Terry Rozier was in violation of his NBA contract and will forfeit most of his $26.6 million salary for the 2025-26 season due to his alleged role in a sports gambling scheme while he was with the Charlotte Hornets, an arbitrator ruled last month. The ruling was included in a court filing released Wednesday.
The same arbitrator initially said the NBA could not withhold Rozier’s salary this season as he faces federal charges from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York. The NBA put him on unpaid administrative leave in October, days after Rozier, then with the Miami Heat, was arrested. He and the National Basketball Players Association filed a grievance, and an arbitrator ruled at the time that Rozier should be paid despite being on leave.
Rozier and the NBA returned to the arbitrator this spring after the league said he should not be paid, as the conditions of his bond — which don’t allow him to travel across the country or be in contact with the Heat and Hornets — prevented him from fulfilling his contract. The union and Rozier again appealed, but this time the arbitrator ruled in the league’s favor.
Federal prosecutors indicted Rozier in October on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering. Prosecutors said Rozier told a friend he would remove himself early from a Hornets game in March 2023, then that friend sold that information to a group of gamblers. Prosecutors indicted Rozier again last month on two more felony charges, including sports bribery. They said Rozier agreed to take a $100,000 payment to exit the game early so gamblers could wager on and win prop bets.
Rozier has pleaded not guilty and denied the government’s claims.
On Wednesday, a lawyer for Rozier asked the judge overseeing his case to change the conditions of his release because Rozier still hopes to play in the NBA and believes those terms are impacting his ability to do so. The Eastern District attorney’s office removed the Heat from his no-contact list late last month, the filing released Wednesday said, after Miami released him in April, but the Hornets remain. The NBA had asked federal prosecutors to prevent Rozier from communicating with anyone in the league, but that request was denied.
Rozier’s attorneys are now asking the judge to remove the Hornets and their current and former employees as well, and to lower Rozier’s limit to not discussing the case with them. Prosecutors have opposed this request.
The player’s attorneys called the current conditions “unfairly punitive” and argued against the conditions since NBA players typically have short careers: “With forced inactivity, Mr. Rozier is facing a potential second season of non-participation despite being entitled to a presumption of innocence.”
“With the NBA’s free agency process officially beginning June 30, maintaining the Hornets on the no-contact list would likely prevent him from having any opportunity to play in the NBA,” the attorneys wrote. “Under the current ruling of the arbitrator, an inability to play for or against the Charlotte Hornets would constitute a ‘failure to perform services’ by Mr. Rozier and substantially diminish or eliminate any chance of being contracted by an NBA team.”
Rozier did not play during the 2025-26 season after being arrested the morning after the Heat’s season opener. He is now a free agent.
Rozier and the other defendants in the case are scheduled to return to a Brooklyn federal courthouse on June 10. Rozier will be arraigned again that day on the charges brought against him last month.