It’s been a busy week for us and our Venn diagram of interests, which often separates sports into a separate bucket. More often than not, that often provides us a welcome distraction from more troubling issues or a celebration of how much sports matters to media these days. Yesterday, neither was the case by a long shot. Or any kind of wager, for that matter.
CNN’s Dana O’Neil recapped the flurry of events that resulted in an otherwise celebratory roundup during the pre-dawn recaps of the first full night of NBA games being usurped by this story and these uniformed performance artists:
Portland Trail Blazers head coach and basketball Hall of Famer Chauncey Billups, Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and former NBA journeyman Damon Jones are among 34 people indicted in connection with two separate federal gambling investigations announced by the Eastern District of New York on Thursday.
At a lengthy and at times spirited news conference that included FBI Director Kash Patel, US Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr., and others detailed the sweeping multi-year investigations that spanned 11 states, resulted in the arrests of 34 people, involved tens of millions of dollars and included members of the notorious Bonanno, Genovese, Gambino and Luchese crime families.
Billups, who coached in the Trail Blazers’ opening game on Wednesday night, was arrested in Portland on Thursday morning and is expected to appear in federal court there later on Thursday. Rozier, arrested in Orlando, will appear there. Both will be arraigned at a later date in Brooklyn.
Jones, who retired in 2012, is one of three people to be charged in both cases.
For the balance of the day, one couldn’t avoid anyone from anywhere in the sports or media landscape for offering their two units. Rozier’s name was perhaps the least surprising and most familiar, given his connections to an incident that already claimed the career of one Jontay Porter, an obscure benchwarmer best known for being the younger brother of Denver Nuggets star Michael Porter, Junior who was banned from the league permanently in spring 2024 and later confessed to manipulating his performance in games to allow gamblers making even more obscure prop bets to profit from it. But as O’Neil noted, Rozier had already emerged unscathed at least as the NBA was concerned:
Investigators allege between December 2022 and March 2024, Rozier tipped people about his availability for games, citing seven specific games in their investigation including one, against the New Orleans Pelicans, already flagged by sportsbooks for irregular activity. In that March 2023 game, Rozier, then with the Charlotte Hornets, left the game after just nine minutes with an injury. According to investigators, Rozier shared that inside information, and his co-conspirator bettors made $200,000 in wagers on the under. The NBA has said previously it looked into the game involving Rozier against the Pelicans and that no rules had been broken.
In Billups’ case, the news was more surprising and unprecedented, but as O’Neil further elaborated while it didn’t involve basketball per se it had an intriguing enough plot line and cast of characters to attract any administration with an obsession for television ratings:
Billups, the Portland head coach since 2021, is charged in an elaborate scheme in which marks were lured to participate in rigged poker games in part with the opportunity to play alongside the NBA five-time All-Star as well as Jones.
Billups, Nocella said, knowingly served as the so-called “face card,” to attract the “fish,” to underground games in Miami, New York, Las Vegas and the Hamptons that they had no chance of winning. Those involved in the scheme used rigged card-shuffling machines, poker chip trays and even special contact lenses or eyeglasses that could read pre-marked cards. In some instances, the alleged conspirators used X-ray tables that reveal cards when they are placed face down.
Nocella said the scheme, deemed “Zen Diagram” by the feds, “fleeced” victims out of tens of millions of dollars. One alleged victim lost $1.8 million. The money was then laundered by the crime families.
That alone might be enough for an image-obsessed ex-podcaster to take the bait to become the real-life embodiment of Eliot Ness. Especially when one considers the parallels to another poker-related scandal which YARDBARKER’s Joseph Varghese hinted at in one of the many theory-based theses that have dropped like feces in the last 20-ish hours:
As the NBA braces itself for blowback after the arrests of Chauncey Billups and Terry Rozier, one might wonder if they were trying to follow the league’s gambling king, Michael Jordan.
“His Airness” was quite open about his gambling addiction, often partaking in games or tables whenever he was afforded the opportunity. In fact, initially, the league tried its best to keep a lid on his activities.
But later, when confronted about it, Jordan openly stated that he did not have a gambling problem. Rather, it was just a hobby, and he loved indulging in it to keep his competitive fire stoked.
Yet as SPORTSKEEDA’s Yiannis Bouranis noted in a July 2023 piece, MJ did provide this clickbaitable quote:
“I took my punishment in that situation and I am done with it”.
Punishment which as the world was reminded as they turned their COVID-desperate attention to ESPN’s LAST DANCE documentary may have included a league-suggested sabbatical in the wake of his father’s murder in 1993 and the NBA investigation that cleared the then-GOAT of any actual wrongdoing because, hey, it was just casino stuff.
Which brings us to Jones, the name connected to both of the smoking guns Patel’s team picked up the trail on, and the particular connections he has had that somehow allowed him to play for ten different teams in an otherwise ignominious 11-year career. Notably, one that resulted in the only stint that lasted for more than one season in any of them–a point YAHOO! SPORTS’ Dan Tracy couldn’t resist amplifying:
Jones spent three seasons with the Cavaliers as a player from 2005-08, playing alongside LeBron James. The two were on the Cleveland team that went to the NBA Finals in 2007. Jones maintained a relationship with James after his playing career, spending time with the Cavaliers as an informal shooting coach in 2014 before joining Tyronn Lue’s staff in 2016. He was on Cleveland’s staff for James’ final two seasons with the organization. According to The Athletic, Jones was still working with James in an informal role during the 2022-23 season, when he is accused of sharing inside information about the NBA star’s playing status with a bettor. While he wasn’t an official Lakers coach, Jones worked with James during pregame workouts.
Guess which current GOAT just happens to be on a reportedly shorter sabbatical and missed this week’s opener, ostensibly due to an unfortunate recurrence of back pain?
And when that GOAT just happens to be a whale with a negative history in the minds of a certain petty tyrant who just happens to be Patel’s boss, Lord and savior, it’s impossible not to at least muse about why this story emerged at the very outset of what was already portending to be one of the most globally successful in NBA history.
I’m hardly a lone wolf with such thoughts, as DEADLINE’s Dominic Patten and Ted Johnson observed:
The arrest of NBA stars and coaches Thursday by the U.S. government over allegations of insider betting schemes and mob-backed poker games are all part of a vengeful Donald Trump power play, says Stephen A. Smith.
Smith added: “We’ve seen accusations before. We’ve seen athletes get in trouble with the law before. You don’t see the director of the FBI having a press conference. It’s not coincidental. It’s not an accident. It’s a statement, and it’s a warning that more is coming.”
Trump’s animosity toward the NBA and its players goes back at least as far as the George Floyd protests and league players kneeling during the national anthem. “I think it’s disgraceful,” Trump said in 2020. “We work with (the NBA). We work very hard trying to get them open. I was pushing them to get open. And then I see everyone kneeling during the anthem. It’s not acceptable to me.”
In 2020 as the league went into a sequestered “bubble” at a Disney resort in Florida finish out its season during Covid, its Players Association and Board of Governors announced a $300 million fund to start a foundation that will focus on “economic empowerment in Black communities,” with each of the 30 teams donating $1 million annually over the next decade.
All throughout that Bubble season, the league allowed players to wear messages related to social justice on their uniforms. Those messages included the words “Black Lives Matter” and “Equality” and “Liberation.” The words “Black Lives Matter” were emblazoned on the court during telecasts and some team busses.
And we do know there wouldn’t have been a Bubble season at all without the support and urging of one very, very prominent player who had recently joined a Los Angeles Lakers team that was well positioned to win a title before that darn COVID threw a monkey wrench into that storyline, one that the league was only too eager to see to conclusion. What we don’t quite know is whether or not that player is one and the same with the one that Patten and Johnson later cited:
Mentioned in the betting indictment but not arrested Thursday is a “prominent N.B.A. player” who is with the L.A. Lakers. That “Player 3” was an ex-teammate of Jones, who is in many ways is the link between the two indictments. Jones had confidential info about Player 3’s medical condition for the February 9, 2023 and January 15, 2024 games and leaked that info to co-conspirators in the gambling syndicate. It is also true that Jones told one of his gambling colleagues that Player 3 would not be on the court for a February 2023 Lakers-Milwaukee Bucks game, and the individual should “get a big bet on Milwaukee tonight before the information is out!” James did not play that game due to an issue with one of his ankles.
Naturally, there was outrage and consternation at the mere suggestion that anything like this could somehow be connected to Fat Orange Jesus, as the DEADLINE duo added:
Patel responded to Smith’s assertions about Trump on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show tonight: “That may be the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard from anyone in modern history, and I live most of my time in Washington DC. It’s right up there with Adam Schiff.”
But in a week where his clearly cuter colleague defended said boss with a carefully crafted defense of how actual bulldozing of an American institution is somehow a “process” after texting responses such as “Your mother does” to inquiring journalists, one would suspect Patel is merely trying to make up for his shortcomings in an attempt to keep pace.
Regardless of motive, at the very least this media land grab does beg for responses from James and league czar Adam Silver as to what, if anything, they knew and when did they know it? Damon Jones can’t be the reason 80 seasons of global growth and success goes belly-up. As the guy who actually produced THE UNTOUCHABLES used to say on his other show, “Lucy, you got some ‘splainin’ to do”.
I’m looking forward to those press conferences fer sure. They’ve certainly got a precedent to live up to. After all, the NBA has never not been about the pursuit of K–er–cash.
Until next time…