The NBA betting scandal that has engulfed Chauncey Billups and Terry Rozier is only the beginning. Former federal prosecutors and legal experts warn that in-game betting and player access to inside information make basketball uniquely vulnerable to manipulation.

The Oct. 23 press briefing announcing two indictments and 34 total arrests—among them Billups, Rozier, and former NBA player and coach Damon Jones—has cast a shadow over the start of the NBA season. The story has snowballed. Well-known sports media figures like Stephen A. Smith and Rachel Nichols wondered whether there’s a political motive; sportsbooks like FanDuel and DraftKings defended legalized sports betting; and members of Congress want to hear from NBA commissioner Adam Silver.

The scandal involves two separate but related federal investigations. One case targets insider sports betting—players and coaches providing non‑public game or injury information to bettors—and is the same probe that led to Jontay Porter’s lifetime ban from the NBA last year. The other focuses on a high‑stakes poker ring rigged by major New York crime families. 

Some defendants, such as Jones, appear in both cases, suggesting overlap between the poker ring and the insider betting operation. Law enforcement alleges the poker ring has direct ties to New York Mafia families, but the sports betting scandal is the one that truly raises concerns about the integrity of the league. 

Yet experts and former federal prosecutors have been expecting something like this since the 2018 U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), which had effectively prohibited sports betting outside Nevada and a handful of states with sports lotteries.

“I’m not surprised there’s a scandal like this,” Elizabeth McCurrach, a litigator at BakerHostetler who co-leads the law firm’s sports industry team, tells Front Office Sports. “The industry has been ripe for a scandal in this arena since PASPA was overturned.”

Andrew Young, also a former federal prosecutor who now works for law firm Snell & Wilmer, was also unfazed.

“If there was anything surprising about this it was that it happened at the pro level, not collegiate,” he tells FOS. “The economics don’t entirely make sense for pro athletes with $100 million contracts.”

How Basketball Is Especially Susceptible

Basketball, experts note, is especially vulnerable because players and coaches can manipulate the pace, shot selection, and other aspects of the game in ways that affect betting outcomes. 

“We’re in a world where you can instantaneously bet on what’s going to happen on the next play, which is so ripe for this type of abuse,” says Artie McConnell, a former federal prosecutor who now co-leads the national security investigations and litigation task force for BakerHostetler.

In March 2023, Rozier—then a member of the Hornets—is alleged to have informed a childhood friend that he would pretend to be hurt and “prematurely remove himself from the game in the first quarter.” His friend, De’Niro Laster, later sold the information to bettors. Rozier did as he said, finishing with five points and two assists—well below his season averages.

The charges against Rozier, while explosive, were limited in scope. Another former federal prosecutor, who asked to remain anonymous, tells FOS the fact there was only one Rozier game included in the indictment likely reflects where prosecutors have the strongest corroborating evidence.

“You’re never going to get the full scope in the indictment,” the source says. “When you’re talking about a broad conspiracy like this, usually the majority of evidence is not spelled out in the indictment.”

In another instance in the betting indictment, an unnamed co-conspirator told another defendant the Trail Blazers would be losing a March 2023 game on purpose, and shortly before tip-off, it was announced that several of the team’s best players would not suit up (Damian Lillard, Jusuf Nurkić, Jerami Grant, and Anfernee Simons did not play). The Blazers were blown out.

Although Billups was not named in the sports betting indictment, this game strongly suggests his involvement. The co-conspirator is described as an “NBA player from approximately 1997 through 2014, and an NBA coach since at least 2021.” Billups was drafted third overall in 1997 by the Celtics, and he played his final game in 2014. He was hired as the Blazers coach in 2021.

It’s not clear why Billups was named in the poker indictment but not the sports betting indictment. Regardless, based on the charges brought, McCurrach of BakerHostetler feels that his and Rozier’s days as part of the NBA are over.

“I don’t think they have any chance of staying in the league,” she tells FOS. “I think they will be banned for life, both of them.”

Through attorneys, Rozier and Billups have both denied the charges, and Billups just hired high-powered lawyer Marc Mukasey, who has previously represented President Donald Trump, a former Navy SEAL who was acquitted on murder charges in 2019, and imprisoned FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried.

Their attorneys would be wise to tell Rozier and Billups to start talking, experts say. The possibility of obtaining additional information on others involved in the schemes is part of why prosecutors made the arrests when they did, and made such a show of the situation.

“When you arrest all these people, you start shaking the tree to see what comes out,” Young tells FOS. “If any of these people flip, with names come phones, and with phones come text messages.”

‘Almost Impossible to Detect’

Even if the government nails more people involved in this scheme, and despite the fact that the NBA and major sportsbooks are reportedly reviewing the most vulnerable types of bets, it’s a tall order to prevent similar issues as long as sports betting continues to proliferate—especially in basketball.

One former federal prosecutor, who asked to remain anonymous, tells FOS that if those involved in betting schemes like this were more disciplined—including limiting the number of people who are in on it and not communicating about the plans using phones or other technology—“it would be almost impossible to detect.”

“There’s no absolute rule on how to prevent it,” the former prosecutor says. “More important is identifying the reasons why people do this, and trying to eliminate those reasons. Whether it’s greed, they are compromised, or what.”

The indictments may have exposed only a fraction of what’s happening behind the scenes. 

“This is going to continue to happen at all levels for the foreseeable future,” says Young.

Mark Walter now owns Los Angeles’s two biggest sports franchises. 

On Oct. 30, the CEO of Guggenheim Partners, who also owns the Dodgers, was approved by the NBA’s Board of Governors to be the new owner of the Lakers. Walter was already a minority owner in the team with a 27% stake, which he purchased in 2021, and in June, agreed to purchase the franchise from the Buss family at a $10 billion valuation, a record for an American sports franchise, and topped the rival Celtics’ valuation of $6.1 billion.

Because of his previous stake in the team, Walter had to pay only around $6 billion to get the majority share, which came in one transaction instead of multiple, breaking a recent NBA trend that includes the Celtics’ and Trail Blazers’ deals. Also involved in the deal is Walter’s longtime business partner Todd Boehly, who is a co-owner of the Dodgers and went in on the 2021 transaction for a 27% Lakers stake. 

Together, Walter and Boehly now own 85% of the Lakers, although their exact stakes are unclear. Walter is the majority owner, and Boehly will be a limited partner. The deal cedes control of one of the NBA’s successful franchises to Walter after being run by the Buss family for nearly 50 years.  

Jeanie Buss will retain a 15% stake in the franchise, which is the minimum required to serve as team governor, a position she will continue to hold for “at least five years,” the NBA said in its release. Team governors typically represent their teams at Board of Governors meetings. Her father, Jerry Buss, bought the Lakers, Kings, and Los Angeles Forum for $67.5 million in 1979. Jeanie became the face of Lakers ownership after her father died in 2013. 

Aside from the Lakers and Dodgers, Walter also has stakes in Chelsea of the English Premier League and the WNBA’s Sparks. He is also the primary financial backer of the PWHL.

Walter takes over the Lakers during a transition period as the team shifts its priorities to building around Luka Dončić while LeBron James is in the twilight of his career. The Lakers have won 17 championships in their history, which is the second most in the NBA behind the Celtics’ 18. The Lakers won their most recent NBA title in 2020, but they haven’t made the Finals since. 

Walter brings extreme wealth to an organization that lacked outside capital over the years, as the Buss family’s wealth stemmed from owning the team. Walter has a net worth of $7.3 billion, according to Forbes, and has turned the Dodgers into baseball’s premier organization in his 13 years as owner (they are currently down 3–2 in the World Series against the Blue Jays—Game 6 is Friday in Toronto). Now he’ll try to do the same thing on the other side of town. 

Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian acknowledges he made a mistake in ceding control of NWSL club Angel City to three of his cofounders—actress Natalie Portman, venture capitalist Kara Nortman, and entrepreneur Julie Uhrman—who he says put up “no money.”

Last year’s record-breaking takeover of Angel City by Bob Iger and Willow Bay at a $250 million valuation was done out of necessity after the club’s original ownership structure proved unsustainable, Ohanian told Front Office Sports during a recent episode of Portfolio Players. 

When he and the trio of women helped launch Angel City in 2020—the team began play in 2022—Ohanian said he mistakenly used a Silicon Valley model.

“I structured it like a start-up,” Ohanian said.

By that, he means he invested about $5 million into the team without the expectation of board control, and he gave around 75% of the team’s equity away “for free” to his cofounders: actress Natalie Portman, venture capitalist Kara Nortman, and entrepreneur Julie Uhrman.

“That works great in tech,” he said. “In sports, it’s a terrible idea.”

Portman and Uhrman are still on the team’s board of directors (Uhrman is now CEO), while Nortman is still an investor in the team but not on the board. 

Angel City did not immediately respond to questions about Ohanian’s comments.

The league viewed Ohanian as being responsible for the team, he says, but the three women were the public faces of the franchise. This eventually led to internal strife spilling out publicly and structural problems that required a change.

“I was [the] founding control owner in the eyes of the league, so it’s my ass on the line,” he told FOS.

Ohanian reportedly became frustrated with how club leadership handled its finances. Nortman and Uhrman were accused by an unnamed law firm representing Angel City’s board members of violating a non-disclosure agreement by “communicating directly with bidders” about proposed deal terms, The Wall Street Journal reported last year. Additionally, team officials, and Ohanian, were unhappy with Uhrman’s “financial and personnel management,” according to the WSJ.

Ohanian told FOS the league should “never” have allowed such a setup, but at the time, it was “in a tricky place” and “took any money they could get from me.”

The NWSL did not immediately respond to questions, including whether the league would permit a similar ownership structure again.

Ultimately, the “only real solution” was to align board control of the team with club ownership, according to Ohanian. Last spring, the team hired investment bank Moelis & Company to find new owners, and that process resulted in the deal with Iger and Bay.

“I learned a lot from that,” Ohanian told FOS. 

The sale of majority ownership in the club diluted Ohanian’s shares, but he maintains a stake and is still on the board. 

He said that “at the end of the day, the three ladies played a role in getting it all started and, you know, were handsomely rewarded for putting up no money.”

“But I’m not upset about that,” he told FOS. “I think the best outcome here is, you got Bob and Willow, they have board control, and it’s good. It’s a rebuild.” 

He says he will not make the same mistake again. Ohanian’s sports portfolio also includes a stake in Chelsea Women’s FC, all-women track and field meet series Athlos, and the Los Angeles Golf Club, a team in TGL, the indoor golf league cofounded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy.

“For sure the next team that I started, LA Golf Club: board control, vast majority of ownership, commensurate with the dollars put in,” he said.

—Annie Costabile contributed reporting.