Thank you for reading The Dope.
The NBA invited gambling in, offered it a drink, lit some candles. The NBA wanted gambling — oh, how it wanted it. The franchise owners and their crack crew at HQ looked at the incoming torrent of casual, everyday, on-my-phone betting on the league, and they simply could not contain their craving for some of that rich, rich payout.
This is what you want, this is what you get. And what we got on Thursday was a story about gambling, basketball and the Mob that would be laughed out of every Hollywood pitch room as being so cliche, nobody’d ever produce it.
The NBA is hip-deep in a gambling scandal that has been hiding in plain sight. Example: Current Miami player Terry Rozier, arrested Thursday and charged as part of a scheme to rig betting outcomes via inside information, tipped a friend in 2023 that he was going to take himself out of a Charlotte Hornets game inside of the first 10 minutes, according to the indictment handed down by federal officials in New York. (Rozier played for Charlotte at the time.)
That’s exactly what he did. Nine minutes and 34 seconds into the Hornets’ game on March 23, 2023, Rozier suddenly left the court with an apparent foot injury, never to return. Why would that matter? Because a betting person, one who knew ahead of time that Rozier was going to come out of the game, could make himself a nice little bundle by taking the under on all of Rozier’s individual statistics that were bettable that night: points, rebounds, assists.
Indeed. Rozier’s friend sold the pre-game information to a couple of bettors for $100,000, according to the indictment. Hundreds of thousands in betting action ultimately came in on Rozier. He took the dive. (Allegedly.)
And where is the NBA in this, you ask? Tremendous question.
The NBA knew all about it.
The league got tipped on Rozier by a number of sports books, in fact, on the very day it happened in 2023. It investigated. Curiously, Rozier did not play another game that season. His attorney has since said that the NBA found no league violations.
And then Rozier kept right on playing. He was still active until Thursday, when the league acknowledged the federal indictments, suspended him, and said it “will cooperate with the relevant authorities.” Thanks for that.
“The NBA at some point is going to have to explain why Terry Rozier was allowed to keep playing,” ESPN basketball reporter Brian Windhorst said on the Rich Eisen Show.
“I just want to point something out: The sportsbooks caught the irregular betting on Terry Rozier the day it happened,” Windhorst said. “They told the NBA right away, and guess what? Rozier didn’t play the rest of the season — and he had faked the injury. So it wasn’t because of the injury. The NBA pulled him. They pulled Jontay Porter, too.” (That’s a reference to the serial bettor and inside-information pusher, on whom the league waited months before finally issuing a lifetime ban in April 2024.)
We haven’t even gotten to Chauncey Billups.
Billups, the Hall of Fame player and current Trail Blazers head coach, got perp-walked in Portland on Thursday after being indicted as part of a Mafia-tied poker ring in which games were repeatedly rigged to cheat ignorant dupes of at least $7 million altogether.
Billups was a “face card,” meaning he played in the games in order to attract other players who’d want to hang with a famous person. It’s a common tactic. It’s even memorialized on film. I just re-watched the entire Sopranos series, and they deployed Frank Sinatra Jr., Lawrence Taylor and David Lee Roth (I bleep you not) at their games to draw in a bunch of bad poker players who had money to lose and wanted to rub some elbows.
This stuff is unreal. Four of the five reputed New York mob families — Bonanno, Gambino, Genovese and Lucchese — were in on the action. They used poker chip tray analyzers, special contact lenses or eyeglasses, and an X-ray table to cheat players out of hundreds of thousands of dollars per game, then (allegedly!) beat folks up until they paid their debts. Billups and former NBA player Damon Jones were in on the scheme, the feds claim.
These two cases are very different, but they do have overlap. Billups was not named in the NBA bet rigging operation on Thursday, but there is a “Co-Conspirator 8” referenced in that indictment. The person is described as a resident of Oregon who was “an NBA player from approximately 1997 through 2014, and an NBA coach since at least 2021.” That describes Billups.
So: Gambling. Money. The Mob. (Which, to be honest, I wasn’t aware still had that kind of juice.)
And — you betcha — sports.
Everybody’s super concerned. The folks at Fan Duel, the largest online sports betting operator in the United States, called the revelations “deeply disturbing” and concerning for “fans, athletes, and everyone who loves sports and values integrity and fair play.”
They should know! Fan Duel is an official betting partner of the NBA.
So is DraftKings. The DraftKings brain trust came up with this one:
“We fundamentally believe that regulated online sports betting is the best way forward to monitor for and detect suspicious behavior while offering consumer protections backed by advanced technology, neither of which exist in the pervasive illegal market.”
Did you get that? The betting company thinks that, definitely, for sure, sports leagues should continue to buddy up with the betting company — for safety’s sake. Thank goodness someone is on the case. Anyway, enjoy the games this weekend.
Not sure which is more astonishing, FanDuel offering to “watch the henhouse”…or, David Lee Roth as a “face card.” 🤯
Sounds like a potential reboot of either Austin Powers or the 1966 Batman Series.🥴
And, oh -- as of November 1, college athletes will be allowed (aka encouraged) to learn how to bet their NIL income on professional sports. Just grooming the next crop of suckers, I guess.