The NBA world woke to explosive news that the FBI had secured more than 30 indictments tied to alleged illegal gambling scandals, linking three current and former prominent NBA figures.

Current Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, current Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and former NBA player Damon Jones were each arrested Thursday, Oct. 23 for their alleged involvement in the operation, though they are facing different charges.

FBI director Kash Patel and U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Joseph Nocella Jr. announced the indictments Thursday in a press conference.

The case creates a massive ripple effect across the league, not only for Billups and Rozier, but for the NBA’s public perception.

Here’s everything you need to know about the explosive details of the alleged NBA gambling scandals.

NBA fraud scheme: What does this mean for the NBA?

The NBA said Thursday in a statement that both Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier have been placed on “immediate leave” as the league is “in the process of reviewing” the indictments.

This allows the league some flexibility in removing Billups and Rozier from public view while the legal process plays out and while the league determines what steps to take. The NBA said it would “continue to cooperate with the relevant authorities.”

The league doesn’t have many options aside from that.

The NBA had initially cleared Rozier following an investigation, but the league lacks subpoena power afforded to law enforcement.

On Thursday, January 30, news of an investigation into Rozier in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York came to light. At that point, the NBA said it would cooperate with that investigation, which ultimately resulted in the arrest of Rozier Thursday.

A spokesperson for the Justice Department said Billups, Rozier and Jones are each expected to make a court appearance later Thursday.

What does this mean for Chauncey Billups and Terry Rozier?

Although the legal process — which may take months, if not longer — will need to play out, involvement in an alleged illegal gambling operation such as this could effectively end the careers of both Billups and Rozier.

Even if both are eventually cleared in the matter, teams may opt to keep their distance from figures who were allegedly connected to a high-profile gambling operation.

But if either or both are found to have committed impropriety, they would be subject to league discipline in addition to any sentencing resulting from the legal process.

Billups, 49, has been the Trail Blazers coach since 2021 and has compiled a 117-212 (.356) record in that span. He was also inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2024 after a 17-year playing career.

Although Portland has not been competitive during Billups’ tenure, he did draw moderate improvements out of its young roster toward the end of last season. The Trail Blazers, though still likely some time away from competing in the stacked Western Conference, had the potential to build on that momentum in 2025-26.

The Trail Blazers lost their season opener Wednesday night against the Minnesota Timberwolves.

The team named Tiago Splitter as the interim coach.

Billups had signed a multiyear contract extension with the Trail Blazers, general manager Joe Cronin announced Sunday, April 13, though terms were not disclosed.

Rozier, 31, is currently on the Heat, though he has struggled and has played himself out of the rotation in Miami. In Wednesday night’s season-opening loss against the Magic, Rozier was a healthy scratch.

In 64 games last season, Rozier averaged 10.6 points per game, representing his lowest total since the 2018-19 season. He’s in the final season of his contract with Miami, which had been reportedly looked to offload him in a trade.

What are the charges Chauncey Billups is facing?

Though the indictment filed in the Eastern District of New York does not specify individual counts for the alleged participants, Billups was charged in connection with an illegal poker operation tied to the mafia.

According to Joseph Nocella Jr., U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, charges in this scheme include wire fraud conspiracy, illegal gambling, money laundering, robbery, and extortion.

Beginning as early as 2019, defendants allegedly used wireless cheating technology to run rigged poker games in places including the Hamptons, Miami, Las Vegas and Manhattan.

Billups, who was not the coach of the Trail Blazers at the time of his alleged involvement but merely a former NBA player, was one of the draws that helped lure victims to the illegal poker games. Essentially, the victims were allegedly duped by the allure of playing poker alongside former pro athletes like Billups and Jones.

Yet, according to the indictment, the dealer at the games, the high-profile players and other figures were in on a scam that allegedly tipped information to all players except the victims.

“Once the game was underway, the defendants fleeced the victims out of tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars per game,” Nocella said.

The alleged fraud included self-shuffling machines that had “been secretly altered in order to read the cards on the deck, predict which player on the table had the best poker hand, and relay the information to an offsite operator,” according to Nocella.

“The offsite operator sent the information via cell phone back to a co-conspirator at the table and that person at the table was known as the ‘quarterback.’ The ‘quarterback’ then signaled secretly the information he had received to others at the table and together they used that information in order to win their games and to cheat the victims.”

Poker chip tray analyzers, special contact lenses or eyeglasses that read pre-marked cards, and an X-ray table that reads cards face down were also allegedly used in the scheme.

Members of the Bonanno, Gambino and Genovese organized crime families also allegedly became involved, taking a cut of the rigged poker games and enforcing the collection of debts.

Former Cavaliers player and coach Damon Jones, who is also implicated in the alleged insider sports-betting scandal, was also indicted in the illegal poker operation.

What are the charges Terry Rozier is facing?

In a separate indictment, Terry Rozier is one of six defendants charged in an alleged insider sports-betting conspiracy. Damon Jones is also implicated in the alleged scheme. The charges listed in the indictment are conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

According to the indictment, Rozier, Jones and others allegedly committed fraud by betting based on insider information about NBA athletes and teams from around December 2022 to March 2024.

The non-public information included when players would be sitting out future games or when they would pull themselves out early based on purported injuries or illnesses.

Rozier is accused of manipulating his performance during an NBA game to benefit illegal betting. The game took place on Thursday, March 23, 2023, when Rozier was a member of the Charlotte Hornets.

He had averaged 35.3 minutes and 21.1 points per game that season, and entered the night with no injury designation.

He started the game, but played only 9:34 minutes before he left the game with a supposed foot injury. He did not return and would subsequently miss the remaining eight games of the season.

That night, Rozier took just four shot attempts, making two of them, and scored five points, while adding four rebounds and two assists.

According to the indictment, Rozier informed his childhood friend, De’Niro Laster, that he “was going to prematurely remove himself from the game in the first quarter due to a supposed injury and not return to play further.”

Per the indictment, Laster then allegedly sold the information about Rozier’s participation to multiple co-conspirators so that they could place fraudulent wagers.

U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Joseph Nocella Jr. called the alleged setup, “one of the most brazen sports corruption schemes since online sports betting became widely legalized in the United States.”

What are the charges Damon Jones is facing?

Former Cavaliers player and coach Damon Jones is allegedly implicated in both schemes.

In the insider sports-betting conspiracy, Jones allegedly provided non-public injury information about the status of two players in NBA games, per the federal indictments.

Based on public injury information USA TODAY Sports reviewed from the dates of those games, those players may have been LeBron James and Anthony Davis.

Jones allegedly used his access with the Lakers and their top players to help orchestrate the operation, with the focus being a Feb. 9, 2023 game between the Lakers and Milwaukee Bucks. According to the indictment, Jones allegedly texted gamblers that “Player 3” would not be playing in that game.

Player 3 is identified in the indictment as “a prominent NBA player” with whom Jones had been teammates and coached. Jones played with James for the Cleveland Cavaliers over three seasons and served as an unofficial Lakers coach during the 2022-23 season, according to the indictment.

At the time of the text message, “Player 3” had not been ruled out of that game against the Bucks.

Jones is also alleged to have tipped off gamblers about the participation of “Player 4” ahead of a Jan. 15, 2024 game involving the Lakers and Oklahoma City Thunder.

Jones claimed to have learned from a team trainer that “Player 4” was injured and going to play limited minutes during that game.

Identified in the indictment as “one of the Lakers’ best players” during the 2023-24 season, “Player 4” was listed as probable on the team’s injury report. Davis was the only Laker listed as probable on that game’s injury report.

Jones allegedly sold that information for fraudulent gambling purposes, though Davis played and finished the game with 27 points and 15 rebounds.

The 2025 World Series is here. The Los Angeles Dodgers will attempt to defend their championship against the Toronto Blue Jays beginning Friday, Oct. 24, and the anticipation is palpable for this best-of-seven matchup.

It’s Shohei Ohtani and the powerful pitching of the Dodgers, coming off a four-game sweep of the Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Championship Series, against the big bats of the Blue Jays, most notably Vladimir Guerrero, Jr.

It’s shaping up to be a memorable Fall Classic, and perhaps that could include some more extra-innings games. The rules are different in the MLB postseason than the regular season these days when it comes to games that are tied after nine innings.

Here’s a breakdown of MLB’s extra innings rules for the 2025 World Series:

World Series extra innings rules explained

In 2023, MLB permanently instituted a regular-season rule in which, if a game goes to extra innings, both teams start each extra inning with a runner on second base beginning with the top of the 10th. During MLB postseason games, however, the rules revert back to normal for extra innings.

If the Dodgers and Blue Jays were to play extra innings in a game during the World Series, each inning would start with the bases empty.

World Series schedule: TV, streaming for 2025 Fall Classic

Every game of the 2025 World Series will be broadcast nationally on FOX and be live streamed with Fubo. Here’s a look at the full Fall Classic schedule for the Blue Jays and Dodgers:

All times Eastern

Game 1: Dodgers at Blue Jays, 8 p.m. on Oct. 24 (FOX, Fubo)
Game 2: Dodgers at Blue Jays, 8 p.m. on Oct. 25 (FOX, Fubo)
Game 3: Blue Jays at Dodgers, 8 p.m. on Oct. 27 (FOX, Fubo)
Game 4: Blue Jays at Dodgers, 8 p.m. on Oct. 28 (FOX, Fubo)
Game 5: Blue Jays at Dodgers, 8 p.m. on Oct. 29 (FOX, Fubo)*
Game 6: Dodgers at Blue Jays, 8 p.m. on Oct. 31 (FOX, Fubo)*
Game 7: Dodgers at Blue Jays, 8 p.m. on Nov. 1 (FOX, Fubo)*

*if necessary

The Los Angeles Chargers defeated the Minnesota Vikings 37-10 on ‘Thursday Night Football.’
Vikings quarterback Carson Wentz was sacked five times and appeared emotional on the sideline.
The Vikings are now 2-3 in games started by Wentz, who is filling in for the injured J.J. McCarthy.

Tears filled Carson Wentz’s eyes as he leaned back on the Minnesota Vikings’ bench in the fourth quarter. His walk there was preceded by a helmet toss, which revealed a red forehead – a symbol of his night.

Before that, Wentz had been walloped on back-to-back incompletions that turned the ball over on downs. He laid on the SoFi Stadium ground for a few extra moments as he grabbed at his left hand.

“Yeah, I’m not proud of that,’ Wentz told reporters after the game. ‘I apologize to the equipment guys for that one but yeah, I was in a good amount of pain.”

By game’s end, with the Vikings losing 37-10 to the Los Angeles Chargers on ‘Thursday Night Football,’ Max Brosmer was in at quarterback. He had it easy compared to the other guy.

Wentz, Minnesota’s starter for the past five games, bore the brunt of a barrage from the Chargers defense, which sacked him five times in a rebound effort, albeit against a backup with Vikings Week 1 starter J.J. McCarthy still on the shelf with an ankle injury.

“Yeah, I’ve felt better,” Wentz said. “That was a tough one. Thursday nights are always tough but that was a little extra tough. I’ve felt better but we’re walking, and we’re alright.” 

It didn’t help much that the passer entered the Week 8 matchup dealing with an injury to his left (non-throwing) shoulder. Minnesota Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell noted an overthrown incompletion to Jefferson that a healthy Wentz potentially makes and could have been an explosive play, he said.

Wentz had entered the game 7-0 as a starter on Thursdays. 

“Pain is pain. I felt like I could still help this team and find a way to go down and score and all that stuff. We knew that coming into the game that that was going to be part of it but again, that’s the tough part of Thursday night games. We just don’t quite get the chance to recover but that’s no excuse by any means. When I was playing out there, I felt fine.”

The physicality of the previous game, a 28-22 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles, was a contributing factor, O’Connell said. Left tackle Christian Darrisaw was able to start, but he lasted two drives. Right tackle Brian O’Neil (knee) was not active. 

“It just felt like we weren’t good enough in any of our three phases tonight,” O’Connell said.

He added: “Injuries and any other excuse you can find them, we will not be doing that.” 

Star receiver Justin Jefferson managed seven catches (11 targets) for 74 yards, but the Los Angeles defense limited his explosive-play ability (his longest catch was 17 yards). The Vikings averaged 3.1 yards per carry on 11 rushing attempts, even in running back Aaron Jones’ return from injured reserve.

The commentary from the broadcast booth was harsh by the pampered standard of announcer analysis, as Prime Video analyst Kirk Herbstreit said, ‘when you’re the captain of the ship, you’re the quarterback, you gotta try to hold some of that emotion in. And I know he’s frustrated, and he’s hurt, but it’s Week (8). There’s a long way to go.’

Wentz finished 15 for 27 with 144 passing yards, one touchdown and one interception. The Vikings are now 2-3 with him as the starter in McCarthy’s stead; the 2024 10th overall pick was the team’s emergency (third-string) quarterback on Thursday.

TORONTO – Two years after he was never on a flight bound from Southern California to Toronto, Shohei Ohtani continues to impact North American aeronautics.

Ohtani and the Los Angeles Dodgers arrived in Canada this week for Game 1 of the World Series, to be contested Oct. 24 as they aim to become the first club in a quarter-century to repeat as World Series champions.

And they did it in comfort, taking two airplanes, one for the roster and the other for staff, a set-up that began as Ohtani led the Dodgers into the 2024 World Series and continued into this past regular season, for big road trips or middling ones.

This is a big one: The Dodgers will take on the Toronto Blue Jays, a first when it comes to World Series matchups and an appropriate one given the manner in which the course of baseball history was massively impacted less than two years ago.

The endgame sounds simple enough: Ohtani chose the Dodgers over the Blue Jays, who along with the San Francisco Giants offered a similar 10-year, $700 million, heavily deferred package – Ohtani’s preference so his new club could have greater luxury-tax wriggle room.

The run-up was unhinged: Media reports had Ohtani either agreeing to a contract with the Blue Jays or on a flight to Toronto, where pitcher Yusei Kikuchi, a Blue Jay lefty and Ohtani’s Japanese countryman, had supposedly made reservations for more than two dozen folks at a swanky sushi joint.

The aftermath suggests the hysteria surrounding Ohtani’s decision wasn’t enough: Ohtani delivered a 50-homer, 50-stolen base season and a World Series title a year ago, returned to pitching in 2025 and had, almost inarguably, the greatest performance in baseball history in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series.

Yet for 24 crazy hours, baseball history appeared to take a different turn.

Max Muncy thought so. The Dodgers’ slugging infielder saw the erroneous report on Ohtani’s agreement with the Blue Jays, bemoaned his team’s fate and went about life in his Dallas home.

“Like everyone else,” he says, “I saw the Blue Jays thing. And so I was like, ‘OK. It’s done. That sucks, but it’s done.’”

A day later, he was trying to get his young children down for a nap when his wife interceded. She asked if he’d heard about his new teammate. He wracked his brain.

Ohtani was gone, so who?

“And she says, ‘Well, he’s worth $700 million.’ And I was like, ‘Who in the world could that be?’”

Muncy had to contain his excitement. His children were trying to get to sleep, and he waited until he was downstairs to express his glee.

Two years later, they are not just the Dodgers, but also Guggenheim Baseball, as the uniform patch says, a global powerhouse that’s made up Ohtani’s salary thanks to dozens of sponsorships in Japan and the whirring turnstiles that counted 4 million fans entering Dodger Stadium this year.

Now, they are aiming for back-to-back titles, arriving in style on what we’ll call the Ohtani Plane.

“The course of the Dodgers is changed forever,” says Muncy, 35 and now in his eighth postseason with the club. “You’re talking about your international brand. You put him – one of the greatest baseball players of all time – in one of the biggest markets in baseball and now that market has become global.

“Things change. We got new renovations to the stadium. The way we traveled changed. Everything changed from that moment.”

And not just in Los Angeles. Here by the shores of Lake Ontario, they haven’t forgotten, either.

Hat tricks

From Florida’s Gulf Coast to downtown Toronto, the Blue Jays’ concerted efforts to become a first-class organization are readily apparent.

Their $400 million renovation of Rogers Centre resulted in a gorgeous modernization of the old Skydome, with a swanky clubhouse and expansive medical, training and workout facilities. Heck, even the home bullpen has a mini-weight room and multiple elliptical machines.

And in Dunedin, Florida, their $100 million in updates to their player development center has resulted in a gorgeous, modernized campus. It was there that Ohtani did, in fact, visit – and the Blue Jays took no shorts.

From the de rigueur – an Ohtani locker with all his preferred fixings – to the extreme, the Blue Jays loved on Ohtani. They flew out his dog, Decoy, outfitting him in a Canadian dog jacket. They took Ohtani’s secrecy oath to an extreme, moving a winter meetings debriefing from general manager Ross Atkins to Zoom, placing him against a generic background to conceal his location, which they would not reveal.

Ohtani kept his Blue Jays swag. Toronto manager John Schneider has not forgotten.

“I hope he brought his hat,” Schneider said before the Blue Jays’ World Series workout. “And the jacket for Decoy, you know?

“It’s like, give us back our stuff already.”

Schneider’s tongue was definitely in cheek. And Ohtani – amid a crush of international press amid the bowels of Rogers Centre – responded in kind.

Yes, he still has the hat. It’s in his garage.

All kidding aside, though, the Ohtani saga might have stung much worse had the Blue Jays not reached the promised land.

His cheerful decline of their offer was just one of many silver medal podium finishes with nine-figure free agents: Juan Soto. Dodgers ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto. And prized Dodgers rookie Rōki Sasaki. Forever bridesmaids in Queen City, it seemed.

“It was free agency. It was one of the best baseball players in our sport getting to choose. He chose L.A., and he had every right to choose that,” says Blue Jays pitcher Chris Bassitt. “It wasn’t so much, ‘Man, we wanted him.’ It was more, he had the ability to choose.

“And he chose.”

Yet look at them now: American League champions behind homegrown superstars Vladimir Guerrero and Bo Bichette, and bell cow free agent George Springer and a gaggle of veteran pitchers.

Who needs Shohei?

“We have a megastar in Vladdy,” says Bassitt. “The reality is, I think so many fans and so many media members will sit here and say, ‘Toronto’s always second place, Toronto’s always third place for these megastars.’

“They’re second place out of 30 and you’re punishing them for going after megastars and not getting them. I guarantee you there are 20 other organizations wishing they were going after megastars. Just because they’re not getting three, four, five guys, I think it’s ridiculous because you’ve got Kevin Gausman, you’ve got (Jose) Berrios, you’ve got Bo here, Vladdy here, George Springer here, Max Scherzer here.

“To sit here and be like, three-four guys didn’t come and you’re supposed to feel bad for that? It’s a big discredit to all the really good players they got to come here.”

‘Just little a kid out there’

And so it goes. Ohtani will bat leadoff coming off his three-homer performance in NLCS Game 4; he’s expected to start on the mound in World Series Game 4, too, at Dodger Stadium.

He’s hit 109 home runs in two years as a Dodger and will have a second NL MVP plaque delivered this offseason. He will probably go into the Hall of Fame with an interlocking LA on his cap, and the eternal regard of his teammates.

“The thing for me that’s been most important is just how special it’s been to be his teammate. He’s a truly wonderful human being,” says Muncy. “He’s a great teammate, a great ballplayer.

“He’s funny. He loves playing baseball. He’s just a little kid out there.”

A little kid who steered almost all the way into the intrigue around his pursuit. Toronto’s not mad about it. World Series trips have a way of soothing any hurt, even if the flight pattern doesn’t point in your direction.

“He’s a great player,” says Schneider. “But that aside, I think that we have a great team and just an unbelievable cast of characters and players.

“I think things worked out the way they’re meant to work out.”

It’s easy to be cynical in an era of scandal and fake news, but let’s not allow our faith in sports to be fractured just yet.
From Shohei Ohtani to Victor Wembanyama to Damar Hamlin, sport still delivers the authentically unexpected, which is something to celebrate.

“This game is rigged.”

“Can’t believe the script had that team winning.”

“Player X is freezing out Player Y because he’s facing him in fantasy this week.”

Most of us have expressed similar sentiments over the years about the sports we watch. In jest.

But Thursday’s shocking revelation that the FBI indicted more than 30 people allegedly linked to a gambling scandal tied to the NBA served to do exactly what pro sports leagues used to fear about any association with betting: rocking the public’s confidence in the integrity of the sports it consumes.

Should we be all that surprised? Really?

Warning alarms have blared since 2018, when the Supreme Court loosened regulations on sports wagering – opening the industry to states far afield from the formerly singular legal sports betting bastion that is Las Vegas. It wasn’t long after that when pro leagues like the NFL began doing what had previously been unthinkable (and taboo) − partnering with betting sites like FanDuel and DraftKings and even allowing sportsbooks to advertise in conjunction with their most premium content: games.

For years, we’ve been trying to parse authentic news from fake, while elected officials – and apparently even Justice Department lawyers at this point – wantonly lie. Many of us have become increasingly desensitized to it. Others actually embrace it.

How are we supposed to know if a pro player is shaving points? Or trafficking insider injury information? It’s not like players across the pro sports spectrum haven’t incurred suspensions in recent years for myriad violations, including betting on games involving their teams. It happens, the respective commissioner touts his league’s gambling guardrails, and everyone basically moves on.

Now the FBI, at a time when its own credibility is under fire, has stepped in to throw a fragmentary grenade into the NBA’s operation. Yet how much will fans care what Damon Jones or Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier or Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups purportedly did a week from now? Or even tomorrow? How long before Adam Silver, if he wanted, could hire Vince McMahon as a creative consultant, and no one would blink? And what does it all matter if there’s a metaverse where the New York Jets are the babyface dynasty while the Kansas City Chiefs are the weekly tomato cans?

Easy as it is to be cynical, let’s not allow our faith in sports to be irreparably fractured just yet. There are too many talented athletes working too hard for championship glory – much less simply putting food on the table – and have too much integrity and honor to believe this is all a systemic ruse. (Not for nothing, there are also far too many incapable of keeping a secret this big for us to begin dismissing the veracity of what we see from the couch, press box, upper deck or sideline.)

And while LeBron James has somehow exceeded all the hype that’s been heaped on him for more than a quarter-century – even if Jones apparently profited from knowing how healthy he was – leagues that aren’t actually scripted had no room for would-be leading men like Tim Tebow, Johnny Manziel, Markelle Fultz or Darko Miličić, none lasting despite apparently emanating from central casting.

We should feel comforted that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was (is?) nearly incomparable as a professional wrestler but not good enough to play in the NFL − and apparently doesn’t have sufficient business acumen beyond making movies and tequila to make the UFL anything more than the fringe football league its forebears have always been.

Sports never have been, nor will be, a pure meritocracy – contracts, public relations, personalities and the like perpetually exert varying influences. Yet so much of the unparalleled excellence and unimaginable tragedy – not to mention the mundane Week 8 NFL game or Tuesday night NBA contest – are too compelling to be authored by some athletic puppet master. Or sullied by shysters. Not when you see what Shohei Ohtani and George Springer just managed in order to create their World Series matchup. Not when you see the New York Giants find a way to lose an 18-point lead in the final six minutes of a game. Not when you see a 7-foot-5, 245-pound player like Victor Wembanyama run the break … unless he decides to pull up and pop a three. Not when Damar Hamlin nearly dies on a football field before he and his career are revived.

Don’t tell me those moments were or could be orchestrated. Our sports aren’t the WWE writ large (not that wrestling’s ardent fans would care).

May they never be.