gambling

I may be revealing a secret cherished by columnists the world over, but I admit that among the columns we relish writing the most fall into the “I told you so” genre.

Case in point: In April last year, in a column about the gambling mess ensnaring Shohei Ohtani’s then-interpreter, I warned that the pro sports leagues’ enthusiastic embrace of betting would inevitably produce a major scandal.

“It might not surface in the next months or even years,” I wrote, “but it will happen.”

The calendar, as it turned out, ticked over at 19 months. Last Thursday, federal prosecutors charged National Basketball Assn. player Terry Rozier and former NBA player and assistant coach Damon Jones with fraud and money laundering in connection with a scheme to fix bets on NBA games. Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups was charged in a separate indictment linking him to a Mafia scheme to fix poker games; Jones was also named in that indictment.

The NBA has placed Billups and Rozier on leave. They’re both due to appear in federal court in Brooklyn over the next few weeks to enter pleas, though both have asserted their innocence.

It may not be easy for the league to wash its hands of this mess. All the professional sports leagues spent years shunning gambling as a threat to their public image of integrity before embracing the siren call of big-time sports betting, bringing gambling companies and their ever-increasing customer base into their tents. But the NBA was ahead of the crowd.

In a 2014 op-ed, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver effectively cried “uncle” in the league’s battle against gambling.

“For more than two decades,” he wrote, “the National Basketball Association has opposed the expansion of legal sports betting, as have the other major professional sports leagues in the United States.” The leagues supported a 1992 federal law prohibiting sports betting except in grandfathered venues, such as Las Vegas.

They took a stern position against players and personnel caught betting on their games and their sports, dating to 1919 and the so-called Black Sox scandal, in which eight members of the Chicago White Sox were accused of throwing the World Series for the benefit of a gambling ring. Major League Baseball hired an austere federal judge, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, as its commissioner and gave him unchecked authority to clean up the game. He banned the eight players from baseball forever.

In recent times, Silver observed in his op-ed, the American appetite for sports betting has only risen. Accordingly, he called for legalizing the practice so it could be “brought out of the underground and into the sunlight where it can be appropriately monitored and regulated.”

(The 1992 law was overturned by the Supreme Court, and legalized sports betting spread coast to coast.)

Given the subsequent developments, one can tag Silver for his childlike innocence in counting on the government to regulate an industry collecting billions of dollars a year from millions of users while operating with a legal imprimatur.

Silver wrote that among his “most important responsibilities as commissioner of the N.B.A. is to protect the integrity of professional basketball and preserve public confidence in the league and our sport.”

When I asked the NBA if Silver has had second thoughts about his 2014 op-ed, the league replied, “We continue to believe that a legal, regulated, and monitored sports betting market is far superior to an illegal one operating underground,” and suggested that a single federal regulator would be preferable to the existing state-by-state patchwork, though the activities alleged in the federal indictments almost surely would be crimes in any state. Silver did say during a broadcast interview Friday that the case gave him “a pit in my stomach.”

The league’s ability to monitor the behavior of its own people is questionable. Consider a March 23, 2024, Charlotte Hornets game against the New Orleans Pelicans. According to the indictment, Rozier let the gambling conspirators know that he would take himself out of the game early, allowing them to profit from bets that his stats would fall short of bookmakers’ expectations.

The NBA, alerted by sports wagering companies to “aberrational behavior” involving Rozier in the game, investigated but later said it could find any “violation of NBA rules.”

The NBA can hardly claim to have been blindsided by the new indictments. Only last year, another federal gambling case erupted involving NBA games.

In that case, prosecutors alleged that a gambler named Ammar Awawdeh forced then-Toronto Raptors player Jontay Porter to take himself out of a game early. That led gamblers who knew of the arrangement to bet that his stats for the game would fall short of expectations; those insiders made more than $100,000 on their bets, the prosecutors charged.

According to text messages filed with the 2024 indictments, Awawdeh acknowledged “forcing” Porter to participate in the scheme to help clear some of his gambling debts.

Awawdeh engaged in plea negotiations in the case, but the outcome couldn’t be determined. Porter pleaded guilty to related federal fraud charges, and is scheduled to be sentenced in December. The NBA has banned Porter for life.

Awawdeh was also named in last week’s indictment over the alleged poker scam.

In recent years, the pro leagues have cozied up to the gambling industry, claiming that their interest is merely “fan engagement” — that is, keeping TV viewers in front of their sets even during blowout games.

Only 11 states bar sports gambling today. They include the customary anti-gambling holdouts Utah and Hawaii, and California, where ballot measures to legalize sports gambling were defeated in 2022. As I mentioned in 2024, the perils of this expansion are manifest.

They’ve created a new underclass of gambling addicts while largely failing to fulfill their advocates’ assurances that state-sponsored and regulated gambling would produce a new, risk-free revenue stream for state and local budgets. The outcomes of some games have come under suspicion even where no evidence of fixing has been found.

The leagues have gone beyond just tolerating gambling; they’ve made partnership and sponsorship deals with the major sports gambling companies. The two leading companies, FanDuel and DraftKings, are official corporate gambling partners of the NBA, National Football League and Major League Baseball.

During broadcasts and steaming of games, it’s common to see in-game statistical projections on-screen — what are the chances of this hitter striking out, or hitting a home run, for instance.

During the seventh inning of Game 2 Saturday, Fox flashed a projection that there was a 36% chance that Yoshinobu Yamamoto would pitch 9+ innings. (He went the distance.)

The only reason to offer such projections is to feed the appetite for in-game proposition, or “prop,” bets. These are fundamentally bookmakers’ estimates. They don’t tell ordinary viewers anything they need to know to enjoy the coming innings, but do give bettors something to chew on before putting money down on the proposition “will Yamamoto pitch a complete game?”

In-game prop bets, as it happens, are like heroin to the vulnerable, offering instant gratification (or dismay). They “may be associated with risky gambling behavior,” according to the National Council on Problem Gaming. Draftkings heavily promotes prop bets on its sportsbook web page.

In a memo issued Monday, the NBA singled out prop bets as trouble spots: “In particular,” the memo says, “proposition bets on individual player performance involve heightened integrity concerns and require additional scrutiny.”

The major gaming companies have rolled out new ways to keep bettors betting. Smartphone apps, for example. In the old days no one could place a legal sports bet without traveling to Las Vegas, a built-in curb on problem gambling. Today, anyone with a smartphone can place a bet, often without certifying their age or financial resources.

“The advent of smartphones in 2007 and the Supreme Court decision in 2018 opened the door to fully frictionless, 24/7 legal gambling,” problem gambling experts Jonathan D. Cohen and Isaac Rose-Berman wrote recently.

I asked FanDuel and DraftKings if they accepted any responsibility for problem gaming in the U.S. DraftKings didn’t reply. A spokesman for FanDuel told me by email that the company “takes problem gambling seriously and continually works to identify at-risk behavior … including when a customer attempts to deposit significantly more than what they typically do,” or “excessive time on site, chasing losses or signals from customer service interactions.” In those cases, the company sometimes imposes deposit limits or timeouts or can exclude the user entirely.

That brings us to the latest indictments. The feds identified seven NBA games in 2023 and 2024, including the 2023 game in which Rozier allegedly tipped confederates to his decision to bench himself.

Among the others were a 2023 Trail Blazers game in which gamblers were tipped that the team would sit its best players so it would lose, thereby acquiring a better position in the upcoming NBA draft; and two Lakers games in which Jones allegedly tipped gamblers that star LeBron James, a friend since they played together on the Cleveland Cavaliers, was hurt and wouldn’t be playing.

“Get a big bet on Milwaukee tonight,” Jones allegedly told a contact before the first game, against the Milwaukee Bucks. James sat it out and the Lakers lost. James isn’t identified by name in the indictment, but its description of his roles helped identify him. James hasn’t made a public comment about the case, but he hasn’t been accused of any wrongdoing.

Can anything stem this tide? The smart bet at this moment is “no.” There’s just too much money riding on the continued expansion of sports betting: DraftKings has more than doubled its revenue since 2022, reaching $4.8 billion last year, and nearly doubling its monthly average users to 3.7 million. FanDuel is owned by a British gambling conglomerate, so its U.S. sports revenue is difficult to parse.

That’s a lot of money to be thrown around promoting more sports gambling, making it harder for governments to regulate and for sports leagues to turn up their noses at the income. Keeping their image for integrity intact in this world of greedy and needy players and voracious gamblers is only going to get harder.

Shaquille O’Neal said he’s “ashamed” of the people involved in the gambling scandal that rocked the NBA on Thursday.

Charles Barkley called two of the individuals involved in the matter “stupid.”

Kenny Smith said the situation is “super unfortunate.”

One day after the “Inside the NBA” crew made its ESPN debut, the three analysts, as well as host Ernie Johnson, had a huge story to discuss that had little to do with the actual game of basketball.

On Thursday morning, federal prosecutors unsealed two indictments that outlined separate schemes to rig sports bets and poker games. More than 30 people were arrested, including former Clippers player and current Portland head coach Chauncey Billups, who was charged with participating in a conspiracy to fix high-stakes card games run by Mafia families.

Also arrested were Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier, who is accused of being part of a scheme to provide private insider NBA information to help others profit from online bets, and retired player Damon Jones, who has been charged with taking part in both schemes.

“All these guys knew what was at stake, and I’m just ashamed that they put themselves and put their family and put the NBA in this position,” O’Neal said during Thursday’s broadcast. “We all know the rules. We all know the letter of the law. And it’s just unfortunate — you know, innocent till proven guilty, but usually when the FBI has something, they have you.”

He added: “I know Chauncey. I know Damon very well, played with Damon. … I’m ashamed that those guys will put their families and their careers in jeopardy. There’s an old saying in the hood, all money ain’t good money. So if you’re making $9 million, like, how much more do you need? Especially if you know you get caught, you can do jail time, lose your career, put a bad image on yourself or your family or on the NBA.”

Smith pointed out that “gambling is an addiction which could make you make illogical decisions,” but Barkley interjected his opinion that addiction had nothing to do with the decision Jones and Rozier made to help others make fraudulent bets.

“This ain’t got nothing to do with addiction. These dudes are stupid,” Barkley said. “Why are they stupid? You under no circumstances can you fix basketball games. Under no circumstances. … Like, Rozier makes $26 million. Him betting, giving people information or taking himself out of games — how much is he going to benefit taking himself out the game to get unders?”

Barkley added: “You can’t fix ball games. Like I said, this is separate from Chauncey, but the notion that guys are making all this money and giving information — come on, man, stop that. That got nothing to do with addiction. That’s just total stupidity on these two dudes parts.”

Billups — a five-time All-Star who was the 2004 NBA Finals MVP as a member of the Detroit Pistons and is in his fifth season as Portland’s coach — and 10-year NBA veteran Rozier were placed on immediate leave, the league announced Thursday.

Billups’ attorney issued a statement Thursday night strongly denying the allegations against his client.

“Anyone who knows Chauncey Billups knows he is a man of integrity,” attorney Chris Heywood said. “Men of integrity do not cheat and defraud others.”

Jones played three seasons with LeBron James on the Cleveland Cavaliers from 2005 to 2008 and was an assistant coach during the Lakers star‘s second stint in Cleveland. In one of the indictments, prosecutors allege Jones was an unofficial coach with the Lakers from 2022 to 2023 when he used inside information for sports betting.

Poker chip trays that can secretly read cards.

Glasses that can detect card markings.

Rigged underground games run by the New York mafia.

NBA figures exchanging insider information as part of illegal betting schemes.

These are some of the wild allegations filed in two criminal complaints this week by federal prosecutors in one of the most sweeping and sensational betting scandals in recent professional sports history.

At the heart of one of the cases, prosecutors charged several figures using private insider NBA information, such as when players would sit out, to help others profit in leveraged bets online.

But the allegations go far deeper, including a connection to the Lakers, the mob and more.

Here are four key allegations:

1. High-roller games with high-tech cheating

Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, who played with the Clippers for two seasons and later was a member of Clippers coach Ty Lue’s staff before earning the Trail Blazers head coaching job, is charged with rigging underground poker games that three of New York’s Mafia families backed, authorities said.

Billups and Damon Jones, a retired NBA player, according to one of the two indictments revealed Thursday, were used to attract wealthy players to the games and were referred to as “Face Cards.” But according to the federal indictment, the two were part of the cheating teams. In exchange for taking part in the games, the “Face Cards” received part of the winnings.

The teams, according to court filings, used rigged shuffling machines that read deck cards and predicted which player on the table would have the best poker hand and relayed that information to someone, referred to as the operator. That person then relayed that information to one member of the cheating team on the table, known as the “Quarterback,” or “Driver,” according to court filings.

In some cases, the cheating teams used poker chip trays that could secretly read the cards on the table. In other cases, players used glasses that could detect special markings on the cards.

U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella of Brooklyn said at a press conference said the defendants used “special contact lenses or eyeglasses that could read pre-marked cards” and tables that “could read cards face down on the table … because of the X-ray technology.”

He cited “other cheating technologies, such as poker chip tray analyzers, which is a poker chip tray that secretly reads cards using a hidden camera,.”

“Anyone who knows Chauncey Billups knows he is a man of integrity; men of integrity do not cheat and defraud others,” Chris Heywood, Billups’ attorney, said in a statement Tuesday night. “To believe that Chauncey Billups did what the federal government is accusing him of is to believe that he would risk his Hall-of-Fame legacy, his reputation, and his freedom. He would not jeopardize those things for anything, let alone a card game.”

2. Alleged mob ties

The games in the New York area were backed by three of New York’s organized crime families: the Bonanno, Gambino and Genovese Mafia families, authorities said. According to the complaint, at least a dozen of the 31 defendants were associates or members of those three families.

Among those named in the indictment was Joseph Lanni, identified as a captain in the Gambino crime family. Known as “Joe Brooklyn,” Lanni was also named as a defendant in a 2023 racketeering, extortion and witness retaliation indictment, where members and associates of the Gambino family were accused of trying to take control of New York’s carting and demolition industries.

Last week, Lanni pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering conspiracy, according to court records.

3. A tip about LeBron James

Federal prosecutors allege that between December 2022 and March 2024, the defendants , used inside information to defraud bettors, including which players would be sitting out games and when players would “pull themselves out of games early for purported injuries or illnesses.”

Damon Jones, a retired NBA player and friend of LeBron James is accused of inside information for sports betting related to the Lakers and specifically “Player 3,” a prominent NBA player.

Although the indictment does not name the player — the date referenced in 2023 when the player sat out matches when James sat out against the Milwaukee Bucks due to ankle soreness. According to the indictment, Jones, a friend of James, profited from the non-public information.

“Get a big bet on Milwaukee tonight before the information is out!” Jones texted an unnamed co-conspirator, according to the indictment. “[Player 3] is out tonight.”

On Thursday, the Lakers declined to comment on the investigation. A person close to LeBron James told The Times that the Lakers star didn’t know that Jones was allegedly selling injury information to gamblers placing bets. Neither James or the Lakers have been accused of any wrongdoing.

3. A ‘shady’ injury

According to the indictment, when Terry Rozier was playing for the Hornets, he told others he was planning to leave the game early with a “supposed injury,” allowing others to place wagers that raked in thousands of dollars, New York Police Commissioner Jennifer Tisch said.

Rozier and other defendants allegedly provided that information to other co-conspirators in exchange for either a flat fee or a share of betting profits.

Another game involving Rozier that has been in question was played a day earlier, on March 23, 2023, between the Hornets and the New Orleans Pelicans. Rozier played the first 9 minutes and 36 seconds of that game — and not only did not return that night, citing a foot issue, but also did not play again that season.

Posts still online from March 23, 2023, show that some bettors were furious with sportsbooks that evening when it became evident that Rozier was not going to return, with many turning to social media to say that something “shady” had gone on regarding the prop bets involving his stats for that night.

Golden State Warriors superstar Stephen Curry says he “wouldn’t worry” about the NBA’s integrity despite a FBI investigation into illegal sports betting.

Miami Heat player Terry Rozier and Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups are among dozens arrested as part of a sweeping investigation that also includes allegedly rigged, mafia-linked poker games.

Rozier and Billups were named by federal prosecutors in two separate indictments on Thursday. Both men deny the allegations.

Rozier, 31, is among six people arrested over alleged betting irregularities. They include NBA players being accused of faking injuries to influence gambling markets.

There is greater concern about the impact of gambling on the integrity of American sports, with most US states having legalised sports betting since the US Supreme Court overturned the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) in 2018.

“I think on the whole, everybody’s very mindful of what to do, what not to do, and understanding the landscape of sports right now in general,” said Curry, who has twice been the NBA’s Most Valuable Player.

“And that’s not just a NBA thing, this is new territory for everybody. So I think, on the whole, we all are very responsible.

“The integrity of the game is fine, and then obviously we let the situation play out, whatever happens. But I wouldn’t worry about that too much.”

Warriors team-mate Draymond Green, who has won four NBA championships with Curry, added: “I was shocked. It’s a tough moment for the individuals involved, a tough moment for the league.

“But I’m not going to sit here and be like, ‘man, you all partner with a gambling company, you open a can of worms’. That can of worms can be open with partnering with gambling companies or not.

“Partnering with a gambling company is not going to make gambling more accessible to us. The accessibility is what it is.”

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What are the allegations?

Which players have been arrested?

What has the NBA said about the allegations?

Who are New York’s notorious ‘Five Families’?

NEW YORK — Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier are among more than 30 people charged in connection with schemes involving illegal sports betting and rigged poker games backed by Mafia, authorities said on Thursday.

Rozier is accused in participating in an illegal sports betting scheme using private insider NBA information, officials said. Billups is charged in a separate indictment alleging a wide-ranging scheme to rig underground poker games that were backed by Mafia families, authorities said.

The indictments are related to two major cases, one involving sports betting and the second involving rigged poker games, U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. said at a news conference with FBI Director Kash Patel. In the first case, six defendants are accused of participating in an insider sports betting conspiracy that exploited confidential information about NBA athletes and teams, Nocella said. He called it “one of the most brazen sports corruption schemes since online sports betting became widely legalized in the United States.”

The second case involves 31 defendants in a nationwide scheme to rig illegal poker games, Nocella said. The defendants include former professional athletes accused of using technology to steal millions of dollars from victims in underground poker games in the New York area that were backed by Mafia families, he said.

In the sports betting scheme, players sometimes altered their performance or took themselves out of games early, New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said. In one instance, Rozier, while playing for the Hornets, told other he was planning to leave the game early with a “supposed injury,” allowing others to place wagers that raked in thousands of dollars, Tisch said.

The indictment of Rozier and others says there are nine unnamed co-conspirators including a Florida resident who was an NBA player and an Oregon resident who was an NBA player from about 1997 to 2014 and an NBA coach since at least 2021, as well as a relative of Rozier.

Rozier and other defendants “had access to private information known by NBA players or NBA coaches” that was likely to affect the outcome of games or players’ performances and provided that information to other co-conspirators in exchange for either a flat fee or a share of betting profits, the indictment says.

The NBA had no immediate comment. The league has investigated Rozier previously and still is looking into the actions of former Detroit player Malik Beasley, one of the sources told the AP.

Rozier was in uniform as the Heat played the Magic in Orlando, Florida, in the season opener for both teams on Wednesday evening, though he did not play in the game. He was taken into custody in Orlando early Thursday morning. The team didn’t immediately comment on the arrest.

A message was left with Rozier’s lawyer, Jim Trusty, on Thursday. Trusty previously told ESPN that Rozier was told that an initial investigation determined he did nothing wrong after he met with NBA and FBI officials in 2023, the sports network reported.

A message seeking comment was left with Billups on Thursday morning.

The case was brought by the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn that previously prosecuted ex-NBA player Jontay Porter. The former Toronto Raptors center pleaded guilty to charges that he withdrew early from games, claiming illness or injury, so that those in the know could win big by betting on him to underperform expectations.

Billups was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame last year. The five-time All-Star and three-time All-NBA point guard led the Detroit Pistons to their third league title in 2004 as NBA Finals MVP. Boston drafted the former Colorado star with the No. 3 pick overall in 1997. The player known as Mr. Big Shot also played for Toronto, Denver, Minnesota, the New York Knicks and the Los Angeles Clippers. Billups won the Joe Dumars Trophy, the NBA’s sportsmanship award, in 2009 while playing for his hometown Denver Nuggets.

The 49-year-old Billups is in his fifth season as Portland’s coach, compiling a 117-212 record. The Trail Blazers opened the season Wednesday night at home with a 118-114 loss to Minnesota.

A game involving Rozier that has been in question was played on March 23, 2023, a matchup between the Hornets and the New Orleans Pelicans. Rozier played the first 9 minutes and 36 seconds of that game — and not only did not return that night, citing a foot issue, but did not play again that season. Charlotte had eight games remaining and was not in playoff contention, so it did not seem particularly unusual that Rozier was shut down for the season’s final games.

In that March 23 game, Rozier finished with five points, four rebounds and two assists in that opening period — a productive quarter but well below his usual total output for a full game.

Posts still online from March 23, 2023, show that some bettors were furious with sportsbooks that evening when it became evident that Rozier was not going to return to the Charlotte-New Orleans game after the first quarter, with many turning to social media to say that something “shady” had gone on regarding the prop bets involving his stats for that night.

A prop is a type of wager that allows gamblers to bet on whether a player will exceed a certain statistical number, such as whether the player will finish over or under a certain total of points, rebounds, assists and more.

Richer, Reynolds and Marcelo write for the Associated Press. Durkin Richer reported from Washington, and Reynolds reported from Miami. Associated Press reporters David Collins in Hartford, Conn., and Larry Lage in Detroit contributed.