So in some form or fashion, Duke, North Carolina, Syracuse, Kentucky and all of the schools are doing something to help get kids. That’s just a part of the space.”

South Carolina-based attorney Andrew Mathias, part of Code’s defense team, declined comment on behalf of his client Friday.

The defense team also submitted an August 2017 text conversation between Kansas coach Bill Self and former Adidas consultant T.J. Gassnola, a cooperating witness for the government who was described in court as an Adidas “bag man” and admitted to making multiple payments to help secure players for schools outfitted by the company. In that text exchange, the two discussed making Kansas the top recruiting priority at Adidas.

“In my mind it’s KU Bill Self,” Gassnola texted. “Everyone else falls into line, to [expletive] bad, that’s what’s right for adidas Basketball. And I know Iam RIGHT. The more you win, have lottery picks. And you happy. That’s how it should work in my mind.”

Self responded: “That’s how ur works. At unc and Duke.”

“Kentucky as well,” Gassnola replied.

View photos An August 2017 text conversation between Kansas coach Bill Self and former Adidas consultant T.J. Gassnola. More

Yet the Nike – and Under Armour – part of the space has been relatively undisturbed since the federal investigation was first made public in September 2017. Former assistant coaches at Nike schools Arizona, USC and Oklahoma State have been charged with bribery and accepted plea deals, and a few other Nike-outfitted programs were implicated via testimony, evidence and other court submissions. But aside from Arizona, where an NCAA investigation into the basketball program has begun according to multiple sources, Nike’s most established programs appear to have gone unscathed.

It is unclear whether federal investigators have any inclination to continue probing the extent of college basketball corruption beyond the 2018 trial of Gatto, Code and Dawkins, and the two trials scheduled for this year. Yet to underscore the point Code made in the transcripts, it seems unlikely that Adidas would have been bidding against itself for the services of top players — this was a market driven by competition. Ultimately, much of this may be a job left to the NCAA instead of the feds, and it’s also unclear whether the governing body of college sports has the wherewithal to investigate what could be dozens of programs in a timely fashion.

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