PHILADELPHIA — One thing nobody will dispute is that Thursday was a victory for the scolds. All at once, they logged on, and logged in, and limbered up their Twitter fingers and sent them dancing across the keyboard like Herbie Hancock on the ivories.

A good old-fashioned gambling scandal was erupting, and they weren’t going to let it pass ...Read more

DETROIT — When he was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame last October, former Pistons star Chauncey Billups talked about what the city of Detroit meant to him.

It was where he became an NBA champion two decades before his enshrinement. It was where he earned the nickname — “Mr. Big Shot” — that he carried with immense ...Read more

LAS VEGAS — A prosecutor said Thursday that former NBA player and coach Damon Jones, arrested in Las Vegas as part of a federal probe into Mafia-linked gambling scams, has a “very serious gambling problem.”

Jones, 49, was charged in an indictment — along with several others — in the Eastern District of New York with conspiracy to ...Read more

MIAMI — The Heat won’t have guard Terry Rozier after his arrest Thursday, and the team won’t be getting any immediate cap relief to replace him, either.

The NBA placed Rozier on immediate leave after he was charged with involvement in an illegal insider sports betting scheme. He is accused of informing a betting ring that he would be ...Read more

ORLANDO, Fla. — A pair of long-running federal gambling investigations into “tens of millions of dollars in fraud and theft and robbery” led to the arrests Thursday of Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and dozens of others, including two former NBA players and New York mafia members.

Two wire-fraud conspiracy indictments were unsealed in ...Read more

TAMPA, Fla. — USF women’s basketball coach Jose Fernandez, who led the Bulls to unprecedented success during his quarter-century tenure, is leaving for a WNBA head coaching opportunity, reportedly with the Dallas Wings.

Various media outlets were reporting Thursday that Fernandez, 53, was closing in on a deal to coach the struggling ...Read more

BOSTON — VJ Edgecombe was unflappable 10 hours before making his NBA debut.

There were no jitters, butterflies or even a restless night before he faced the Boston Celtics on Wednesday night at TD Garden.

“I slept great,” Edgecombe said Wednesday morning. “I ain’t going to lie. Yeah, I got more than eight hours of sleep. I ain’t ...Read more

NEW YORK — A current NBA player, former player and current NBA head coach were arrested Thursday as part of the federal takedown of a pair of sweeping gambling conspiracies, including a mob plot that cheated players in rigged underground poker games out of millions of dollars.

Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier, Portland Trail Blazers head coach ...Read more

PHILADELPHIA — A sports betting scandal involving Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier has roiled the NBA and threatens to undermine the $13 billion sports betting industry.

Billups and Rozier are among 34 people across 11 states charged in connection with two separate schemes — defrauding ...Read more

PORTLAND – The Timberwolves’ first game of the season brought with it the first surprise.

Coach Chris Finch opted to start Donte DiVincenzo in place of veteran Mike Conley as the Wolves opened their season with a 118-114 victory over Portland.

Anthony Edwards had 41 as the Wolves overcame 19 turnovers. Jerami Grant had 29 for the Trail ...Read more

CHICAGO — NBC Sports ushered in the new NBA season Tuesday with plenty of Chicago Bulls highlights and a halftime interview with the franchise’s biggest star.

Unfortunately for the current team, the highlights were mainly old clips of Michael Jordan in the 1990s, and the halftime interview with Jordan, titled “MJ: Insights to Excellence,�...Read more

NEW YORK — Karl-Anthony Towns said he played through a Grade 2 quad strain in the Knicks’ season-opening 119-111 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday.

Towns missed New York’s final two preseason games with what the team described as a quad issue and had his status for the season opener at Madison Square Garden fluctuate from ...Read more

The Nets opened the 2025-26 season with a 136-117 loss to the Charlotte Hornets at Spectrum Center, struggling defensively from start to finish. It was a discouraging showing on that end of the floor, especially with the team nearly at full strength, missing only Danny Wolf (left ankle) and Haywood Highsmith (right knee surgery).

It didn’t ...Read more

BOSTON — A 13-point fourth-quarter lead against an undermanned Philadelphia 76ers squad wasn’t enough to earn the Celtics a win in their season opener.

Boston’s first game after its seismic offseason overhaul ended in a 117-116 loss at TD Garden.

Jaylen Brown and Derrick White — the only remaining starters from this team’s 61-win ...Read more

CHICAGO — The Detroit Pistons spent much of Wednesday night appearing distant from the team that achieved one of the most remarkable one-year turnarounds in league history last season. However, in the fourth quarter, the Pistons relied on one trait that had been a key part of their success: resiliency.

The Pistons trailed by as many as 23 ...Read more

Michael Jordan was nervous.

All he had to do was sink a free throw, but a lot was riding on that one shot.

It had nothing to do with a championship or a scoring title or the outcome of any meaningful game.

It had everything to do with being Michael Jordan, the man considered by many to be the greatest basketball player of all time.

In his ...Read more

The band is back together, even though they never really parted.

Departed? Sure. The crew that comprised “Inside the NBA” moved from TNT when the cable network lost its NBA broadcast rights to ESPN, NBC and Amazon after last season.

But the ensemble that somehow is greater than the sum of its star-studded parts continues — albeit now ...Read more

DENVER — Competitive impulse lured Jamal Murray and Jon Wallace into a gym together for the first time.

It was 2019, and the Nuggets had just hired Wallace as a basketball operations associate — “basically like an intern,” he said. Tim Connelly, his new boss and the roster architect who drafted Murray three years earlier, created a ...Read more