Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups was one of 34 people arrested by the FBI on Thursday morning in connection with two cases involving gambling. Billups is being accused of helping to rig underground poker games backed by the mafia. He is being charged with one count of wire fraud conspiracy and one count of money laundering conspiracy.
The NBA said in a statement that Billups has been placed on "immediate leave" from the Blazers while the league cooperates with the investigation.
The Blazers said in a statement that they are cooperating with authorities and assistant coach Tiago Splitter will become the team's interim head coach while Billups is on leave. A previously scheduled media availability following Thursday afternoon's practice was cancelled.
Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier was also arrested Thursday for alleged involvement in a sports betting ring that involved sharing private information about NBA games with bettors. Billups is not listed as a defendant in that case, although a Blazers game from 2023 is a part of the allegations and details about an unnamed co-conspirator in the case match the Blazers' head coach.
According to the indictment in the poker case, Billups and other defendants allegedly participated in illegal poker games backed by the Bonnano, Gambino and Genovese crime families. Billups is alleged to have served as a "Face Card," leveraging his celebrity to entice victims into the games. The poker games are alleged to have been fixed using a variety of secret technologies including rigged electronic card-shuffling machines, electronic chip trays that could read face-down cards, card analyzers loaded onto cell phones and marked cards visible only to players wearing special contact lenses and sunglasses.
Although Billups is not a named defendant in the sports-betting case, a game he coached with the Blazers is one of the games used in that case as an example of impropriety, and details about a co-conspirator in the case suggest he could be involved.
According to the case, "Co-Conspirator 8" was a resident of Oregon and was an NBA player "from approximately 1997 to 2014, and an NBA coach since at least 2021." Billups was drafted in 1997 and retired after the 2013-14 season. He was hired as the head coach of the Blazers in 2021 after spending the 2020-21 season as an assistant coach with the L.A. Clippers.
Eric Earnest (aka "Spook"), one of three people listed as defendants in both cases, is alleged in the sports betting case to have used inside information from "a longtime friend, an NBA coach at the time" that the Blazers were planning to sit several starters in a March 24, 2023 home game against the Chicago Bulls, which he then allegedly used to bet over $100,000 on the Blazers to lose that game before the injury report was made public.
Portland's previous game, a March 22 road win over the Utah Jazz, was the last game Damian Lillard played as a member of the Trail Blazers before being traded to Milwaukee the following summer. Lillard and Jusuf Nurkic were both shut down on the day of the Bulls game as the team pulled the plug on the rest of the season to chase lottery odds. The Blazers lost that game 124-96 to Chicago.
Billups was upbeat on Wednesday night following the Blazers' season-opening 118-114 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves. Despite a cold-shooting fourth quarter, the team displayed the smothering defensive identity and unselfish, fast-paced offense he'd been preaching since the start of training camp last month.
"I'm happy as heck with how we played," Billups said after the loss. "I'm proud of our guys. They left it on the line. I want to create an environment where if you do beat us, you're going to have to go earn it. I thought we did that tonight."
