The FBI has arrested Chauncey Billups, NBA champion, Hall of Famer, and coach of the Portland Trail Blazers for his association in a rigged poker game operated by some of New York City’s most notorious crime family. “Why would Chauncey do it?” the world of sports is asking. He’s already worth tens of millions of dollars. That’s a question for Billups, his attorneys, his God, and, presumably, Blazers ownership to answer. But as someone who regularly plays a lot of low and micro-stakes poker, I have a pretty good idea.
The games I play in are monitored by security cameras, with armed guards at the exits in case people get out of line. When I play in World Series of Poker or World Poker Tour events, there are a strict set of rules by which the vast majority of players abide. There’s some rule-bending, but it usually involves peeking at other people’s cards, using computer solvers to help make quick decisions at the table, or a variety of “angle shooting” tricks upon which the poker world tends to frown. In the rare instances when actual cheating does occur, with the occasional earbud installed to allow a player who know what’s happening on the internet livestream in which they’re participating, the poker world roots it out pretty quickly, and that player quickly finds themselves uninvited, in legal trouble and having to actually work for a living instead of playing cards.
Chauncey Billups, on the other hand, fell prey to the sinister temptations of the “private game,” which is where all poker pros know the real money lies. The Bonanno, Genovese, Lucchese and Gambino crime families paid Billups, as well as two Miami Heat players, Terry Rozier and Damon Jones, to participate in New York games that involved rigged card shufflers and special glasses and contact lenses. Rozier also apparently faked an injury to throw games, or at least manipulate NBA stats, winning thousands of dollars in sports betting as a result.
So the NBA is at least partially rigged, big surprise, but let’s keep our eyes on the cards. As the New York Post put it, the mob used the NBA stars to attract “fish” to the games. However, these weren’t mere fish. I play against fish on the average Thursday night as they pull crumpled $20 bills out of their wallets in a desperate attempt to beat a game they can only occasionally win. These were bonafide whales.
It might seem odd for people to risk playing a private game, run by the mob, when the bright and mostly regulated lights of Atlantic City casino poker are just 80 miles away. But poker is a tempting devil. The idea that you can turn $100 into $2,000 isn’t just an abstraction. It’s a reality, and it happens in card rooms around the world every day. Blowing thousands of dollars at a time also happens regularly. So whales don’t even necessarily know that they’re whales. They’re just swimming in the ocean.
And the temptation of playing with actual professional basketball players, who we’ve seen on TV and probably gambled on before, is pretty high. In the skeezy world that makes up my days and nights, guys get pretty excited if they play against someone who was once a AAA pitching coach for the Red Sox, or a backup point guard for Michigan State for a couple of seasons. Imagine playing against Mr. Big Shot himself from the Pistons. You’d never suspect that he’s actually a bald, black Le Schiffre.
“The fraud is mind-boggling,” said FBI director Kash Patel at a press conference yesterday. Yet when I heard about it this morning, it didn’t quite boggle my mind. If you play poker, you just assume that kind of stuff is going on at private games, at all stakes, all the time. I, for one, would be very wary of playing in a game run by someone named “Flappy” who’s backed by the Gambino crime family.
There’s no real mystery that the mob would run a shady card game. That’s nothing new. Or that rich marks would fall for their schemes. The real question revolves around Billups, who risked his shining reputation and his substantial fortune to help criminals cheat at cards. We can only assume that the mob made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.
Tag: Basketball
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Did the mafia make NBA stars offers they couldn’t refuse?
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LeBron’s ‘Second Decision’ wasted everyone’s time
With bated breath, diehard sports fans in America and across the globe waited to see what LeBron James’s “The Second Decision,” meant for the NBA icon’s future. Retirement? A team change? Another son being gifted – ahem – earning an NBA draft pick?
“Everyone’s on pins and needles across the country,” the host said in the anticipated video. “You ready to go, LeBron?”
Then, a pause for unnecessary dramatic effect. “LeBron, fans want to know where you’re taking your talents this year. What’s your decision?”
“In this fall, man this is tough,” James’s bad acting enunciates, “In this fall, I’m going to be taking my talents to Hennessy VSOP.” Hennessy is a cognac brand. He was announcing a new brand deal. The host then asks,“And this was the conclusion you woke up with this morning?”
Well, LeBron, thanks for wasting our morning. What in the corny, cliche publicity stunt was this? Make fun of yourself, sure. But you really spent all this production money for a Hennessy ad. Bring back ’90s Ashton Kutcher – we just got Punk’d in the name of narcissistic, low-brow comedy.
James’s first posted about “The Second Decision” on social-media on Monday. It sent tickets for the Los Angeles Lakers final home game of the 2025-26 regular season through the roof. Prior to the post, the cheapest available ticket for the game started at $82. After the post, those prices soared to $580 each. To the fans who shelled out for what is now a non-historic game: try downing some Hennessy VSOP to drown those sorrows of getting financially played by your favorite athlete.
The “first” decision came, of course, more than a decade ago, when LeBron injected the nation’s sports fans with a dose of anxiety to announce his first major free-agency move. “The Decision,” as it was billed, was a television-ratings bonanza, during which he told the world he was “taking his talents to South Beach.”
Thus began what many consider to be the start of the modern super-team basketball era, where star players plot their moves together. In this case, it was Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh and LeBron James leading the Miami Heat. It worked. The Miami Heat won back-to-back championships in 2012 and 2013.
So fans expected the “second” decision would be an announcement of equal import. Instead, today’s commercial announcement cheapened what was a first-of-its-kind moment.
It was a marketing ploy, designed to go viral and make money. Because why wouldn’t it be in 2025?
After all, James just went on popular Twitch streamer Kai Cenat’s stream a week ago. He joins the ranks of other celebs like Kevin Hart, Drake and Teyana Taylor to hit Cenat’s streams. Perhaps this is the new normal of media consumption. The cool kids in the club – or rather, the old kids as LeBron James is at 40 years old starting his NBA record 23rd season – want to compete digitally with 20-year-old influencers.
Some may call this marketing genius. But the best basketball player of the modern era does not need to do this. LeBron James’s wallet is loaded enough. Our laughs at this moment are not.