On Friday, Adam Silver stood solemnly in the bowels of Madison Square Garden to address what has become an all-too-familiar issue. The success of the NBA’s first week—a thrilling opener on NBC, brilliant performances from Victor Wembanyama, the debut of basketball on Amazon Prime Video—had been overshadowed by federal indictments that ensnared an NBA head coach (Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups), an active player (Heat guard Terry Rozier) and a former player (Damon Jones) in a scandal FBI director Kash Patel called “the insider trading saga for the NBA.”
“My initial reaction was I was deeply disturbed,” Silver told Prime Video. “There’s nothing more important to the league and its fans than the integrity of the competition. And so I had a pit in my stomach. It was very upsetting.”
It should be. Some 18 months ago the league survived the first scandal of the legalized gambling era, banning Raptors guard Jontay Porter after discovering that Porter, among other things, conspired to influence the outcome of bets based on his own performance. The NBA was able to control that story, swiftly exiling Porter after an internal investigation revealed his scheme. This one it won’t.
The indictment that targets Rozier and Jones suggests the government has a strong case, says Steve Dollear, a government investigations and white collar attorney at Vedder Price. Dollear spent 19 years as a federal prosecutor, most recently serving as Chief of the National Security and Cybercrime Section at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois. The level of detail in the indictment, says Dollear, is particularly notable.
“The way it reads, it suggests that they either have cooperators or they had people and/or maybe cooperators wearing recording devices,” Dollear says. “Or it is possible that they had wiretaps because they go into very significant detail about specific games. And then they can trace out not only what the non-public information that was transmitted, but then ultimately they’re tracing what bets were made on that non-public information. They can trace the proceeds.”
Of particular interest to Dollear was paragraph 43 of the indictment, which alleges that one of the defendants, Deniro Laster, drove from Philadelphia to Charlotte, where Rozier was living, to count the profits from the fraudulent schemes.
“You don’t have to put [those specifics] in, but once you put it in, you have to prove it or you have to cut it for trial,” says Dollear. “And, historically, the Department of Justice doesn’t put in needless language. They put in language that they can ultimately prove up. And to me, it just suggests that they know what happened in that room that day.”
Silver has defended the NBA’s inaction against Rozier, who the league investigated and ultimately cleared. The league, said Silver, “frankly couldn’t find anything.” Rozier cooperated, even handing over his personal phone. Still, the NBA determined there was “insufficient evidence” to punish Rozier. The government, Silver noted, has more tools at its disposal.
“The federal government has subpoena power, can threaten to put people in jail, can do all kinds of things that a league office can’t do,” said Silver. “So we’ve been working with them since then, and of course what they announced was an indictment.”
Silver’s claims have drawn some eye rolls in front offices. “They don’t want to be the one questioning the integrity of the league,” says a high-ranking team executive. Others find it more believable. Dollear agrees that the government has “tools to get people to tell the truth that the NBA does not have.” They can enter into cooperation agreements, obtain search warrants, even utilize wiretaps.
The NBA will almost certainly let the federal investigation play out before taking any further action. Both Billups and Rozier have been placed on leave. The league’s focus since the indictments have been on preventative measures. In a memo to teams, a copy of which was obtained by Sports Illustrated, Rick Buchanan, the NBA’s general counsel, and Dan Spillane, executive vice president of league governance and policy, wrote that the NBA “believe[s] there is more that can be done from a legal/regulatory perspective to protect the integrity of the NBA and our affiliated leagues.” Prop bets, the memo said, deserve additional scrutiny.
The memo indicates the league will target injury reports. Currently, rules state that by 5 p.m. local time the day before a game (other than the second day of a back-to-back) teams “must designate a participation status and identify a specific injury, illness, other medical condition, or other reason for any player whose participation in the game may be affected for any reason.” But injury statuses evolve throughout the day, with players often making the final decision. And there is little the league can do if a player, as Rozier is alleged, fakes an injury during a game.
Says Dollear, “The only way to get compliance is make people agree to follow a procedure.”
That is Silver’s challenge. Gambling is woven into the fabric of sports now. There’s no putting that toothpaste back in the tube. And even if they could, the NBA, like other leagues, collects millions every year from partnerships with gambling companies. Efforts have been made to eliminate prop bets, but NBA officials feel like that is a losing battle. Tightening the rules, increasing the monitoring and hoping the threat of federal charges will be enough to discourage bad actors may be all the league can do.
Indeed, the final paragraph of the memo reflects that uncertainty. “We welcome team input on these matters as we move forward with this review,” it read. “If you have any suggestions, questions, or other thoughts, please contact either of us.”
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Adam Silver, NBA Face Crisis As Betting Federal Indictments Reveal Explosive Details.