On Thursday, the basketball world was shaken by the arrests of several notable figures linked to the NBA, casting a shadow over the sport and raising serious questions about the league’s increasingly close relationship with gambling. The arrests of Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups, Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier, and former player and assistant coach Damon Jones were part of an FBI investigation into illegal gambling and rigged poker games. These developments have reignited a long-standing debate about the consequences of the NBA’s embrace of sports betting and the risks that come with intertwining professional basketball with gambling interests.
The NBA today feels less like a pure sporting competition and more like a platform for betting. The traditional excitement of the game is often drowned out by the omnipresent presence of betting odds, live betting offers, and parlay updates scrolling across broadcast screens. Fans are increasingly divided—some are fully engaged in the game, while many more are glued to their phones, tracking bets and wagering outcomes in real-time. This shift in focus from the sport to the speculation around it was arguably inevitable, given the NBA’s enthusiastic partnership with major gambling companies over recent years. The league signed lucrative sponsorship deals that allowed sportsbooks to flood broadcasts with ads and overlays displaying betting lines and prop bets, effectively normalizing gambling as part of the viewing experience.
The arrests on Thursday highlight the dark side of this gambling culture. Terry Rozier is accused of tipping off associates about his intention to leave a 2023 Charlotte Hornets game early, a move that reportedly helped bettors make large sums of money. Rozier’s lawyer, however, claims that prosecutors are relying on unreliable sources rather than solid evidence. Chauncey Billups, who is not implicated in any NBA game-fixing, is alleged to have participated in rigged poker games with mafia connections. Damon Jones is accused of leaking inside information about NBA games to gamblers. Although Billups denies the allegations, the association of such high-profile figures with gambling scandals underscores how deeply betting has permeated the sport.
The NBA’s aggressive marketing of gambling has arguably created an environment ripe for these types of scandals. The league’s partnership with gambling companies has transformed basketball from a game of skill and competition into a product heavily monetized through betting. This not only changes the nature of the sport but also invites ethical dilemmas and potential corruption. For example, prop bets—wagers on very specific occurrences during a game, such as how many rebounds a player might get or whether they will leave the court early—do not require a player to throw an entire game to be exploited. Even minor actions can be manipulated for financial gain, raising the stakes and temptations for players and coaches alike.
The consequences of this gambling culture are not limited to the NBA. In Texas, for example, casino magnate Miriam Adelson, heiress to the Las Vegas Sands fortune and majority owner of the Dallas Mavericks, is lobbying for a massive casino-arena complex in Dallas. While this is promoted as an economic development project, it essentially aims to use basketball as a lure to attract gamblers, further blurring the lines between sports entertainment and betting.
The NBA has defended its embrace of legal gambling by claiming it enhances transparency and integrity. The league works with regulated sportsbooks that flag suspicious betting activity and shares data with its integrity units to detect wrongdoing. This system helped uncover another major scandal involving Jontay Porter, who was banned for life after admitting to providing inside information and manipulating his play while betting through an associate’s account. However, these safeguards have not prevented the current scandals, which suggest that the problems run deeper than isolated incidents.
Experts and critics have long warned about the risks of embedding gambling so thoroughly into sports culture. Ryan Gayle, an NBA writer and co-host of The Knick of Time Show on YouTube, has been vocal in his criticism of the NBA’s partnerships with gambling companies such as FanDuel and DraftKings. Gayle argues that the league’s cozy relationship with these companies inevitably opens doors for players and coaches to share information that can be exploited for betting gains. He questions whether the NBA values its financial partnerships more than the integrity of the game itself.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, who was once a leading advocate for legalized sports betting, has recently called for more restraint. Silver has asked league partners to pull back on prop bets and has pushed for tighter regulations to protect players from the pressures of gambling and to reduce hostility from frustrated bettors. Despite these efforts, the continued presence of gambling