John Niyo: Allegations seem unimaginable against Pistons hero Chauncey Billups

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 pride. It’s where his No. 1 jersey now hangs from the rafters at Little Caesars Arena.

“And it was in Detroit where I became known as a winner,” Billups said, “which is all I ever wanted.”

No one wanted this, though. And few could’ve imagined a scandal like the one he is linked to Thursday. Billups, in his fifth season as head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, was among 34 individuals indicted by federal prosecutors as part of a sprawling illegal betting investigation that linked the NBA’s own gambling problem with organized crime.

Billups, 49, was arrested before dawn Thursday morning at his home in suburban Portland, hours after the Trail Blazers’ season-opening loss to Minnesota. The NBA quickly announced he’d been placed on “immediate leave” as head coach, and Billups was arraigned later Thursday in Portland.

He is listed as defendant No. 6 in the case of “United States v. Aiello, et al,” arguably the biggest name being prosecuted by the Eastern District of New York. Billups is alleged to have played a role in operating rigged poker games, used as a celebrity “face card” to lure “fish” into an elaborate scam that netted millions of dollars and involved four of the five notorious New York Mafia families, according to the Justice Department.

Prosecutors say the mob-run poker games in Las Vegas, New York and Miami utilized an array of high-tech cheating techniques, including hidden cameras, altered shufflers, X-ray tables and special glasses and contact lenses to read marked cards. But they also used Billups and other so-called “face cards” who allegedly received a portion of the proceeds for playing their role in the games. A prosecutorial memo alleges Billups, who played for the Pistons from 2002-08 and was NBA Finals MVP when they won the title in 2004, received a $50,000 wire transfer after one of the poker games in October 2020.

“My message to the defendants who’ve been rounded up today is this: Your winning streak has ended. Your luck has run out,” U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. said at a press conference in New York. “Violating the law is a losing proposition, and you can bet on that.”

There was much more of that sort of bluster from federal officials Thursday as FBI director Kash Patel announced some of the more salacious details from a years-long investigation into what he called “mind-boggling” fraud and a “criminal enterprise that envelops both the NBA and La Cosa Nostra.”

Big problem for NBA

There are two overlapping cases — dubbed “Operation Nothing But Bet” and “Operation Royal Flush” — and it’s the latter in which Billups and another former Pistons player, Damon Jones, are each facing one count of wire fraud and four counts of money laundering.

But for the NBA, which tipped off its season and a new $77 billion media-rights deal this week, it’s the other case involving rigged performances in games and the sharing of inside information for gambling purposes that’s even more problematic.

Jones was also indicted in that case, and while Billups is not named, he matches the description of “Co-Conspirator 8,” a resident of Oregon who was “an NBA player from approximately 1997 through 2014, and an NBA coach since at least 2021.”

That indictment alleges that in March 2023, Co-Conspirator 8 told one of the defendants “that the Trail Blazers were going to be tanking (i.e., intentionally losing) to increase their odds of getting a better draft pick in the upcoming NBA draft” and that “several of the Trail Blazers’ best players … would not be playing” in a game against the Chicago Bulls. That non-public information allegedly was shared with other defendants who successfully wagered “approximately $100,000” on what turned out to be Portland’s 124-96 loss that night.

Other performance-fixing allegations center on the actions of Jones, a former teammate and close friend of LeBron James who is said to have sold insider information to professional gamblers about the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2022-23 season. The feds also claim Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier was part of a prop-bet scheme with the gambling ring that involved, among other allegations, Rozier taking himself out of a game citing injury in March 2023 — and securing wins for “under” bets on his statistics — while he was a member of the Charlotte Hornets.

Rozier was taken into custody Thursday morning at the Orlando hotel where his team was staying after Wednesday night’s season opener. And like Billups, Rozier was also placed on leave from his team, the NBA announced in a statement, adding, “We take these allegations with the utmost seriousness, and the integrity of our game remains our top priority.”

The NBA Players Association offered a slightly different spin on that, saying in a statement, “The integrity of the game is paramount to NBA players, but so is the presumption of innocence, and both are hindered when player popularity is misused to gain attention. We will ensure our members are protected and afforded their due process rights through the process.”

But regardless of some of the motivations on the prosecutors’ side, and the requisite grandstanding that was on display at Thursday’s announcement, the point Patel made is undeniable.

“Let's not mince words,” Patel said. “This is the insider trading saga for the NBA. That's what this is.”

No surprises

And what this will continue to be for the NBA, and every league — college sports, too — now that they’re inextricably tied to the booming sports gambling industry. What once was a third rail for these entities is now a front-facing sponsor, and ever since the Supreme Court effectively legalized sports betting in 2018 when it struck down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, this is the collision course they’ve been on.

The NBA has business deals with DraftKings, FanDuel and BetMGM, and some teams even have in-arena sportsbooks. So is anyone really surprised that the players and coaches on the court might have some skin in the game, too?

Just this week, NBA commissioner Adam Silver, in an interview on ESPN, again lobbied for federal legislation on sports gambling. He also said the league had asked some of those gambling “partners” to “pull back some of the prop bets,” especially involving some of the more marginal players on NBA rosters “who don't have the same stake in the competition.” Another former NBA player, Toronto’s Johntay Porter, already pleaded guilty last year to betting on NBA games and manipulating his own performances to aid other gamblers. He has since received a lifetime ban from the league.

NCAA president Charlie Baker also reiterated his plea for the elimination of prop bets entirely in the wake of Thursday’s news. And while Nocella said these indictments didn’t involve college basketball, a separate federal investigation in another jurisdiction is examining a series of cases in that sport. Last month, the NCAA also announced it was pursuing gambling-related violations tied to 13 former men’s basketball players at six schools, including Eastern Michigan.

And while Silver and others are right to point out that legalized betting does allow for better regulation — “We can monitor it in ways that were unimaginable years ago,” Silver noted — that clearly isn’t enough, based on the indictments handed down Thursday.

Nor is this the end of it, according to authorities. Patel described the feds’ investigation as “very much ongoing” and when asked about what the implications were for the NBA and other sports leagues, he replied, “Simple, if you're participating in the legal gambling industry, you got nothing to worry about. If you're participating in illegal conduct, you got everything to worry about. And this case shows it.”