Jim Sweeney has never watched the movie “Goodfellas’’ from start to finish.

“I don’t have to,’’ Sweeney says. “I lived the real life Goodfellas.’’

Sweeney was in the middle of the 1978-79 Boston College point-shaving scandal, which is mentioned prominently in the book “Wise Guys’’, which the Martin Scorsese movie is based. Henry Hill, the main character of “Goodfellas’’ is the man who orchestrated the point-shaving operation.

Next week ESPN will debut in it's latest round of 30-for-30 documentaries, the first of which is “Playing for the Mob’’ which revisits what happened at Boston College 36 years ago. The film is narrated by Ray Liotta, the actor who portrayed Henry Hill in Goodfellas.

“I’m excited about it,’’ Sweeney, the Trenton native said. “It’s a chance for me to tell my story.’’

The story most people know about what happened during that 1978-79 basketball season has come from either reading “Wise Guys’’, which is Hill’s story, another book “Fixed’’ by David Porter, or more likely a Sports Illustrated cover story that came out in 1981.

“That day the magazine came out was my Pearl Harbor day,’’ Sweeney said. “Here I was being disparaged by Sports Illustrated, the Bible of sports. The one thing that helped me was when my old baseball coach, Gary Vogler, came to the house to see me.’’

The SI story written by Douglas Looney was again told by Hill, who as “Playing for Mob’’ points out was paid $10,000 to tell. Sweeney had never told his side, because the FBI told him he couldn’t.

To go back, any boy who grew up in the Trenton/Hamilton area of Mercer County in the 1970s and spent a day playing basketball at the CYO, or baseball at Wetzel Field not only knew who Sweeney was, he wanted to be like him. His mother wanted him to be like Sweeney. His sister wanted to date Sweeney and his father wanted his sister to date Sweeney.

Sweeney was a soccer, basketball and baseball star at the prestigious Lawrenceville School and a baseball star for the state champion Trenton Schroths and Vogler before going to BC on a basketball scholarship.

When the story hit that he was involved in a point-shaving scandal, it rocked the area like nothing before, or since. Tony Mack, the mayor of Trenton, going to jail was dog bites man compared to Sweeney being involved in fixing basketball games for gangsters such as Hill and Jimmy “the Gent’’ Burke, Robert De Niro’s character in “Goodfellas’’.

In “Playing for the Mob’’ which features commentary from Sweeney, Hill, Ernie Cobb, the leading scorer on that Boston College team, and others he tells what happened 36 years ago. He also took time to tell Nj.com.

“One of the first things I hear, and I heard it when we started to do (Playing for the Mob) is how could a guy with my reputation get involved with this?’’ Sweeney said. “I wasn’t looking for this. I didn’t seek out Henry Hill.’’

As Sweeney tells the story, one of his teammates and friend, Rick Kuhn, asked him if he wanted to go out to dinner with him and a couple of friends who were in from out of town one night before the start of the season.

“I said, ‘sure’,’’ Sweeney said. “I had met one friend of Rick’s before, Rocco Perla, and this was his brother Jim, who was in town and a friend of his, Henry Hill. We went to meet them at the Logan Airport Hilton, and it wasn’t what I expected.’’

Earlier in the day, as Sweeney remembers, he was on the phone with his mother and told her he was being taken out to dinner by friends of Rick.

“She told me to be respectful,’’ he said. “If someone is taking you out to dinner, you should bring them something. So, I went out and got a small box of chocolates.’’

Sweeney never gave Hill the candy.

“We get there and we go to their room, which I thought was strange,’’ he said. “I meet Jim Perla and he shakes my hand. Then I meet Hill, and he gives me a big hug and starts patting my back and rubbing me. He’s saying, ‘man you guys are really put together, you’re in great shape.’ I realized later he was checking me for a wire.’’

Perla and Hill started asking Sweeney about the upcoming season and how he thinks the team is going to do.

“We’re talking basketball and I happen to have a schedule card in the pocket of my jacket, so I take it out and we’re looking at different games,’’ Sweeney said.

According to Hill, Sweeney and Kuhn already had games circled on the card that they thought they could fix. Sweeney says that’s not true.

“And we didn’t have dinner, either,’’ he said. “Even though I’ve read where Hill says I ordered lobster. Another lie is Hill says he came to our games and sat with my mother. My mother never went to any of my games in college.’’

Sweeney also tells how Hill threatened him.

“All of a sudden, Rick and Perla leave the room and it’s just me and Henry Hill,’’ he said. “He says to me ‘you know why you’re here.’ I say ‘to have dinner?’ He says ‘we’re going to fix these games.’ Then he brings up my girlfriend, Maura (now his wife), who I had just started dating.

“He looks at me and says, ‘How would your honey Maura like it if the next time she sees you, you’re wearing your (testicles) around your neck?’ He had done his homework, he knew a lot about me. Yeah, it was scary.’’

A lot has been said and written about how many games were actually “fixed’’ if any. The first one was supposed to be against Providence, in which BC was favored by nine points and won by 19, costing the “bettors’’ money.

Another one was against Harvard, where BC was favored by 12 and won by 3, making the “bettors’’ money. In that one Sweeney led the team in scoring.

The last game that was to be fixed, according to the 30-for-30 documentary, was against Holy Cross in which Boston College was three-point favorites. They lost by two, but covered the spread and cost the “bettors’’ what was called “a lot of money’’.

Sweeney fouled out in that game.

“I had no idea what to do,’’ he said in the documentary. “I fouled myself out.’’

Sweeney admits taking $500, under duress, from Kuhn in the Boston College locker room after one game went the right way.

“Rick took five $100 bills out of envelope and tried to hand them to me,’’ Sweeney said. “I didn’t take it. Then he crumbled them up and pushed them into my chest. They fell to the floor, and I picked them up. I kept them.

“That was what I did wrong. And I hold myself accountable. I could have done things differently.’’

Through the years, Sweeney says threats continued when he and Maura moved to Florida and into their new house. Her family got a call that said “they’re coming after Jimmy.’’

Before that during his final days at Boston College there would be phone calls that kept him always walking in crowds, but nothing ever came to light.

“At the time it was extremely frightening,’’ he said. “But it also showed me how much stronger I am.’’

Sweeney says to this day, 36 years later, he never missed a shot or threw a ball away on purpose, and an e-mail he received in 2009 from FBI agent Ed Guevara, who was on the case, verifies that. He also says he doesn’t know what else was going on and who, if anyone else, was involved. He also says the days of point-shaving didn’t end in Boston in 1979.

“I’m sure it’s happened since,’’ he said. “And I’m sure it will happen again.’’