The first week of the new NBA season has produced two double-overtime thrillers and several scoring explosions by the league’s brightest stars.

However, Thursday’s arrests of Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier, Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups and former Dallas Mavericks guard Damon Jones as part of a federal investigation into illegal betting activities sent the league into a frenzy.

Mavericks coach Jason Kidd was asked for his reaction to the arrests and how sports gambling continues to impact the league and its players ahead of Friday’s game against the Washington Wizards. Kidd declined to comment on the allegations because there’s an ongoing investigation and chose to highlight recent scoring explosions by Shai-Gilgeous-Alexander and Victor Wembanyama.

“What I will say is we have a beautiful game with a lot of talented players in this league,” Kidd said. “The start of the season, we’ve had an MVP score 55 points. We got to see up close Victor score 40 points. Hopefully that doesn’t overshadow what these young men are doing because it’s a beautiful game. They’re playing the game at a high level and it’s fun to be a part of. Hopefully they can get that fixed.”

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Jones, Billups and Rozier were among more than 30 people charged in connection with schemes involving illegal sports betting and rigged poker games backed by Mafia, authorities said on Thursday.

Jones, who spent one season with the Mavericks in the 1999-00 season, allegedly provided inside information about NBA games to co-defendants who used it to place sports bets.

Kidd was asked about the pressure applied to players caused from fans’ interest in online sports betting and praised the NBA for leading the charge in providing educational material on the matter.

“The league does an incredible job of talking about that,” Kidd said. “There’s a lot of literature that goes out. The league has done a great job of teaching and showing and now we have real life examples. We’ll learn from this and be better.”

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