“We’re dealing with a lot of (bleep).”

– Crash Davis, “Bull Durham”

The good tidings for the NBA’s 2025-26 season lasted about a fifth of a Scaramucci.

Less than 48 hours after the Oklahoma City Thunder and Houston Rockets played an epic double-overtime season opener, and Luka Dončić almost triple-doubled the Golden State Warriors in a loss, and Giannis Antetokounmpo destroyed the Washington Wizards, and Victor Wembanyama … Wembied, the excellent on-court product was disappeared by arrests, and charges levied, against one of the league’s current 30 head coaches, one of its current players and one of its former players, who also was an assistant coach.

Advertisement

All were implicated, according to the federal government, in a massive gambling scheme alleging rigged poker games and helping gamblers place winning bets with inside information on who was and was not going to play in games.

And money — always, always, money — is at the center.

Money lost in the poker games, where Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups and former Cleveland Cavaliers assistant coach Damon Jones were allegedly the “face cards” — the celebrities — whose presence compelled other players to take part in the games, which were allegedly rigged in all kinds of ways. Money proffered from wagers on games in which bettors could clean up on “prop bets” on players they were told would either not play or would take themselves out of games — info allegedly provided by Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and Jones and an as-yet-unnamed, unindicted “co-conspirator 8,” whose profile is suspiciously simi