Just two days into the new 2025 NBA season, shocking news arose that over 30 people were arrested in an FBI investigation that involved illegal gambling and rigged poker games. This included Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier, Trailblazers head coach and Hall of Famer Chauncy Billups and former player and assistant coach Damon Jones.
On Oct. 23, the FBI announced that numerous individuals across the country had been arrested in a mass investigation involving several different charges. Rozier and Billups, currently in the NBA, were put on unpaid leave the next day. Rozier’s charge is for a mass placement of bets during a couple of games in March 2023 when he was a member of the Charlotte Hornets. In one instance, Rozier left the game in just under 10 minutes of play with an apparent foot injury and did not return. Before the game started, a large number of bets were placed on his under, which raised suspicion among prosecutors. Apparently, he gave out non-public information to those close to him to cash in on his under from these games. As of now, seven other games he played in during his time in Charlotte have been flagged for illegal gambling. He was subsequently arrested in his hotel room in Orlando and is now threatened with potential fines and jail time.
Billups, who was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame last year and is a former Finals MVP, is facing a completely different set of charges. Billups, who was arrested in Oregon on the same day, is being charged with running illegal poker games. According to the report, four of the five major mafia organizations were involved in this scandal, and Billups was a headline piece. He would use his fame to get people to play poker with him, and later use illegal schemes such as x-rays under the table to see cards, win games and cash in hundreds of thousands of dollars. In fact, throughout all the charges against the 37 criminals, the FBI claims that tens of millions of dollars have been shuffled around and placed into their pockets. Billups, whose charges include wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy, could face up to 20 years in prison.
Jones, a former player and assistant coach with the Cleveland Cavaliers, is facing similar charges to those Rozier is facing. Jones is suspected of using insider information to tell people in his personal life to bet on games in which he knew LeBron James would not play. This, according to the report, was around the 2016 season when he was an assistant.
According to the report, the total number of defendants is currently 37. As more news is released, allegations have been made against more people in the sports world, such as Clippers head coach Tyronn Lue and former Chargers tight end Antonio Gates. Other bettors have been arrested and charged and are all believed to have connections with Rozier, Jones or both. They are believed to have either used the information that they were given to make bets or sold the information to other betters for a large sum.
The NBA has already had major gambling problems before, with the most famous cases being former referee Tim Donaghy, who admitted to betting on games he refereed in and former Toronto Raptors forward Jontay Porter, who was given a lifetime ban for his involvement in sports betting last year. The NBA already investigated allegations against Rozier last offseason. After it was completed, the NBA said it found no evidence of suspicious activity and cleared Rozier to play this season.
Adam Silver, the current head of the NBA, has been known to be unwilling to dish out punishment unless necessary. Besides a few instances of severe punishment, such as the previously mentioned Porter or former owners of the Suns and Clippers, respectively, Robert Sarver and Donald Sterling, who were forced to sell the teams for their racist and sexist remarks, Silver has never been a commissioner known for his discipline. Fans believe that either Silver didn’t do a thorough job of investigating, found out but didn’t want to hand out punishments or he swept it under the rug to hide it from the media.
As days pass by and more information comes out, time will tell what happens next, who else is guilty, who may be innocent and what the NBA truly knew before the FBI had to step in. The NBA is no longer just the National Basketball Association; it has become the National Betting Association.
