In a storyline that sounds straight out of a Hollywood sports drama, multiple household National Basketball Association (NBA) names have been accused of collaborating with the mafia in a prop-bet scandal. The scandal—which has led to the federal indictments of Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and Portland Trail Blazers Head Coach Chauncey Billups, along with almost 30 others—involves two different cases: one centered on insider information sharing by players and staff and another on a poker cheating scandal tied to New York crime families.
Sports betting was illegal in the United States between 1992 and 2018, with exceptions in Nevada, Delaware, Montana and Oregon. This changed when the Supreme Court overturned the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) in 2018, leaving the right to sports betting up to the state’s discretion. This led to the rise of regulated sportsbooks in over 30 states and the advent of a $13.7 billion industry.
The first set of indictments, including the ones filed against Rozier, involved the use of insider information provided by Rozier and other co-conspirators over at least seven NBA games between February 2023 and March 2024. This scheme involved players such as Rozier providing non-public information—such information on injuries—to gamblers in exchange for a cut of their profits. Rozier’s indictment appears to be directly related to the lifetime ban which former Toronto Raptors power forward Jontay Porter received in April 2024 for prop-bet cheating of the same flavor.
The second scandal to rock the league was a poker cheating case that included the indictment of Billups. This case, the larger of the two, included over 30 arrests and directly involved four New York mafia families. U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. revealed that the poker cheating scandal involved the use of rigged shuffling machines and under-the-table X-ray devices to read cards. These rigged games netted almost $7 million for the gamblers involved, an amount which has been building since at least April of 2019. Although not directly related to basketball, Billups’ arrest occurred on the same day as Rozier’s, which compounded each one’s impact on the league and further damaged its credibility seeing as the two high-profile figures saw their downfall at the same time.
The prominence of the arrests could spell the end of the unregulated sports betting boom that has emerged since the overturning of PASPA. Ads for FanDuel, live betting odds on TV and large sportsbooks sponsoring sporting events have become increasingly common since 2018 due to relaxed laws on betting, but the arrests of several well-respected figures has the potential to tear sports betting down from its foundations. With the potential of increased government oversight over sportsbooks and leagues from both state regulators and the FBI, a reactionary trend toward pre-2018 precedent in sports betting law is probable. While the federal government may not ban sports betting directly, federal agencies are likely to take tips of illegal betting practices more seriously and states will certainly be pressured to roll back the wild-west atmosphere of betting laws that currently exists.
While still in the initial stages, the result of the federal investigation could yield detrimental results for the NBA and the sports betting industry alike, not only eroding the trust of the league’s fans but also threatening a government crackdown on the rapidly-growing industry.
