Portland Trailblazers head coach Chauncey Billups exits the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse after his arraignment on Thursday in Portland. Billups, the 2004 NBA Finals MVP, was charged for his alleged participation in a scheme that involved rigging illegal poker games. Mathieu Lewis-Rolland Getty Images
One of the many unfortunate realities of the NBA gambling scandal dominating headlines this week is the reminder of what happened to the Sacramento Kings at the franchise’s peak in 2002.
The loss in the Western Conference Finals to Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal’s Los Angeles Lakers, which included questionable calls by officials in Game 6 before losing the series in Game 7, might have played a role in preventing the Kings from reaching their first NBA Finals and bringing Sacramento its only championship.
Disgraced official Tim Donaghy later admitted to betting on NBA games, including ones he officiated. He was not on the floor for Game 6 or any game of that series, but he said he believed officials were working to push that conference finals series to seven games. He was accused of conspiring to fix games to benefit gamblers and later spent 15 months in federal prison because of it.
The NBA finds itself in a sticky situation after the FBI on Thursday detailed gambling-related allegations against current Portland Trail Blazers head coach and Hall of Famer Chauncey Billups; Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier; and former player Damon Jones, who played one season for the Kings (2002-03).
Some coaches have been open about the potentially difficult relationship between gambling and the NBA, which has formally partnered with sports books since 2018.
Kings coach Doug Christie — who was on that early 2000s team that nearly made the Finals — was one of many coaches and players throughout the NBA this week given the difficult task of answering questions about their perspectives of the ongoing legal case. He was not thrilled to answer a question about it before the Kings’ home opener Friday against the Utah Jazz.
“That question is loaded as hell,” Christie said after being asked how important the NBA operating with competitive integrity was for him.
“Ever since I was a kid, the game is everything,” Christie continued. “And I hope that’s what it means to all of our players. And I tell them to play with a childish joy and to never lose it because the game, in so many ways, it requires (integrity) but there’s also a level of love. It deserves that too. So for me, it’s everything. I’ve been through a lot of different stuff. But we’re still here.”
Sacramento Kings coach Doug Christie talks to his team during the home opener at Golden 1 Center on Friday in Sacramento. PAUL KITAGAKI JR. pkitagaki@sacbee.com
Since the golden era of Kings basketball ended, the team has made the playoffs just once in the past 19 seasons, while nostalgia for those teams continues to drive passion for both the fan base and organization.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that the Sacramento Kings should have a ring on their finger,” Donaghy said to NBC Sports Bay Area’s Monte Poole on a podcast in 2019. “They were the best team in the league that year. That Game 6 was definitely a situation where towards the end of that game they got robbed.”
‘Very close to the sport’
In federal indictments, prosecutors alleged that Billups and Jones were involved in illegal, rigged poker games run by the Mafia; and that Rozier and Jones supplied sports bettors with inside information on NBA games. Jones’ most recent NBA experience was in 2018 as an assistant coach for the Cleveland Cavaliers.
The Kings were on the periphery of a betting scandal in 2024 when former Toronto Raptors player Jontay Porter was accused of helping a gambler win a parlay bet consisting of the “unders” of his statistics.
Porter subbed out of a game March 20, 2024, against Sacramento after just three minutes citing an illness, which would have won the bettor $1.1 million, though the bet never paid. An investigation showed Porter bet on at least 13 NBA games. He has since been banned from the league for life.
Billups, Rozier and Jones were arrested this week, with Billups and Rozier placed on leave from their teams.
There’s little doubt the fallout of the ongoing betting scandal will have a significant impact on the NBA for years to come. It appears the stakes will be higher now that apparent malfeasance is putting the league under the microscope.
“Gambling is very close to the sport, it just is,” Jazz coach Will Hardy said before Friday’s game. “If you sit close to the floor at any game, the last five minutes there’s a lot of people that are yelling at me and the other coach and everybody about what they want to see happen at the end. And our job is to coach the game. So it’s a hard topic. Because pretending it’s not there would be being very naive. It’s very, very present.”