The 2025-26 NBA season was two days old when the league was rocked by the arrests of Hall of Fame Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups, Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and former player Damon Jones, who is closely linked to the league’s biggest star LeBron James and was once his shooting coach.
While arrests of athletes are sadly commonplace in US sports, the arrests in this instance were federal indictments led by the FBI into a gambling and betting ring which are said to involve four out of the five mafia crime organizations, the so called ‘Five Families’. This was no ordinary betting scandal; this was an event that could have been used as plot device in ‘The Sopranos’.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Access deeper industry intelligence
Experience unmatched clarity with a single platform that combines unique data, AI, and human expertise.
The legalisation of sports betting in the United States over the past decade has come with associated problems throughout all the major sports leagues. The NFL, NBA, and MLB have all had some form of betting scandal.
In November, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred stated that while MLB was aware of potential issues with ‘prop bets’ which is a wager on a specific event or statistic that does not directly rely on the final score of the game, they were now taking steps to work with their betting partners to limit and restrict the wagers available.
This action came considering the arrests of Cleveland Guardians pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz on allegations they conspired with bettors. Clase and Ortiz are accused of rigging what pitches they would throw for the benefit of bettors they collaborated with.
Rozier is accused of similar activity, allegedly taking himself out of a game on purpose in 2023 so that an associate could win a bet, which followed on from Toronto Raptors guard Jontay Porter who was charged with a conspiracy to commit wire fraud after removing himself from NBA games. Porter was subsequently banned from the NBA for life.
US Tariffs are shifting - will you react or anticipate?
Don’t let policy changes catch you off guard. Stay proactive with real-time data and expert analysis.
By GlobalDataThe allegations against Billups and Jones are of a completely different level, however. Both are accused of joining rigged poker games which are linked to the New York crime families, but more worryingly for the world of sport, both are accused of providing gamblers with line up information relating to the Trail Blazers and LA Lakers.
Gamblers could then use that information to bet on line-ups and ‘over/unders’ for specific players ahead of time and before this information was available to the sportsbooks, allowing them access to far better odds. It should be noted that Billups has pled not guilty to all charges.
Given the Federal nature of the indictments, the NBA is in a bind – further investigation could mean a huge fallout if the thread is pulled, and it is revealed that the scandal runs far deeper than first feared.
On the other hand, with Congress now focused on the investigation and the league, the NBA must ensure that it has its house in order. It has asked multiple teams, including the LA Lakers, to hand over documents and other property including mobile phones as part of an investigation into the betting scandal.
Ultimately, the question is whether the greater proliferation of gambling and betting partnerships across the US sports ecosystem is to blame for these scandals. The NCAA, the body that regulates student-athletes and organizes collegiate sports in the US, has just last week rescinded a rule change to allow athletes and staff to permissibly bet on sports, fearing a similar sort of scandal, which followed an investigation into 13 basketball players at various schools.
The ease of access to gambling, as well as the potential of vast sums which could be made by betting on sports mean that the temptation of players to influence the outcome of contests calls into question the integrity of sporting events.
While the sums of money available to professional athletes through their playing contracts means the top players are unlikely to get involved, those at college level or lower-level players will see opportunities to further their earnings with bets so could be tempted to take advantage.
With the spectre of organized crime also hovering over sports betting, the question is whether the risk is ultimately worth it? For the leagues and teams who enter partnerships with sportsbooks, and the betting companies themselves, the answer is obviously yes thanks to the vast amount of money they can make, but long term, the risk is that fans stop trusting what they are seeing on the field of play.
If there are continued scandals, it is almost inevitable that fans will stop watching and engaging, which in turn puts at risk other expensive sponsorships and the billions of dollars available through media rights deals.
What is not in question is that the US sports industry collectively must get a grip on the situation before the scandals threaten to overwhelm it and make the partnerships with the gambling industry more of a risk than reward.
