With Billups, it’s a different kind of serious
Does the FBI have the goods on Chauncey Billups? We’ll learn more as the case plays out
After the news broke about Chauncey Billups two weeks ago, I got several notes via text and email from friends and acquaintances.
“Another chapter for Jail Blazers?” read one.
“Jail Blazers2,” read another.
“Got another book in you, Eggers?” asked a third.
They were making light of a serious situation, I realize. The “Jail Blazers” era was flush with regrettable transgressions by players, characterized by drug arrests, pit-bull fights, drag racing, a fist-fight during a pickup scrimmage and a record-breaking number of technical fouls. Then there was Bob Whitsitt’s free-agent signing of Ruben Patterson a few months after the small forward entered a modified guilty plea to a third-degree attempted rape by forcing his nanny to have oral sex with him. Patterson was ordered to register as a sex offender and was suspended by the league for the first five games of his initial season with Portland.
That was serious stuff, but nobody did any jail time for their actions.
This is a different kind of serious. Billups has been named in a pair of federal gambling indictments, including one in which he has been charged with wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy. Each count carries a maximum penalty of up to 20 years in prison.
Watching the press conference announcing the arrests of 31 people, including Billups, for allegedly rigging illegal poker games in an FBI investigation that spanned six years, you couldn’t help but get the impression that the powers-that-be feel they have an airtight case against the co-defendants.
Six people talked over a period of more than a half-hour, including FBI director Kash Patel and Chris Raia, the agency’s assistant director “in charge.” There must have been 20 members of the law enforcement team on the stage as they spoke. Boy, were they proud of themselves, figuratively thumping their chests as they offered details about the investigation to the media.
By now, you probably know many of the details. The Trail Blazers coach allegedly participated in the rigged poker games as a “Face Card,” a celebrity brought in to entice gamblers’ participation in the games, and as part of a “Cheating Team” working together to use technology and tricks to defraud the unsuspecting victims. In other words, not just being there, but being involved in the planning and the carrying out of the swindle.
Specifically, the 22-page indictment says Billups was among defendants who participated in rigged games in Las Vegas “in or around April 2019.” That was during a time period after his retirement as a player in 2014 and before he began his coaching career in 2020. At the time, he was working as a studio analyst and an occasional game analyst for ESPN.
Among the co-defendants are former NBA player and coach Damon Jones and a number of members and associates of the La Cosa Nostra organized crime families in the New York area. The Mafia. Mobsters, if you will. In the indictment, which I read in its entirety, Billups’ name is lumped in with characters known as “Flappy,” “Spanish G,” “Juice,” “Sugar,” “Big Bruce” and “Pookie.” Chauncey, erstwhile known as “Mr. Big Shot,” has to love that kind of association.
Billups also matches the description of an unnamed defendant to a charge that he provided inside information on player availability in a Trail Blazers-Chicago Bulls game in March 2023 to a friend, who spread the information to gamblers, who used it for bets that cheated sports books.
The friend, according to The Athletic, was Eric “Spook” Earnest, a felon since his teenage years with at least two stints in prison. Through wiretaps, Drug Enforcement officials heard Earnest brag about his connections with NBA players and other famous athletes. That’s who Chauncey allegedly tipped off that the Blazers would sit top players, including Damian Lillard, for the game in 2023.
The Justice Department alleges that their friendship included trading inside information. The contention is that from 2022-24, Earnest received and passed along inside info from “a long-time friend” and NBA coach, whose identifying details match those of Billups.
The Dean of Portland Sports is now on BlueSky.
All of this is mind-boggling to the Brown brothers, Larry and Herb. Larry was head coach and Herb an assistant on the Detroit Pistons team that featured Billups and won the 2004 NBA championship. If Chauncey needs character witnesses as he proceeds through the judicial process, the Browns would be willing participants.
Larry Brown, 85, lives in Charlotte but plans to move to Chapel Hill, N.C., to be closer to family. Larry, a member of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame and the only man to coach championship teams in the NBA and NCAA, coached Billups for two seasons with the Pistons. Larry says he has communicated with Chauncey since news broke of his arrest and indictment.
“We text,” says Larry, who ranks ninth with 1,098 career coaching victories in 10 stints with NBA teams (and 1,275 wins if ABA wins are included). “I text him almost every day to let him know that I am praying for him and thinking of him. He always responds.
“I am sick. I really don’t know what to say. I love Chauncey. I followed his career from high school. I’ve gotten so many calls from people who have been connected with him like me. We’re all in shock. I know his family, his kids, his wife. He’s a great father and husband.”
When Billups was inducted into the Hall of Fame last year, he asked Brown to present him. Larry was unable to do so because of medical condition.
“I know how much that meant to him,” Larry says. “I can’t imagine him jeopardizing that, or his family’s reputation. Chauncey doesn’t seem like one who would ever compromise himself.”
Two years ago, Billups asked Brown to come to Portland to provide perspective on the Blazers players. Brown watched a couple of preseason practice sessions.
“I watched him work with the kids and saw how respectful and attentive they were and what relationship he had with them and his staff,” Larry says. “It was, and still is, a young team, and it seemed as if they all worship him. He is an unbelievable role model. I was so excited when he became a coach, and he did it the right way. He became an assistant to learn how to coach, how to be there for his players.
“That’s not the Chauncey Billups these FBI guys are referring to — not in my eyes. It just doesn’t make any sense to me.”
Herb Brown, 89, is retired now and living in Eagle, Idaho, after a long career as an NBA assistant, including a two-year stint with the Trail Blazers from 2001-03. Herb, who also was head coach of the Pistons from 1975-78, has kept in touch with Billups regularly through texts.
“I texted Chauncey the morning of their season opener to wish him luck,” Herb says. “He always gets back to me. That’s the first time he didn’t.”
The morning after that game, a 118-114 loss to Minnesota, Billups was arrested and taken into custody.
“I’m devastated,” Herb says. “I can’t believe he did that. I can’t imagine him doing what those allegations say. It’s beyond me.”
During the Christmas season in 2003, Billups and Pistons teammate Richard Hamilton hosted a charity event in which they bought presents for children in low-income families.
“ ‘Rip’ and Chauncey took the kids shopping, and I went with them,” Herb says. “It was incredible. They were so gracious, mingling with the kids and their parents and letting them buy whatever they wanted. It was wonderful.
“Last year they had a 20-year reunion of the 2004 team in Detroit. The Blazers played the night before, but Chauncey flew in for the event that morning with his wife and three daughters, then flew out the next day. Darvin Ham did the same thing when he was coaching the Lakers. What (the FBI) says he has done is so out of character … it’s hard for me to believe.”
Both Browns mention, however, the culture of gambling between players on road trips during the era in which they coached.
“Gambling started with the players playing cards for all sorts of money in the front of the plane,” Herb says. “I never went up there, but I know it was happening.”
“All the guys play cards, and they all have a whole bunch of cash,” Larry says. “But that’s between teammates.”
In recent years, could Billups have piled up some gambling debts, and agreed to appearances to offset his losses, then got caught up in the con game itself? Is it possible that he didn’t realize its extent?
“I don’t like to speculate,” Larry says, “but what if somebody approached Chauncey and said, ‘Hey, we’re having a big card game. It would be great if you were there. We’ll give you X number of dollars.’ And all of a sudden, you’re caught in the middle of something, and you don’t about know it.”
Larry remembers the college basketball scandals of the 1950s and early ’60s, which implicated players of accepting bribes from gamblers — including some from North Carolina, where Brown played. One of those implicated was Doug Moe, Larry’s teammate and “best friend,” who declined the offer to take part in point-shaving for a payout. Even so, Moe, a second-round NBA draft pick, was effectively blackballed from pro basketball in the aftermath. He never played in the NBA and had to wait several years before beginning a playing career in the ABA.
“Doug just met with gamblers and refused to do it, but it ruined his life,” Larry says. “I played against guys who got caught dumping games. I played on AAU teams with kids who were implicated. No gambler came up to me and asked me (to throw games), but I must have been lucky. I don’t know what would have happened.
“I can’t stand gambling in sports. The NCAA recently sent out a memo to all the colleges saying that student-athletes can bet on pro sports. How dumb is that?”
(After Larry and I talked, the NCAA announced it was delaying implementation of the rule change, perhaps as a result of the fallout from the Billups/Jones/Terry Rozier case.)
The NBA has little right to be on a high horse about gambling. The NBA and sports books have been in bed together for years. During the three decades with David Stern as commissioner, any relationship with gambling was prohibited. When Adam Silver took over in 2014, things changed. The NBA became the first major American sports league to endorse legalized sports betting.
Maybe it was an inevitability. Yes, the NBA requires detailed injury reports, and fines teams that do not follow protocol as a hedge against betting. This, incidentally, should be law at the FBS level of college football, too.
But gambling is everywhere in the NBA. You can’t watch an NBA game broadcast without seeing commercials advertising on-line gambling sites. According to the Sports Business Journal, sports books spent $52.1 million on advertising and media buys during televised NBA games last season.
During the previous season, the NBA earned more than $160 million from partnerships with sports books and casinos. CNN reports that direct sponsorship deals between various legal sports books and top American sports leagues are likely worth more than $1 billion annually. Their advertisements appear in arenas and stadiums all across the country.
After Jontay Porter was banned for life by the NBA in 2024 for violating gambling rules, the league asked its partner sports books (primarily DraftKings and FanDuel) to stop allowing bettors to wager on the “under” on prop bets involving players on two-way contracts. Porter was a two-way guy.
Then after news broke about the FBI’s bust of such as Billups, Jones and Rozier, Silver called for more federal regulation on sports betting and urged sports books “to pull back some of the prop bets.” Bettors can make prop bets on their phones while sitting in an NBA arena watching a game. In effect, the NBA encourages it.
A prop bet, short for proposition bet, refers to bets of an occurrence during a game, such as over-under for player or team stats. (For instance, Deni Avdija points in a half, 17; the Blazers 3-pointers made in a game, 15).
That is where Rozier got in trouble, allegedly telling bettors he would fake an injury and leave a game early, allowing them to take the “under.”
I would like to see the prop bet illegal. Not that I think that will happen, or that a ruse like Rozier’s will happen often in the NBA, where the average salary is nearly $12 million. Most players would have enough money, and be smart enough to avoid any temptation to accept offers from gamblers.
That is what we thought about Billups, who made $106 million in salary during his playing career. A source says his contract as coach of the Blazers, which runs through 2028, calls for him to make $7 million this season. The NBA has him on leave, however, and recently announced that he will forfeit his salary until the outcome of the FBI’s case is determined.
In the weeks and months ahead, we will learn more about the facts of Billups’ case. There are many questions to answer. When did Billups realize FBI agents were on him, or at least believed they were? In how many poker games did Billups allegedly participate as a Face Card, and what was the time period involved? Will there be additional arrests and indictments of players and/or coaches? Victims’ losses, it was announced, were at least $7 million. That’s all? Will this go to trial? Will he cut a deal? Will he get a jail term? (Porter pled guilty to wire fraud; he is expected to receive a sentence of from 41 to 51 months.)
Billups’ next court date is Nov. 24 in Brooklyn. He has retained a high-powered defense attorney, Marc Mukasey of New York, who has represented Donald Trump in recent years. Mukasey is currently also representing Jon Sanberg, co-founder of the Aspiration company that is being investigated by the NBA for its seemingly shady endorsement deal with the Clippers’ Kawhi Leonard.
I’m not sure Billups’ players worshipped him, as Larry Brown suggests, but I certainly got the impression they respected him. He could get tough when necessary but was generally a players’ coach. And his pedigree as a player gave him credibility.
That said, life goes on, and the Blazers shouldn’t skip a beat with Tiago Splitter at the helm. The foundation is set, with Avdija and Toumani Camara as the best players, Jrue Holiday the veteran leader, Jerami Grant as an early Sixth Man of the Year candidate and some good young talent around them.
Chauncey built a reputation as a player and coach upon integrity. I am going to reserve judgment on his guilt until that plays out in the legal process. I can tell you, I won’t be writing a book about this unseemly episode in his life. But somebody might.
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