Featured Image Credit: PBD Podcast/Screengrab
Topics: NBA, Basketball
John McDougall
A former basketball referee who was jailed for his part in a gambling scandal has revealed what he has heard about the current case which has seen a star NBA player and a coach arrested.
The NBA was rocked earlier this week after it emerged that Miami Heat player Terry Rozier and Chauncey Billups, the coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, were arrested reportedly after games on Wednesday.
The arrests came as part of an FBI sports betting investigation.
Rozier is accused of participating in an illegal sports betting scheme using private insider NBA information, and Billups has been arrested for alleged illegal gambling.
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According to BBC News, FBI officials have alleged that Rozier has faked an injury and collaborated with other people to bet illegally through using non-public details about teams and athletes.
Billups meanwhile is alleged, along with others, to have targeted victims to play in poker games which had been rigged and had received backing from crime families.
Both men have denied the allegations made against them.
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A former NBA referee who was himself jailed for his part in a gambling scandal during the 2000s has now spoken on what he has heard about the current ongoing case and what an FBI agent has told him.
Tim Donaghy was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison in July 2008 after admitting his part in an NBA gambling scandal.
The now 58-year-old admitted betting on games he officiated across four NBA seasons.
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Donaghy has now spoken on the PBD Podcast and believes the fresh case will be 'very damaging' for the NBA.
He even revealed that he has been contacted by an FBI agent who worked on his case and believes the current proceedings will have far more spill out into the public domain than Donaghy's one ever did and suggests the fallout will not be as contained as it was in the 2000s, which he claims was 'run' by former NBA commissioner David Stern, who died in 2020.
He said: "I think it’s going to be very damaging to the league. I just received a text message from one of the FBI agents that worked my case, and he basically said that they’re not going to be able to cover this up like they covered up mine.
"I think David Stern was able to put a lid on it and paint me as one bad apple, the only guy involved, and then just move on from it. The FBI said there were six or seven other people they wanted to indict, and this got shut down from the highest level.
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"Later, I found out that a guy by the name of Greg Andres, who was the head of the Eastern District of New York, took a job at a law firm and suddenly got all the outside legal counsel work for the NBA.
"So, it was a situation where David Stern really ran that whole investigation, and it got shut down by the highest-level people when it came to others being involved."