The Athletic has live coverage of the U.S. federal betting investigation into NBA players.

NEW YORK – Just two days into its new season, the NBA was rocked by a sweeping federal indictment of illegal gambling charges unsealed Thursday which resulted in the arrests of a head coach, a current player and a longtime confidant of the game’s most prolific scorer, and allegedly involved the participation of four reputed mafia crime families in New York.

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Hall of Fame player and current Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier, and Damon Jones, a former player who was a teammate of LeBron James and was once his personal shooting coach, were charged.

“This is the insider trading saga for the NBA,” FBI director Kash Patel said at a federal courthouse in Brooklyn.

Billups, 49, inducted into the hall of fame in 2024, was indicted for his alleged participation in a wide-ranging, years’ long scheme to defraud card players in poker games that were said to have involved numerous members of the Bonano, Gambino, Luchese and Genovese crime families in New York.

Rozier, 31, is charged for allegedly taking himself out of a game on purpose in 2023 so a co-conspirator could place a bet and win. These charges stem from the ongoing investigation that produced a guilty plea – and subsequent lifetime ban from basketball – for former Raptors player Johntay Porter, who bet on NBA games and manipulated his own performance so co-conspirators could win money on prop bets. Porter pleaded guilty in July 2024 to one felony count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Following the charges, Billups and Rozier were placed on leav