Chauncey Billups, Terry Rozier arrested by FBI in gambling probe

Capt. Factorial said:
I want this scandal to blow up so big and encompass so many NBA players that Adam Silver is forced to resign as commissioner in shame and flee the country to somewhere that doesn't have an extradition treaty to the U.S., and I don't care how many of my favorite players have to go to prison to make that happen.
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You may get your wish. This is just the beginning.
 
Talking to a retired DDA friend of mine today, he had this "early take" on shocking betting scandal involving numerous NBA subjects (players, coaches, etc) and involvement with Italian mafia. If games were "fixed" and proven in court which should be relatively easy to get convictions this could not just rock NBA but lead to its downfall my longtime friend said. Anyone who attended (paid for tix) could claim cheated as games were "fixed." Civil suits on massive scale could result NBA having to pay millions if not billions of dollars in damages for NBA licensed merchandise fraud, other criminal violations. I want my money back for all the Kings games in the time frame that rigged games happened and cheated in this massive fraud. 30 individuals arrested today my retired prosecutor said very telling evidence FBI has to go forward at this scale.
 
Kingster said:
When this story came up I couldn't help but think about all the gambling that Vlade, Bibby and crew did on the airplane flying to and from their away games. On several occasions Napier implied the stakes were quite large. I would hazard a guess that these "friendly" poker games were replicated with many other teams around the league. It seems to me criminal types could exploit this gambling culture by slowly but surely extending the boundaries of "friendly and above-board" into criminal activity.
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now that you brought that up, it reminds me of the Arenas and Crittenton incident happening because of a card game dispute
 
PurpleHaze said:
Talking to a retired DDA friend of mine today, he had this "early take" on shocking betting scandal involving numerous NBA subjects (players, coaches, etc) and involvement with Italian mafia. If games were "fixed" and proven in court which should be relatively easy to get convictions this could not just rock NBA but lead to its downfall my longtime friend said. Anyone who attended (paid for tix) could claim cheated as games were "fixed." Civil suits on massive scale could result NBA having to pay millions if not billions of dollars in damages for NBA licensed merchandise fraud, other criminal violations. I want my money back for all the Kings games in the time frame that rigged games happened and cheated in this massive fraud. 30 individuals arrested today my retired prosecutor said very telling evidence FBI has to go forward at this scale.
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1/2 the scandal is a poker scam that has nothing to do with the games. nba betting stuff appears to be prop betting and insider info (Lebron is out with injury). This has also been a “years long investigation”. They have been collecting surveillance, witnesses, texts and calls dating back to ‘23. Unless I’m looking at this all wrong, this is the iceberg, not the tip.
 
Sherds said:
Its all about $$.

In Australia, sports betting is out of control to the point that most teams jersey sponsors are betting companies and in every pre/post game media includes dedicated segments discussing odds and the hosts suggesting what are "good value" bets.

We now have government led agencies to try and curb the normalisation of gambling cause you have 12yo kids discussing odds.

What makes me laugh though is that in the 90's, cigarette advertising was banned cause of the impact on kids, it was replaced by alcohol companies which were then banned in the 2000's... which were replaced by (drum roll)... the gambling agencies and somehow could not see a pattern.
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you want to talk about impact on kids, look no further than fast food and junk food commercials catering to adolescence and young kids
 
iowamcnabb said:
1/2 the scandal is a poker scam that has nothing to do with the games. nba betting stuff appears to be prop betting and insider info (Lebron is out with injury). This has also been a “years long investigation”. They have been collecting surveillance, witnesses, texts and calls dating back to ‘23. Unless I’m looking at this all wrong, this is the iceberg, not the tip.
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I think there is absolutely an iceberg, but I don't expect the people presently in charge to get very far below the surface. I think they want an easy win.
 
PurpleHaze said:
Talking to a retired DDA friend of mine today, he had this "early take" on shocking betting scandal involving numerous NBA subjects (players, coaches, etc) and involvement with Italian mafia. If games were "fixed" and proven in court which should be relatively easy to get convictions this could not just rock NBA but lead to its downfall my longtime friend said. Anyone who attended (paid for tix) could claim cheated as games were "fixed." Civil suits on massive scale could result NBA having to pay millions if not billions of dollars in damages for NBA licensed merchandise fraud, other criminal violations. I want my money back for all the Kings games in the time frame that rigged games happened and cheated in this massive fraud. 30 individuals arrested today my retired prosecutor said very telling evidence FBI has to go forward at this scale.
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PurpleHaze said:
NBA scandal draws Kings into outrageous corrupt fray. As I said earlier in a post - Want my money back from Kings organization and NBA for fixed outcome of games I paid for tix!

https://www.abc10.com/article/news/...ad491d22-9ae2-4b7a-9ab5-22af561c9074?tbref=hp
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You and your friend seem to be misunderstanding here. This article you've cited is in relation to a prop bet. These kinds of bets are placed on in-game occurrences that have no direct impact on the outcome of the game. That's part of the reason that modern legal sports gambling is so insidious and so addictive. The prop bet menu is so insanely large that you can bet on the most inconsequential of occurrences, like Jontay Porter's point total. This is not evidence that the outcomes of NBA games have been "fixed".

As far as we currently know, the outcomes of games weren't fixed in the cases uncovered, but the outcomes of bets were fixed. If you know your team is angling to lose a game toward the end of the season for draft pick positioning by sitting your most talented players, you can influence betting outcomes. The NBA has already done much to try and curb tanking as a practice, but even the return of a blanket ban on NBA gambling isn't going to stop tanking. Teams would try their hand at tanking regardless.

And plenty of fans are, indeed, unhappy when they pay to go to a game and star players are sitting. It's why the league office has instituted fines for the practice of DNP: Tanking. But again, this is a different concern than, say, Chauncey Billups using insider knowledge to influence betting outcomes.
 
Padrino said: "As far as we currently know, the outcomes of games weren't fixed in the cases uncovered, but the outcomes of bets were fixed. If you know your team is angling to lose a game for draft pick positioning by sitting your most talented players, you can influence betting outcomes. The NBA has already done much to try and curb tanking as a practice, but even a return to a ban on NBA gambling isn't going to stop tanking. Teams would try their hand at tanking regardless. And plenty of fans are, indeed, unhappy when they pay to go to a game and star players are sitting. It's why the league office has instituted fines for the practice of DNP-tanking. But again, this is a different concern than, say, Chauncey Billups using insider knowledge to influence betting outcomes."

I hope you are right and outcome of NBA games never affected. But I still think the proverbial shoe has yet to drop on scope of this massive scandal with over 30 arrests and counting plus Italian mafia involved. Depending on the facts revealed at trials of the defendants I see many civil suits, class action suits ready to be filed against NBA and various of its franchises.
 
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PurpleHaze said:
I hope you are right and outcome of NBA games never affected. But I still think the proverbial shoe has yet to drop on scope of this massive scandal with over 30 arrests and counting plus Italian mafia involved. Depending on the facts revealed at trials of the defendants I see many civil suits, class action suits ready to be filed against NBA and various of its franchises.
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I'm really skeptical that it's going to rise to that level or anything close to it. More information will surely come out, but so far, it mostly seems like we're dealing with a handful of NBA-affiliated knuckleheads who got caught because they were acting stupidly and openly and this stuff gets watched very closely.

To be clear, I absolutely hate seeing legalized gambling in the NBA. I hate it with the fire of a thousand suns. People are going to have their vices, and that's fine, but I just despise everything about the way the gambling conversation has rapidly infected all other conversations around the game. It's one of the reasons KF.com remains such a safe haven for me as a Kings fan. Here, we talk Kings. We talk basketball. And, apart from the occasional charity bet between spun-up forum members, gambling tends to remain far away from our daily conversation around the game.

All of that said, I'm a realist. Legalized sports gambling is going nowhere because of the enormous amount of money involved. Everybody knew that there were going to be some growing pains once it was legalized. Further regulations will surely find their way to the books. The league will do its best to put a lid on it, and with respect to state and federal legislation, we'll very likely see action there, as well. If you tighten up the prop menus considerably, you solve a lot of these problems. There's just far too many opportunities for this kind of idiocy currently.
 
Padrino said:
You and your friend seem to be misunderstanding here. This article you've cited is in relation to a prop bet. These kinds of bets are placed on in-game occurrences that have no direct impact on the outcome of the game. That's part of the reason that modern legal sports gambling is so insidious and so addictive. The prop bet menu is so insanely large that you can bet on the most inconsequential of occurrences, like Jontay Porter's point total. This is not evidence that the outcomes of NBA games have been "fixed".
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So your saying LBJ leaving a game early has no impact on the outcome of a game? The bets themselves don't. The actions of players faking injury to leave the game absolutly impacts the outcome of the game
 
Section 101 said:
So your saying LBJ leaving a game early has no impact on the outcome of a game? The bets themselves don't. The actions of players faking injury to leave the game absolutly impacts the outcome of the game
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Faking injury? LeBron's old. He'll be lucky to play 60 full games a season for however long he remains in the league. And while his early exit certainly impacts the outcome of a game, to my knowledge, LeBron has not been implicated in any of this. He's been named as a player who's absence from games was used as insider knowledge for others to win bets. Are you saying James is throwing Laker games for chump change?
 
Padrino said:
Faking injury? LeBron's old. He'll be lucky to play 60 full games a season for however long he remains in the league. And while his early exit certainly impacts the outcome of a game, to my knowledge, LeBron has not been implicated in any of this. He's been named as a player who's absence from games was used as insider knowledge for others to win bets. Are you saying James is throwing Laker games for chump change?
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No, I'm saying even porter leaving changes the game. it changes rotations and puts lesser players on the court. So it can change wins/losses, but the point spread even more so.
 
NBA world now in turmoil and needs a sacrificial lamb. NBA Board of Governors should immediately fire Adam Silver and replace him with Mark Tatum his Deputy Commissioner and Chief Operating Officer who Silver hired 2014. Tatum should be replaced as soon as a new Commish can be selected to try and clean up the massive scandal mess.
 
You know, everybody else is calling for Adam Silver's job, and excoriating the NBA for clearing Terry Rozier in the wake of the FBI bringing him up on charges. And meanwhile, the only thing I can think about is, how ****ing sloppy did Jontay Porter have to be that he got caught?!
 
Padrino said:
Faking injury? LeBron's old. He'll be lucky to play 60 full games a season for however long he remains in the league. And while his early exit certainly impacts the outcome of a game, to my knowledge, LeBron has not been implicated in any of this. He's been named as a player who's absence from games was used as insider knowledge for others to win bets. Are you saying James is throwing Laker games for chump change?
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It definitely makes me look at the concept of "load management" in a different way. Resting healthy veterans throughout the regular season as a means to save their legs for the playoffs was meant to be entirely a basketball motivated decision -- unfortunate for the fans but not technically against the rules. What it looks like to me now that we have confirmation of that information being sold to privileged individuals for financial gain is a pattern of randomized score manipulation which is essentially untraceable unless someone (maybe the FBI) starts to correlate who is betting big on games where star players have been "load managed", when those bets were made, and how often they were successful.

And the NBA still has not fixed their own officiating problem that Tim Donaghy exposed. I watched most of one NBA game today where the referees had apparently decided that nothing was going to be called (even players being knocked to the ground resulted in no-calls) and then the first quarter of another game where damn near everything was a foul. The final score of that first game was 105-95 and the final score of the second game I see now was 110-128. The whole damn thing stinks.
 
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