Could LeBron end up getting wrapped up in this mess too?
The sports world was shaken by two high-profile arrests in the NBA this morning when it was announced that Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier had been arrested in two separate but related gambling investigations.
According to FBI Director Kash Patel and US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Joseph Nocella Jr., the indictment alleges that Rozier, along with five other defendants, participated in an illegal sports betting scheme using insider information.
Sportsbooks in multiple states had reportedly flagged a surge of bets on Rozier while he was playing for the Charlotte Hornets in a game against the New Orleans Pelicans back in 2023, with 30 wagers in 46 minutes being placed on Rozier hitting the under in that game. He then exited the game after just 10 minutes, citing a foot injury.
The case is reportedly connected to Toronto Raptors player Jontay Porter, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges after admitting to manipulating his performance in two games during the 2023-24 season and was subsequently banned from the NBA.
Billups, meanwhile, was charged in an indictment that includes 31 people allegedly involved in rigging underground poker games connected to the mafia, including the Bonanno, Gambino, Lucchese and Genovese crime families. According to the indictment, Billups was used to lure gamblers into the poker games, which reportedly used technology including rigged shuffle machines, X-ray tables that could read cards face down and special contact lenses and eyeglasses that could read premarked cards to rig the games.
Absolutely wild stuff. But how does any of this involve LeBron James?
Well former Cleveland Cavaliers player and assistant coach Damon Jones was also charged in the scheme for allegedly providing inside information about NBA games to sports bettors.
Jones played for the Cavs from 2005-2008, and joined the team’s coaching staff from 2016-2018 after retiring as a player. And where was LeBron James playing from 2005-2008, as well as from 2016-2018? The Cleveland Cavaliers.
It was during their time together on the Cavs that Jones and James reportedly became close friends, and Jones also served as an “unofficial assistant coach” for the Los Angeles Lakers during the 2022-2023 season, after LeBron had left the Cavaliers for the second time to play for Los Angeles.
According to the indictment of Jones, the coach allegedly sent a message to a bettor on February 9, 2023, encouraging him to place a bet on the Milwaukee Bucks in their game against the Lakers:
“Get a big bet on Milwaukee tonight before the information is out!”
The indictment alleges that Jones had information about an unnamed player, identified only as Player 4, who would not be playing that night but was not listed on the injury report. LeBron would sit out not only that game but the next two games for the Lakers.
According to The Athletic, an NBA source reported that LeBron is not believed to have known that Jones was sharing information about his playing status with sports bettors.
Still, the whole thing shows you just how valuable this inside information is, and the lengths people will go to profit off of it.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver appeared on The Pat McAfee Show just this week and discussed the issue of protecting the integrity of the game, revealing that the league is working with sports betting sites like DraftKings and FanDuel to implement controls that would prevent game manipulation:
“We’ve asked some of our partners to pull back some of the prop bets, especially when they’re on two-way players, guys who don’t have the same stake in the competition, where it’s too easy to manipulate something, which seems otherwise small and inconsequential to the overall score. We’re trying to put in place -learning as we go and working with the betting companies – some additional control to prevent some of that manipulation.”
It’s obviously a complicated issue, one that the law, the leagues and the sports betting platforms haven’t been able to keep up with. And unfortunately, this probably isn’t the last time we see a player caught up in a scandal like this.
