NBA Commissioner Adam Silver made his first public comments on the twin federal gambling indictments — one of which involves inside information from players and coaches — going to gamblers, which have rocked the league.
Silver attended the Knicks’ win over the Celtics at Madison Square Garden and spoke to Amazon Prime reporter Cassidy Hubbarth during the game.
“My initial reaction was I was deeply disturbed,” Silver said. “There’s nothing more important to the league and its fans than the integrity of the competition, so I had a pit in my stomach. It was very upsetting.”
Hubbarth asked what a lot of fans have asked: How did the NBA investigate now-on-leave Heat player Terry Rozier for his actions around a March 23, 2023 game — when Rozier was not on the injury report but took himself out after less than 10 minutes due to an ankle injury after allegedly tipping off gamblers with the inside information he was going to do that — but the FBI was able to indict him.
“We then looked into that situation and were very transparent about it, and while there was that aberrational betting, we frankly couldn’t find anything,” Silver said. “Terry, at the time, cooperated. He gave the league office his phone, he sat down for an interview. And we ultimately concluded that there was insufficient evidence, despite that operational behavior, to move forward. We then work directly with law enforcement, as they said at the press conference, that the league has been cooperating, and so that was obviously over two years ago. So the federal government has subpoena power, can threaten to put people in jail, can do all kinds of things that a league office can’t do. So we’ve been working with them since then, and of course, what they announced yesterday was an indictment. So two and a half years later, he still hasn’t been convicted of anything, in fairness to Terry, obviously it doesn’t look good, but he’s now been put on administrative leave.”
This echoes what NBC Sports was told by law enforcement sources. The NBA investigators (who are often retired federal law enforcement officers) can try to talk to the gamblers — many of whom were tied to the [Jontay Porter betting scandal that saw the former Raptors player banned for life from the league](https://www.nbcsports.com/nba/news/nba-bans-raptors-jontay-porter-for-life-due-to-involvement-in-betting-on-nba-games) — but those people have no obligation to talk to the NBA investigators. The league has no leverage on them. Federal investigators can seize the phones of those gamblers, threaten jail time and do more to get one of them to “flip” and detail the scheme in a way the NBA simply cannot.
On Thursday, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District unsealed two indictments, one for illegal sports betting and one for illegal poker game schemes (with ties to East Coast organized crime families), and with that arrested Rozier as well as Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups. Both Billups and Rozier are on leave from their teams. In total, 34 defendants were arrested across 11 states for their involvement in the two schemes.
Rozier, as well as former NBA player and assistant coach Damon Jones, were arrested in the illegal sports betting scheme, which used inside information about player health — known only to players and coaches — to give them an advantage and defraud the legal gambling books. “This scheme is an insider sports betting conspiracy that exploited confidential information about National Basketball Association athletes and teams,” U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District Joseph Nocella Jr. said in announcing the arrests.
Billups’ arrest was tied to the illegal poker game scheme, where the Hall of Fame player (before he was hired to coach Portland) was used as a “face card” to draw in unsuspecting gamblers to what law enforcement says were rigged poker games. Billups, as well as Jones, were given a cut of the winnings from these games, according to the indictment.
Attorneys for both Rozier and Billups have said that their clients are innocent and would fight the charges.
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