NEW YORK – The federal trial of a sneaker executive, a B-list hustler and a grassroots basketball mainstay begins in Lower Manhattan this week. They face felony charges that include conspiracy and wire fraud as alleged orchestrators of an elaborate scheme to essentially manipulate the system to sell basketball players to preferred colleges. It marks the first of three scheduled federal trials in a sweeping corruption case that shook the sport more than a year ago.

The defendants’ families will fill wooden pews at the Daniel P. Monahan Courthouse, as the defendants face jail time and the indelible stain of federal felony charges. But the fates of Adidas executive Jim Gatto, low-level runner Christian Dawkins and Adidas employee Merl Code in Judge Lewis A. Kaplan’s courtroom loom as just a subplot in a trial that has riveted the basketball industry from grassroots to the NBA.

Starting on Monday, we’ll find out if the entire sport is truly on trial as many predicted last September, when 10 men were arrested and the feds staged an elaborate news conference. The biggest question hanging over this trial remains simple: Will there be more light shined on exactly how college basketball’s black market operates? If the feds do indeed “have your playbook,” as New York FBI Assistant Director in Charge William Sweeney memorably boasted a year ago, this trial should allow everyone to read the pages.

Officials inside and outside the case told Yahoo Sports the collateral damage to coaches and programs through potential NCAA violations that could be revealed may end up as the most newsworthy elements of the trial. Still looming over the case are 330 days of federal monitoring that could come out in the three trials, which includes 4,000 intercepted calls, countless text messages and thousands of documents and bank records. Multiple sources indicated that programs previously not connected to the case are likely to be implicated via potential NCAA violations.

“Over the course of these three trials, you’re going to see major programs get touched by this, and the nature of how business is done is going to be exposed,” said a source with knowledge of the investigation. “The question is, ‘How many?’ The coaches who are mixed up in this are used to controlling everything, and they’ll have no control in how all this comes out.”

The first trial – USA vs. Gatto, et al – projects to play out over the month of October, if not longer. The most intrigue revolves around the wiretaps, text messages and other communication between coaches, assistant coaches and Dawkins and the Adidas representatives. The witness list doesn’t appear to have any bombshells. There’s no Bill Self, Mark Gottfried or Rick Pitino, prominent coaches whose programs or former programs have been implicated in the scheme. The list is more of a compilation of compliance officers, expert witnesses and cooperators – such as prominent former Adidas grassroots executive T.J. Gassnola, who has agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

The fact that none of the three defendants in this case have pled out is particularly rare; statistics say that more than 90 percent of defendants in federal trials end up taking pleas. (The New York Times reported in 2016 that number was as high as 97 percent in a recent year.) There’s no expectation that will change before jury selection begins this week, setting the stage for a compelling trial once the prosecution lays its cards on the table. They have held those cards closely since that splashy 2017 news conference announcing the charges.

“We don’t know yet whether that relative silence following the indictments is evidence of a weak case or someone methodically putting their evidence together and being ready to put it forward at trial,” said Stephen L. Hill Jr., a partner at Dentons in Kansas City and former U.S. Attorney who prosecuted a case against AAU coach Myron Piggie in the early 2000s.

No one doubts the potential for fireworks in terms of NCAA violations being revealed. The NCAA appears to expect this as well, as sources told Yahoo Sports lawyers and enforcement representatives from the association are expected to be among the observers in the courtroom.

“To date, the results have not matched the show [of the news conference last year],” said Stu Brown, an Atlanta-based attorney who specializes in NCAA rules cases. “But I don’t know how far into the game we are. To date, only the feds know. Any coach or administrator who presumes all that has happened is all that is going to happen is on shaky ground. That might turn out to be the case, but I certainly wouldn’t stake my livelihood on it.”

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