The man at the center of one of the best-known point-shaving scandals in American history is about to become a lived-experience facilitator for EPIC Global Solutions, one of the world's leading gambling harm reduction firms.
In 1994, back when legal sports beting was restricted to brick-and-mortar sportsbooks in Nevada, Stevin “Hedake” Smith was a star point guard at Arizona State University who'd run up a $10,000 gambling debt to a campus bookie named Benny Silman. Smith lacked the money to pay the debt off, so Silman proposed a solution: He'd pay Smith $20,000 per game to fix two games that the Sun Devils were favored to win at home.
Smith cut a cash-strapped teammate, Isaac Burton, in on the deal 50/50, which meant Silman and his money man, an ASU grad named Joe Gagliano, had the entire Sun Devil backcourt in their pockets. But Smith, whose nickname is pronounced “headache,” remained the key participant.
“When you have a point guard who isn't playing well, the team is gonna suffer,” said Burton in the 2021 Netflix documentary Hoop Schemes. “When you have a point guard who's point-shaving, the team is really gonna suffer.”
Smith didn't necessarily have to play poorly to secure the desired result in these games. To wit, in a matchup with Oregon State, which the Sun Devils were favored to win by six points, Smith scored 39 – and ASU won by exactly six, creating a windfall for all those involved.
“I could not even begin to fathom that Hedake could get the game to land right on six, but Hedake had the skill to make it happen,” said Gagliano.
“I was the point guard. I was in control,” explained Smith. “I had different techniques. I could walk the ball up the floor, start the offense late, put players in situations where they couldn't score.”
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Porter Scandal Illustrates Ongoing Need
As folks familiar with such stories might surmise, things went swimmingly for Smith and his cohorts – until they went horribly awry.'
Two successfully fixed games weren't enough for all those involved, especially Smith, who blew through his cut almost as quickly as it was doled out to him. The FBI eventually launched an investigation after another campus bookie caught wind of the multi-game scheme and helped push a particular point spread down to an extremely suspicious margin. Smith wound up doing a year in prison, and his hoop dreams were dashed.
Today, according to an EPIC press release, Smith says he's “passionate about wanting to tell my story and get out there to prevent this from this from happening again.”
The present-day equivalent of the ASU point-shaving scandal is the situation involving former Toronto Raptor Jontay Porter, who was permanently banned from the NBA and has since pled guilty to federal charges for conspiring to fix his player props to pay off a steep gambling debt. Despite college athletes' ability to get paid through NIL money nowadays, recent betting scandals involving Porter and others illustrate that Smith's cautionary tale, which he's been actively sharing prior to the EPIC announcement, is as compelling as ever.
“In being approached to shave points on game, Hedake has experienced a type of gambling-related harm which is different to many of our other team members,” EPIC VP of Partnerships Teresa Fiore said in the release. “His story represents an area of increasing concern within sports, which adds to the range of our education designed to benefit our valued partners and the key people in their organizations.”
In his role as a U.S. sports advisor with EPIC, Smith will participate in educational sessions involving NCAA, Major League Baseball, and Major League Soccer players and personnel.