{"id":235263,"date":"2025-10-23T14:40:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T14:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/235263\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T14:40:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T14:40:08","slug":"trail-blazers-coach-chauncey-billups-heat-guard-terry-rozier-among-30-individuals-arrested-by-fbi-for-alleged-illegal-gambling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/235263\/","title":{"rendered":"Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, Heat guard Terry Rozier among 30 individuals arrested by FBI for alleged illegal gambling"},"content":{"rendered":"

Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier were arrested by the FBI on Thursday as part of two separate illegal gambling-related cases, according to multiple sources<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Billups, Rozier and former Cleveland Cavaliers player and assistant coach Damon Jones were among 30 individuals arrested in connection with the FBI’s probe. Four other individuals, Eric Earnest, Marves Fairley, Shane Hennen and Deniro Laster were named in the Department of Justice’s indictment<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Billups was charged in “an illegal poker operation tied to the Mafia<\/a>,” per ABC News. His involvement is reportedly not related to games he coached, per NBC News.<\/p>\n

Billups, 49, spent 17 seasons in the NBA as a player. Billups, the No. 3 overall pick in the 1997 NBA Draft, spent eight of those seasons with the Detroit Pistons, where he helped lead the team to a championship in 2004. Billups was a five-time All-Star, made the All-NBA team three times and was a member of the NBA All-Defensive team twice. Billups was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2024.<\/p>\n

Following the end of his playing career, Billups went into coaching. He was hired by the Trail Blazers ahead of the 2021-22 NBA season and has compiled a 177-212 record in five seasons with the team.<\/p>\n

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One of those defeats came Wednesday night, as Billups led the Trail Blazers to a 118-114 loss<\/a> to the Minnesota Timberwolves in the team’s 2025-26 season opener.<\/p>\n

Jones’ arrest was also related to the illegal poker game. Jones, an 11-year NBA veteran, played for 10 teams during his career. After retiring in 2012, Jones spent time as an assistant coach with the Cavaliers.<\/p>\n

Rozier, 31, had been under investigation<\/a> for his actions during a 2022-23 NBA game, when he was still a member of the Charlotte Hornets. Prior to a game against the New Orleans Pelicans that season, a bettor placed nearly $14,000 on unders involving Rozier’s statistics. Rozier left the game after just nine minutes due to a foot injury, causing his under bets to win, per documents acquired by ESPN.<\/p>\n

The investigation into Rozier reportedly focused on whether he “manipulated his performance<\/a> as part of an illegal sports betting scheme,” the Wall Street Journal wrote in January.<\/p>\n

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Despite the investigation, Rozier, an 11-year NBA veteran, was preparing to play for the Heat during the 2025-26 NBA season. The guard battled a hamstring injury ahead of the team’s season opener Wednesday, but was reportedly available to play in the contest.<\/p>\n

He did not make an appearance in the team’s 125-121 loss<\/a> to the Orlando Magic.<\/p>\n

In September, the Hornets canceled a sports betting theme night promotion<\/a> that was supposed to take place when Rozier and the Heat came to town in March.<\/p>\n

Rozier’s lawyer, Jim Trusty, released a statement to CNN saying his client “looks forward to winning this fight.”<\/p>\n

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Trusty also criticized the way the FBI handled Thursday’s arrest<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is unfortunate that instead of allowing him to self surrender they opted for a photo op. They wanted the misplaced glory of embarrassing a professional athlete with a perp walk. That tells you a lot about the motivations in this case. They appear to be taking the word of spectacularly in-credible sources rather than relying on actual evidence of wrongdoing,\u201d Trusty\u2019s statement continued.<\/p>\n

The probe into Rozier was previously said to be linked to the one that resulted in Toronto Raptors forward Jontay Porter being banned from the NBA<\/a> for life. Porter was investigated after unusual betting activity came in on his unders for two games<\/a>. Porter left one of those contests with an injury and another with an illness, causing a number of those unders to hit.<\/p>\n

An NBA investigation determined Porter leaked “confidential information to sports bettors,” limited his playing time in certain games for betting purposes and bet on NBA games, leading to his lifetime ban.<\/p>\n

FBI director Kash Patel will hold a press conference<\/a> at 10 a.m. ET to discuss the arrests<\/a> made in the investigation.<\/p>\n

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This story will be updated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier were arrested by the FBI on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235264,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,5670,27164,17603,141140,7214,7810,23234,141134,7223,5665,590,7210,12985,4621,85,41165,141133,17602],"class_list":["post-235263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-charlotte-hornets","tag-chauncey-billups","tag-cleveland-cavaliers","tag-damon-jones","tag-detroit-pistons","tag-fbi","tag-illegal-gambling","tag-jontay-porter","tag-miami-heat","tag-minnesota-timberwolves","tag-nba","tag-new-orleans-pelicans","tag-orlando-magic","tag-portland-trail-blazers","tag-sports","tag-terry-rozier","tag-tom-winter","tag-toronto-raptors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}