'This is catastrophic for the NBA': Bombshell sports gambling bust includes stars

You're excused if you suddenly got a sinking feeling about the parlay you bet on tonight's slate of NBA games.

You have every reason to feel skittish about laying a little action on the NBA considering that Thursday morning, just two days after the start of the 2025-26 regular season, the FBI arrested and charged Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups, former NBA player and coach Damon Jones and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier in two separate indictments. Billups and Jones are accused of participating in rigged poker games that included involvement by mafia members. Jones and Rozier are accused of using insider knowledge about NBA teams and players to help people place bets. If that's true, then it might be considered sports' worst gambling scandal since former NBA referee Tim Donaghy pleaded guilty in 2007 to betting on games he officiated.

Actually, I take that back. If the government's claims are true -- that Rozier, Jones and others with insider knowledge about teams and players bet on games played by the Trail Blazers, Charlotte Hornets, Los Angeles Lakers, Orlando Magic and Toronto Raptors -- then it wouldn't be an exaggeration to call this the worst scandal in NBA history. It would also be one of the worst gambling scandals in American sports in at least a generation.

"We're talking about tens of millions of dollars in fraud and theft and robbery," said FBI Director Kash Patel when he announced the charges Thursday morning.

Billups and Jones were allegedly part of a 31-person ring that included Mafia members and scammed people out of $7.15 million during elaborately rigged poker games.

Billups' attorney, Chris Heywood, described his client as a "man of integrity," and said Billups will fight the charges and is not guilty of any wrongdoing. "Anyone who knows Chauncey Billups knows he is a man of integrity; men of integrity do not cheat and defraud others," Heywood said. "To believe that Chauncey Billups did what the federal government is accusing him of is to believe that he would risk his hall-of-fame legacy, his reputation, and his freedom. He would not jeopardize those things for anything, let alone a card game."

Rozier had previously been cleared by the NBA after an investigation related to betting activity connected to games he played in, a fact that his attorney brought up after his arrest. "Terry was cleared by the NBA, and these prosecutors revived that non-case," attorney Jim Trusty said in a statement. "Terry is not a gambler, but he is not afraid of a fight, and he looks forward to winning this fight."

According to NBC News, it's unclear if Jones has an attorney, and calls made to a number believed to be his were not returned. Each of the three is entitled to a presumption of innocence before the law.

Their respective teams placed Billups and Rozier on leave Thursday and, the NBA said in a statement Thursday that it is cooperating with authorities. "We take these allegations with the utmost seriousness, and the integrity of our game remains our top priority," the statement read.

The insider knowledge the government said Rozier, Jones and others improperly exploited included information about injuries, player absences and even which teams were trying to lose games to better their chances of picking early in the draft.

The scandal has ruined what appeared to be a great start to the 2025-26 season. The league began a promising season with a thrilling double-overtime game that ended with a player missing a potentially game-winning shot at the buzzer. The owners have made peace with the league's players' union, and the league just started a lucrative new broadcast and streaming era marked by an 11-year, $76 billion deal with Amazon, NBC and Disney -- which owns ESPN -- for the rights to carry its games. The league may have believed the worst problem it would have is finding time between its seemingly ubiquitous televised games to rake in and count its cash. NBC and MSNBC are both owned by Comcast.

Instead, this entire NBA season is likely to be played under the shadow of a federal investigation and possibly court dates and trials. There's no way that won't cast a pall over the season, and it will be difficult for some fans not to question the integrity of every game they watch. After all, the government says that in a March 23, 2023, game between the Charlotte Hornets and New Orleans Pelicans, Rozier -- then a starter for the Hornets -- let a childhood friend know he was going to "prematurely remove himself from the game in the first quarter due to a supposed injury and not return to play further," and that friend, the government says, sold that info to others who placed bets that resulted in thousands of dollars in winnings.

Some of those bets, the government says, were placed through "Betting Company 1 and Betting Company 2," which it says "have been the co-official sports betting partners of the NBA." In 2021, the NBA announced sponsorship deals with online sportsbooks FanDuel and DraftKings, and the Department of Justice describes the betting platforms as victims.

FanDuel said in a statement to CNBC that the arrests "are deeply disturbing," and that it was committed "to rooting out abuses by those who seek to undermine fair competition and the games we love."

DraftKings told CNBC that it "fundamentally believe[s] that regulated online sports betting is the best way forward, to monitor for and detect suspicious behavior."

Donaghy wasn't the NBA's only gambling scandal before this one. Just last season, the league banned former Toronto Raptors center Jontay Porter after a scandal very similar to the current allegations. Porter pleaded guilty to federal charges that he conspired to help bettors win games he played in.

Thursday's federal indictment doesn't accuse teams of throwing games. Even so, the league and its 30 teams have a big problem on their hands, and they may never be able to wash away the stench of these allegations because the games and betting are so closely linked now.

Until recently, that would have been unimaginable because federal law banned all but four states from issuing licenses for sports betting. But after the Supreme Court ruled that law unconstitutional in 2018 and states passed laws allowing legal sports betting, the NBA cozied up to sportsbooks. It's now impossible to watch a sporting event without getting a branded report on betting lines and player props.

Expect that cozy relationship to persist. There's too much money in sports betting to imagine the NBA will shun it now. But if the league takes the integrity of its game as seriously as it says, then it needs to consider that there's a good probability of new scandals involving players and coaches.

And it needs to think about what fans' eroding faith in the integrity of the games might do to the NBA's revenue and its future as a league.

Opinion | This may be the biggest NBA scandal ever