From the basketball court to the courtroom. A handful of NBA players and coaches were arrested in a case linked to illegal sports gambling and fixed poker games.
The case, led by the FBI, was a yearslong investigation, and included a total of 34 arrests. Portland Trailblazers head coach Chauncey Billups, and NBA veteran Terry Rozier, along with former Cleveland Cavaliers player and current assistant coach Damon Jones were all arrested last Thursday.
The case is also tied to the mafia, who operated underground poker games.
Billups was one of the individuals who participated in these mafia-backed poker games, while Billups also allegedly gave insider information about his team, the Trailblazers, in a March 2023 game against the Bulls.
Rozier, who currently plays for the Miami Heat, but has had previous stints with the Charlotte Hornets and Boston Celtics, is accused of providing sports bettors with non-public information.
FBI director Kash Patel called the money involved in the scandal “mind-boggling.”
Green Level’s head basketball coach John Green spoke on the scandal, and its effect on the sport.
“I think it’ll have an effect on the sport short-term, but it’ll go away. Just like the steroids scandal in baseball, everything kind of will go away,” Green said.
However, Green acknowledged how basketball fans might be more suspicious of certain plays or choices that occur in-game.
“People are going to certainly question when somebody has a bad game whether they’re trying to throw the game,” Green said.
Just this scandal in the NBA, at the professional level, dishonesty can happen at lower levels too, including college and high school basketball.
“I think integrity is important,” Green said, “but the day and age of NIL and money has completely taken the integrity out of the college game, which is going to trickle down the high school level, and even go up to the NBA.”
Since sports betting was legalized in the United States in 2018, sports betting has created a massive industry, generating a ton of revenue for sports leagues and state governments.
“There should be more restrictions,” added Green, “but I don’t think that they can get rid of sports betting because they’re making so much money.”
Green also noted that even high school students are placing bets on sports, furthering his reasoning that sports betting is just too popular and profitable to get rid of entirely.
“All they see at the end of the day people are seeing basketball as more of a business than an actual hobby and loving the game,” said Green.
Scandals like the NBA’s, which is linked to the mafia and has the FBI involved, are a ding on the integrity of the game, and not only affect the professional level, but there also could be impacts to the game at the college and even high school level as sports betting becomes more and more legal and popular.
