The arrest of NBA stars and coaches Thursday by the U.S. government over allegations of insider betting schemes and mob-backed poker games are all part of a vengeful Donald Trump power play, says Stephen A. Smith.
“I’m watching a press conference with the director of the FBI,” the provocative ESPN host said this morning not long after FBI director Kash Patel and a phalanx of law enforcement officials unveiled the arrests of 30 individuals that include the Miami Heat’s Terry Rozier, ex-Cleveland Cavaliers player and assistant coach Damon Jones, and Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups. “Tell me when we’ve seen that,” Smith went on to say of the clearly crafted media spectacle.
Smith added: “We’ve seen accusations before. We’ve seen athletes get in trouble with the law before. You don’t see the director of the FBI having a press conference. It’s not coincidental. It’s not an accident. It’s a statement, and it’s a warning that more is coming.”
Turning to the topic of Trump and more possible NBA and even WNBA targets, the increasingly political multi-platform pundit issued a warning to his fanbase and America. Trump’s “not playing,” Smith stated.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” he added of a possible crackdown in sports like we have seen in other arenas of American life since Trump returned to office this year. “It’s very concerning. We don’t know where this is gonna go. But everybody better brace themselves, because he’s coming.”
FBI Director Kash Patel responded to Smith’s assertions about Trump on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show tonight: “That may be the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard from anyone in modern history, and I live most of my time in Washington DC. It’s right up there with Adam Schiff.”
Trump’s animosity toward the NBA and its players goes back at least as far as the George Floyd protests and league players kneeling during the national anthem.
“I think it’s disgraceful,” Trump said in 2020. “We work with (the NBA). We work very hard trying to get them open. I was pushing them to get open. And then I see everyone kneeling during the anthem. It’s not acceptable to me.”
The NBA itself has long leaned into social justice issues.
In 2020 as the league went into a sequestered “bubble” at a Disney resort in Florida finish out its season during Covid, its Players Association and Board of Governors announced a $300 million fund to start a foundation that will focus on “economic empowerment in Black communities,” with each of the 30 teams donating $1 million annually over the next decade.
All throughout that Bubble season, the league allowed players to wear messages related to social justice on their uniforms. Those messages included the words “Black Lives Matter” and “Equality” and “Liberation.” The words “Black Lives Matter” were emblazoned on the court during telecasts and some team busses.
NBA star Terry Rozier
Getty Images
Before today’s indictments, Rozier was previously investigated by the Adam Silver-led NBA over betting accusations for close to two years, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania, but the league closed the case due to a lack of damning evidence. Also, for all the often mentioned potential 2028 POTUS candidate Smith’s spotlighting of Trump and his minions in this matter, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York have also actually been probing these crimes for about two years, officials say. The federal probe was revealed in January 2025.
Marring the otherwise mostly stellar opening days of the new NBA season and the league’s reintroduction on NBC, the arrests saw the league put Billups, who coached the Blazers on Wednesday, and Rozier, who was in uniform for the Heat’s game against last night against the Orlando Magic, on immediate leave.
Charania also said that Malik Beasley, who played for the Pistons last year, is under “ongoing investigation by both the NAB and the FBI,” and has had to turn his phone over as part of those probes. The ESPN reporter said he is unsure how much they shared with the NBA before announcing today’s indictments.
“We take these allegations with the utmost seriousness, and the integrity of our game remains our top priority,” the NBA said today, around the time Rozier appeared in court in Florida on the charges.
One league hall-of-famer begs to differ.
One ESPN’s Inside the NBA today, Charles Barkley — no stranger to betting on a round of golf himself — said, “The NBA clearly dropped the ball. You can make all the excuses saying, ‘They didn’t have the information that the FBI had,’ but Adam Silver could pick up the phone and call the FBI.”
Barkley’s Inside the NBA foil Shaquille O’Neal, who played with Jones on the Cavaliers, agreed.
“I agree with you, Chuck, they dropped the ball,” said the four-time NBA Champion and three-time Finals MVP. He then took it one further and expressed disappointment in the players ad coaches.
“I’m ashamed that those guys would put their families and their careers in jeopardy. There’s an old saying in the hood: ‘All money ain’t good money.’ So if those guys are making $9 million a year…How much do you need? Especially if you know you can get caught and do jail time, lose your career.”
Indeed, the NBA banned Toronto Raptors forward Jontay Porter for life in 2024 for “disclosing confidential information to sports bettors, limiting his own participation in one or more games for betting purposes, and betting on NBA games.”
Previously, the league’s worst betting scandal came in 2007, when the FBI announced that Tim Donaghy, one of the league’s top referees, had admitted to betting on games he officiated. Donaghy denied ever having fixed a game, but the scandal struck at the heart of all competitive sports: fair play.
Then NBA commissioner David Stern called the Donaghy affair “the most serious situation and the worst situation that I have ever experienced either as a fan of the NBA, a lawyer for the NBA or a commissioner of the NBA.”
However, in 2018 when the Supreme Court ruled it was legal to wager on sports outside of Nevada, the NBA became the first major sports league to embrace sports betting. The NBA now has deals with brands like DraftKings, FanDuel and BetMGM. Several teams even have sportsbooks inside their arenas.
If besides the Trump element from Smith you think this has all the makings of an Aaron Sorkin script directed by Guy Ritchie, there’s more.
In the poker game indictment, Detroit Pistons legend and NBA Hall of Famer Billups and Jones were allegedly knowingly used as celebrity lures by the much-feared Gambino, Genovese and Bonnano crime families to draw in and fleece would-be big shots. To that, the DOJ claims that, starting in 2019, “the defendants and their co-conspirators, who constituted the remaining participants purportedly playing in the poker games, worked together on cheating teams (collectively, the ‘Cheating Teams’) that used advanced wireless technologies to read the cards dealt in each poker hand and relay that information to the defendants and co-conspirators participating in the illegal poker games (collectively, the ‘Rigged Games’).”
The 22-page poker indictment adds: “The defendants and their co-conspirators then bet accordingly to ensure that the unsuspecting Victims lost money. Through the Rigged Poker Scheme, the defendants and their co-conspirators defrauded Victims of millions of dollars.” The feds say $7 million to be exact was lost by victims of the rigged games. With that kind of money at play, the indictment alleges that sometimes things got a bit rough, and sometimes members of the “three La Cosa Nostra crime families” got really rough.
With defendants looking at a maximum sentence of 20 years behind bars on wire fraud conspiracy charges and 20 years for the money laundering conspiracy count, the 23-page illegal sports betting indictment names specific teams and games. It also lays out the scope and depth of the alleged crimes and manipulation of games.
“The fraudulent wagering scheme typically involved various iterations of the same pattern within a network of co-conspirators,” the indictment exclaims of a scam that ran into the “tens of millions of dollars,” according to Patel – who may be aiming a little high there.
Still, naming names, the indictment says: “The defendants and certain co-conspirators had access to private information known by NBA players or NBA coaches that was likely to affect the outcome of upcoming NBA games or individual players’ performances. They provided other co-conspirators this non-public information-in exchange for either a flat fee or a share in expected wagering profits-for the purpose of betting. The co-conspirators disseminated the non-public betting information through a network of individuals who placed bets on the co-conspirators’ behalf, placed wagers on their own behalf, or directed others to place wagers, all with the intention of profiting off the scheme at the expense of the Betting Companies. As a result, many of the wagers were placed in connection with betting lines that did not reflect or account for the private information known by the defendants and their coconspirators, rendering the wagers more profitable.”
Mentioned in the betting indictment but not arrested Thursday is a “prominent N.B.A. player” who is with the L.A. Lakers. That “Player 3” was an ex-teammate of Jones, who is in many ways is the link between the two indictments. Jones had confidential info about Player 3’s medical condition for the February 9, 2023 and January 15, 2024 games and leaked that info to co-conspirators in the gambling syndicate.
While it is not made explicit at all in the indictment if Player 3 knew his status was being used as insider info, it is true that Jones and LeBron James played together in Cleveland in the early 2000s. It is also true that Jones told one of his gambling colleagues that Player 3 would not be on the court for a February 2023 Lakers-Milwaukee Bucks game, and the individual should “get a big bet on Milwaukee tonight before the information is out!” James did not play that game due to an issue with one of his ankles.
With what is certain to be a parade of defendants in court over the next few weeks in both cases, Smith asserted: “For me, this is the latest nugget of evidence. That’s not to question the legitimacy of the case, we don’t know. But anybody that has been around him, anybody that has talked to him and seen his reactions, from the sports leagues … they are not surprised at what’s going on today.”
At another point this morning on his show, Smith reiterated: “How many times, with one incident after another, have I said Trump is coming. He’s coming.”
Contacted by Deadline about the indictments and arrests, the White House referred us to the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI.
Ted Johnson contributed to this report