2025 NBA betting and gambling scandal
What was the 2025 NBA betting and gambling scandal about?
Who is Chauncey Billups?
Who is Terry Rozier?
In October 2025 the NBA was rocked by a scandal in which active and former players and coaches, among others, were accused of participating in illegal gambling and poker schemes. Federal law enforcement announced two indictments. In one indictment, Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups was charged with involvement in a series of illegal poker games that were facilitated by Mafia crime families. In the other indictment, Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier was accused of having given advance warning to coconspirators that he would fake an injury and remove himself from a basketball game, thereby allowing his associates to make bets on his performance using inside information. In addition, former player and coach Damon Jones was charged in both indictments.
Hours after the charges were made public, the NBA announced that Billups and Rozier had been placed on leave. The scandal, which threatened to taint the integrity of professional basketball in the United States, erupted several years into an ongoing boom in sports betting that began after a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court decision allowed its widespread legalization (see Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association). That boom had been enthusiastically encouraged by the NBA itself, which benefited from a massive influx of sponsorship money from sports betting companies. Critics had warned that such a rapid expansion of gambling platforms risked creating the conditions for exactly such a scandal as the one that burst into public view just days into the 2025–26 season.
Details of the indictments
Illegal poker games
- Born: September 25, 1976
- NBA career: player from 1997 to 2014 on seven teams, most notably the Denver Nuggets and the Detroit Pistons; head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers (2021– )
- Notable achievements: 2004 NBA champion, 2004 Finals MVP, five-time All-Star, 2024 Hall of Fame inductee
The indictment involving illegal poker games, filed in the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York, named Billups, Jones, and 29 other men as defendants. Prosecutors alleged that Billups and Jones had joined numerous high-stakes games in the New York City area that were organized by members of the Bonanno, Gambino, and Genovese crime families, exploiting their status as prominent former athletes to attract wealthy victims. On those occasions the defendants were alleged to have used various technological means—such as hidden cameras and altered card-shuffling machines—to rig the games against unsuspecting players. The indictment states that Billups and Jones then received a cut of the fraudulently won earnings from these games as compensation. To read the indictment, click here.
Rigging games and sharing insider information
- Born: March 17, 1994
- NBA career: player since 2015 for three teams, the Boston Celtics, Charlotte Hornets, and Miami Heat
- Notable achievements: tenacious role player on the Celtics team that pushed LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers to seven games in the Eastern Conference Finals in 2018
The second indictment, filed in the same District Court, named Rozier, Jones, and four other men as defendants. It alleges that prior to a March 23, 2023, basketball game between the Charlotte Hornets and the New Orleans Pelicans, Rozier, who at the time was a guard for the Hornets, informed an associate that he would claim to be injured and leave the contest early. Prosecutors stated that the associate then sold this inside information to others, allowing them to place various “unders” bets with sportsbooks, predicting that Rozier would underperform expectations in the game. When Rozier did indeed play only several minutes, those bets paid off handsomely, and Rozier was alleged to have received a cut of the money earned from selling the advance information.
The indictment also listed numerous instances in which the other defendants used ill-begotten inside information to make winning bets on NBA games. These include several cases in which Jones, while serving as an “unofficial assistant coach on the Los Angeles Lakers,” sold privileged information, including about an athlete’s injury, to bettors. Subsequent news reports indicated that one of those players was LeBron James, who was not accused of any wrongdoing. Perhaps most damningly, prosecutors alleged that prior to a March 24, 2023, game between the Portland Trail Blazers and the Chicago Bulls, “Co-Conspirator 8” told a defendant that numerous Portland starters would not be playing. This information was then used to place successful bets against the Trail Blazers in that game. Although the indictment does not name “Co-Conspirator 8,” it does provide details that strongly suggest it refers to Billups (“a resident [of] Oregon” who “was an NBA player from approximately 1997 through 2014, and an NBA coach since at least 2021”). To read the indictment, click here.
Aftermath
In November 2025 Billups pleaded not guilty, and a month later Rozier did the same. Billups’s trial is scheduled to begin in November 2026. Billups remains on unpaid leave from the Blazers, and in April 2026 the Heat waived Rozier from their roster. Also in April 2026 Jones pleaded guilty to two charges, one related to participating in poker games and the other related to selling inside information. A month later federal authorities filed additional charges against Rozier, including for bribery.
The NBA has maintained that the overall integrity of the game is not at risk and that the indictments suggest that existing safeguards to detect unusual gambling behavior worked. However, it has acknowledged a need for greater regulation and adjustments to the current sports gambling regime. In particular, the league has singled out prop bets on the performance of individual players as especially problematic because they make inside information potentially very valuable to gamblers. Such bets were at the center of other recent sports gambling scandals, including in November 2025, when two MLB pitchers were indicted for deliberately manipulating their pitches to affect prop bets on their performances.
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