The NBA has been a league that has stayed clear of gambling for a very long time. The few people who have gotten caught helping people gamble, like Jontay Porter, have been banned from the league as a result of them being caught helping out gamblers. But recently, there has been a huge scandal that has broken the news. A player and a coach have been arrested because of it. This scandal could have some serious consequences, as it is not a good look for the league for a player and a coach to be in separate gambling scandals at the same time. Here is what we know.
Terry Rozier was the first player to get arrested for the illegal gambling scandal. He has been accused of telling people to bet his under on stats, and then getting a fake injury to get him taken out of the game. His charges from these games he purposely sat out are conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering. He was investigated on this back two years ago when it actually happened, but the NBA could not find evidence against him. Now that the case has gone federal and the actual government is getting involved. There is a lot more evidence that the police are finding that makes him look a lot more guilty then in the previous investigation. A lot of these allegations against players and coaches happened back in 2023/2024. The federal government is only getting involved now because they have taken 2 years to fully investigate and now that they have all the evidence, they can make arrests. Another NBA involved member that got arrested was Chauncey Billups.
Chauncey Billups was the current Blazers head coach before getting arrested. He is currently on leave but he hasn’t been fired yet. The investigation against him is a lot more interesting. Terry Rozier had these allegations against him in 2023. Chauncey Billups’ case was just put to the public when he was arrested. According to reports, Chauncey Billups would let certain people in his inner circle when the Blazers had a lot of guys sitting out due to injury. This was because Billups knew that they would lose with their best players out, so the betters would put a lot of money on the Blazers losing and they would win big. This isn’t even the biggest thing he’s being arrested for. According to the reports, Chauncey Billups was also involved in a big scheme that rigged underground poker games that were backed by the mafia. The accusations say that they used technology to steal millions of dollars from people in the New York area. Although this is unrelated to basketball gambling, this is still a big fraudulent scheme that NBA coaches should not be getting involved in, as it gives the league a bad look.
Overall, this is a big hit to the NBA. Seeing all these arrests against people who are involved with the NBA gives them a bad representation of what they are. The NBA is supposed to be a competitive league where the players want to win championships and play. The last thing the NBA wants is seeing reports of a NBA player purposely faking an injury so others can get money, or a coach purposely sitting players so that people can gamble against them. These actions have always been widely known as against rules and seeing 2 people getting arrested means that others could be involved as well, they might’ve just not been caught. Overall, it’s going to take a while for the NBA to rebuild its image after this scandal.
