TJ Gassnola Testifies Deandre Ayton Received Money And That He Met With Bill Self And That Was Just Day 1

I’m sure not a whole lot of people know who TJ Gassnola is. That’s fine. Most wouldn’t if it wasn’t for this trial. That said, he’s arguably the most important person to take the stand. He’s the one who can really blow this open. Gassnola is a former Adidas consultant and AAU coach. On top of all that Gassnola already plead guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and therefore is working for the feds in this trial. That means he’s not going to hold anything back because he’s trying to avoid 20 years in jail for his cooperation.

That’s why what he says while testifying makes him probably the most intriguing person in this whole trial. He has no reason to lie as he’s trying to save his own life.

Which brings us to yesterday. He had two pretty big nuggets of information come out, the first being Deandre Ayton. The other names in the list of players that he admitted paying – Silvio De Sousa, Billy Preston, Dennis Smith Jr. and Brian Bowen – we all heard before. But, Ayton all we heard was that ESPN report which seemed to never find consistency. There were corrections, corrections that were deleted and then a whole lot of nothing. But, now we see Ayton’s name come up for the first time.

Then there’s Bill Self. To me that’s even bigger than Deandre Ayton receiving money. Here we have Gassnola saying that he met with Bill Self and let him know that Adidas was there to help. Everyone has to know what that means, right? You can’t claim you had no idea and just thought that Adidas was there for no reason. What all did Self know? Will we find out more today? I mean he has two players on this list of receiving payment. Is that something that will come up more?

Gassnola is expected to return to the stand today as he isn’t even halfway done his testimony procedure.