NEW YORK— The defense decided to put aspiring agent and co-defendant Christian Dawkins on the stand as the college basketball corruption trial reached critical mass and Dawkins discussed his philosophy of doing business.

Dawkins testified Wednesday when he was a runner for agent Andy Miller, he thought there was nothing wrong with paying college players, their families or handlers in order to get them to sign with the ASM sports marketing agency because he felt everyone else in college basketball was getting paid.

But he said he didn’t want to pay assistant coaches because he didn’t think they had much influence over players’ choices in agents. “By the time the kids get to college, the deals are usually already done,’’ he said.  ”There is no reason to pay a college coach because these players are coming to college with agents. This idea that it’s an amateur world is not real.

“I may be wrong here, but I’m pretty sure that no one is signing players who isn’t paying.’’

Federal prosecutors have charged Dawkins and Merl Code, a former Adidas consultant, with bribing three former assistants—Book Richardson (Arizona), Lamont Evans (South Carolina and Oklahoma State) and Tony Bland (USC)—to influence their players to sign with Dawkins fledging sports management agency and certain financial advisors when they turned pro.

As of late yesterday, it was still uncertain whether Code would testify.

Dawkins said Jeff D’Angelo—an undercover FBI agent who was posing as an investor—pushed him to bribe coaches, despite Dawkins’ objections. He told him as much in a June 28, 2017 call in which he said, “If you just want to be Santa Claus and give people money, well s … t, let’s take the money and go to a strip club and buy hookers.’’

“Just to pay guys for the sake of paying them, because he’s at a school, that doesn’t make sense,’’ Dawkins testified. “D’Angelo is basically saying, ‘You’re going to introduce me to coaches that I can pay, or I’m not going to fund you.’’

Dawkins testified that he took the money given to him for college coaches and instead deposited it into the company back account. “Everything I deposited was given to me by the government,’’ he said.