An NBA head coach, a veteran NBA player and a former player and assistant coach were arrested on Thursday in an FBI sting related to illegal sports betting and rigged poker games backed by The Mafia, but no, despite what ESPN know-nothing Stephen A. Smith thinks and is saying, this isn’t Donald Trump getting revenge on the NBA for being too “woke.”
“In his eyes, folks tried to throw him in jail. In his eyes, he’s innocent, and, They’re trying to put me behind bars. I’m getting everybody. He’s not playing,” said Smith, who doesn’t seem to realize that the investigation leading to the arrests of Chauncey Billups, the head coach of the Portland Trailblazers and a 2024 inductee into the Basketball Hall of Fame, NBA veteran Terry Rozier and former NBA player and assistant coach Damon Jones dates to the issue with Jontay Porter, the former Toronto Raptors player who was banned from the NBA last year for his involvement in a gambling ring, and is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty in July on a wire-fraud charge, was launched during the Biden administration.
The rigged poker games date to 2019, according to court documents; the inside info on games part of the story dates to the investigation into the Jontay Porter matter, which dates to 2023, which is where the Terry Rozier part of the story also dates.
It’s worth noting here that the lawyer for Rozier in this case is a guy named Jim Trusty, a former personal attorney for Trump, who leverages his contacts with Team Trump these days as a crypto lobbyist to bring in an extra few bucks.
I doubt that’s a coincidence; if you want to get away with something these days, it helps to have a Trump guy on your side.
So, sorry, Stephen A., but your buddy, Trump, who likes to take credit for everything, and blame for nothing, this one is just another matter in which he just happens to be there.
And for that matter, Smith and whoever else wants to try to make this more than it already is doesn’t need to embellish – I mean, we’re talking here about a major sports gambling scandal involving an NBA head coach and at least two players now, and it’s fair to assume that this may get a ton worse before it’s all said and done.
The arrests are for what is being presented in the here and now as separate matters – one track involving information being provided to gamblers about the availability of players that could be used to influence bets on games and prop bets involving players, the second the rigged poker games put on by prominent Mafia crime families.
Acknowledging that, I wouldn’t be surprised if we were to learn later that there is a nexus between the two, because that’s where the serious money is made in the gambling underworld – a guy lets himself get dragged into gambling, eventually loses more money than he can afford to pay back, and is presented a way to get square that has him doing things, like checking out of a game with a phantom foot injury, or using your celebrity to lure people into a high-stakes poker game.
According to court documents, Billups, who is facing charges at the moment only in the rigged poker games part of the story, also appears to fit the description of a co-conspirator who provided information about the availability of players in a 2023 game involving Portland that the Blazers went on to lose by 28 points.
I’d be shocked if there isn’t more of that kind of thing still to come in terms of revelations.
The Mafia part of this is, by far, the most interesting to me.
According to New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, the rigged poker games involved members and associates of the Bonanno, Gambino, Lucchese and Genovese crime families, and how the games themselves played out comes across like something from a movie.
According to court documents, The Mafia used “sophisticated cheating technologies,” including shuffling machines that could read the cards in the deck, poker chip trays with hidden cameras, special contact lenses and glasses that could read pre-marked cards, and an X-ray table that could read cards facedown on the table, which, seriously, this actually happens?
The indictments allege that Billups and Jones were used by the crime families as what are called “face cards” to lure high rollers into playing in the poker games, in which victims lost a collective $7 million, with one gambler being taken for $1.8 million.
The betting activity around games is pretty standard stuff – according to court documents, players removed themselves from several games with phantom injuries after informing bettors of their plans, allowing the gamblers to bet the unders on prop bets.
With respect to Billups, it appears that the game that his Blazers lost by 28 was one before which he tipped off bettors regarding plans to rest rotation players.