{"id":17838,"date":"2025-10-23T18:02:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T18:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/17838\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T18:02:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T18:02:09","slug":"damon-jones-former-university-of-houston-player-charged-after-federal-investigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/17838\/","title":{"rendered":"Damon Jones, former University of Houston player, charged after federal investigation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p data-v-6fc2855c=\"\">HOUSTON &#8211; Former NBA player and coach Damon Jones, who grew up in the Houston area, is among the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fox26houston.com\/sports\/heat-terry-rozier-trailblazers-chauncey-billups-arrest-gambling-probe\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">dozens of people charged<\/a> in connection with a federal investigation.<\/p>\n<p data-v-6fc2855c=\"\">Jones, Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier are\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/miami-heat-terry-rozier-gambling-probe-de98ecb76bb8f13b85f4c5ac62f66221\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">among more than 30 people charged<\/a>\u00a0in connection with schemes involving illegal sports betting and rigged poker games backed by the Mafia, authorities said on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p data-v-6fc2855c=\"\">Jones is accused in both indictments announced Thursday \u2014 of participating in rigged poker games as well as an illegal sports betting scheme using private insider NBA information.<\/p>\n<p data-v-6fc2855c=\"\">Authorities say Jones was coached \u2014 in real time \u2014 about how to play his hands during the poker games, and that at one point, he snapped back, saying: &#8220;Y\u2019all know I know what I\u2019m doing!! Let me hibachi like Gilbert Arenas.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p original-article-post=\"\" origination_station=\"KRIV\" data-v-ec26887a=\"\" data-v-6fc2855c=\"\">Dig deeper:<\/p>\n<p data-v-6fc2855c=\"\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fox26houston.com\/sports\/heat-terry-rozier-trailblazers-chauncey-billups-arrest-gambling-probe\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">More on the alleged schemes.<\/a><\/p>\n<p> Who is Damon Jones? <\/p>\n<p data-v-6fc2855c=\"\">Jones, 49, was an unofficial assistant coach for the Los Angeles Lakers in 2022-23 when he allegedly was involved with the betting scheme, according to the indictment. He\u2019s been coaching since at least 2014 after finishing an 11-year NBA playing career.<\/p>\n<p data-v-6fc2855c=\"\">He is from Galveston and played for Houston in college before suiting up with NBA teams in New Jersey, Boston, Golden State, Dallas, Vancouver, Detroit, Sacramento, Milwaukee, Miami and Cleveland.<\/p>\n<p data-v-6fc2855c=\"\">Jones averaged 11.6 points in the 2004-05 season with Miami, his only season scoring in double figures.<\/p>\n<p data-v-6fc2855c=\"\">Jones joined Cleveland\u2019s coaching staff in 2014 as a shooting consultant. He was on Tyronn Lue\u2019s Cleveland staff for the postseason in 2016 and was named a full-time assistant for the Cavaliers later that year. He also worked as a TV analyst for ESPN in 2018.<\/p>\n<p class=\"group-source-paragraph\" data-v-4fbf7207=\"\">The Source: The information in this article comes from the Associated Press.<\/p>\n<p>    <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fox26houston.com\/tag\/us\/tx\/houston\" class=\"tags-tag\" data-v-6fc2855c=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Houston<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fox26houston.com\/tag\/us\/tx\" class=\"tags-tag\" data-v-6fc2855c=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Texas<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fox26houston.com\/tag\/crime-publicsafety\" class=\"tags-tag\" data-v-6fc2855c=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Crime and Public Safety<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON &#8211; Former NBA player and coach Damon Jones, who grew up in the Houston area, is among&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17839,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1046,56,58,57,223,216,393],"class_list":{"0":"post-17838","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-crime-publicsafety","9":"tag-houston","10":"tag-houston-headlines","11":"tag-houston-news","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-tx","14":"tag-us"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}