00:00Sam McQuillan has been very busy. I see him making a lot of appearances talking about these big stories online here from Legal Sports Report and certainly the biggest story that Sam has dealt with here in sports betting, I would assume, and Sam is going to spend some time now here with us going over it.
00:14So much debate is coming out of the post story with this, Sam, and I think that's probably a good place to start because by now I think most people know that NBA player in Terry Rozier was arrested for allegedly shaving points off his props.
00:29Chauncey Billups arrested for allegedly running a poker ring that was rigged and you're seeing all these kind of things from that.
00:35But the fallout is now the story at this point, Sam, and when what's happening is you're doing shows and you're getting asked questions from people like me, is sports betting bad?
00:47Should we get rid of sports betting? Should partners in the NBA be partnering up?
00:52And they're like silly conversations to have because we just know that they're not going away.
00:56But it does open up the conversation, I think, to how to make things a little bit cleaner and better so that the average fan who really doesn't understand can know that they feel safe placing bets and know that the players that are involved are not getting paid to not perform.
01:15And I think that is probably the place that I'd like to start with you today.
01:20Yeah, it's a lot to unpack.
01:21It's definitely the biggest sports betting scandal we've had in about a year.
01:27We've had a number of these random college betting investigations that have gone on and one that's actually ongoing and connected to the group that's allegedly behind this scheme as well.
01:36But I think the really interesting thing in terms of fallout is the fact that the NBA had already cleared one of these players, Terry Rozier.
01:44He wasn't a surprise name.
01:45And we had already heard that there was that game from, I believe, March 2023 that he was allegedly, you know, had tipped off a friend that he wasn't going to, you know, finish the game and fake an injury.
01:57And, you know, the FBI came out with more reports on exactly how that worked with, you know, sending money over to his house and everything.
02:03But the fact that the NBA cleared him of any wrongdoing in the investigation that it had, it seized his phone, it allowed him to play for two more years.
02:12And then all of a sudden yesterday, it seems like the NBA didn't even know this was coming.
02:16The FBI comes out and announces not only is he going to jail, but current head coach Chauncey Billups is going to jail as well as a ex-head coach for the Cavs, Damon Jones, who's longtime friend of LeBron.
02:29So I think the big thing here is, like, you know, why didn't the league find any of this beforehand?
02:35You know, now they don't have subpoena power of the FBI.
02:38They don't have, you know, the resources they do.
02:40And the timing is definitely really interesting, too, right?
02:42Like, you talk about two days into the NBA season.
02:45You just had two great games to start on NBC.
02:48Victor Wimbanyama was making headlines with his great play.
02:51And all of a sudden, the FBI comes out with not just the director of the FBI, who I've never seen involved in anything like this,
02:57but you have the DOJ there, you have, you know, law enforcement from New York, you have law enforcement from Pennsylvania.
03:04You have a whole organized effort.
03:05So clearly, they've been working on this for a long time, and there's a lot of people who knew about it, except for the NBA.
03:12So I think now you have to go, you know, where does the NBA go from here in terms of public image,
03:17like you're mentioning with, you know, player availability, with tanking games.
03:21It came out in the indictment as well that allegedly Billups, you know, not only was part of this poker ring,
03:26but that he had notified someone that they were going to tank the rest of their season when they went one and nine.
03:32So, you know, it's never good when the NBA has to deal with that kind of stuff.
03:35They've already been dealing with a lot of concerns about injuries and tankings and everything like that.
03:40So we don't even know the full picture as well.
03:42They called this only the tip of the iceberg.
03:44So I think the NBA is going to be playing catch up during the worst time of the year for it to be playing catch up,
03:50which is right at the start of the season.
03:52Yeah.
03:53So here's I'll share my opinion with you on this is that the actual games themselves,
03:59I don't think need to be touched at all.
04:02I don't I still think that having these safeguards in place are the reason why we found out about these stories
04:08and stuff like this has probably been going on for years in the black market, in overseas, offshores, etc.
04:15But, Sam, I mean, I think I just have a very simple solution to all this, and I just don't know why this is.
04:22Look, there's two things for me.
04:24The first is, is there's just so much stuff to bet.
04:27Do we really need props?
04:28If the answer is yes, OK, I'm good with that.
04:31But, Sam, why not just limit the amount of money that you can get down on props?
04:38Wouldn't that just completely solve this problem?
04:40Everybody can get their little taste.
04:42But if the max bet on a prop is 500 or a thousand bucks, I mean, maybe guys still will do it even at that point
04:51to make their $15,000 or something like that.
04:53OK, fine.
04:54But you heard the number 200,000.
04:57Not a lot of money to Terry Rozier.
04:59Not a lot of money to anybody who plays in the NBA, but still a lot of money to us and to somebody of his, of course,
05:05that could cash in on $100,000.
05:08Am I crazy for thinking that?
05:09It just seems to me it's the easiest solution.
05:12Yeah, that's how this stuff was even caught in the first place, right?
05:15You had $200,000 placed on Terry Rozier's unders, which usually bets of that size don't get placed on a player like that.
05:22That's how they caught Jonte Porter, right?
05:23All of a sudden, there was tons of money coming in on his bets before the game.
05:28Also, the timing of it, too.
05:29These were huge amounts of money that were placed on these props before the injury reports had come out.
05:36So, you know, the sports books, to your point, Craig, the reason it's getting caught, the legal sports books where these bets were placed,
05:43they said, oh, wow, this was all before the injury reports came out, which I think goes back to my earlier point of, you know,
05:48the NBA had that information.
05:50Why did they not really do anything with that?
05:52But as far as limiting prop bets, you know, I think it's always going to be a conversation of, you know, you get rid of bets in one place,
06:00and obviously the black market has not been stamped out.
06:04Some of these bets were going on on illegal sports books as well.
06:07It wasn't just FanDuel and DraftKings.
06:09And one of the ways that these conspirators allegedly tried to navigate what you're talking about, where you identify, you know,
06:15$15,000 being placed on a random prop is by using a network of individuals where they're all placing small amounts at different sports books across the nation.
06:25So, you know, this is the Genovese, the Colombo, the Bonanno crime families that we're talking about implicated in this.
06:31I think the bottom line is, yes, people are going to try to exploit the law no matter what.
06:38And to your point, it being legal is the reason that this was caught.
06:42If this was all done offshore on illegal sports books, I don't think that we would have caught this.
06:46And I think when we talk about the tip of the iceberg, there's probably a lot more going on like this that we don't know yet.
06:52I think one solution that we've talked about is banning bets on minor players.
06:58That was a result that we saw of the whole Jontae Porter thing last year.
07:01He was like the 12th, 13th ban on the Raptors.
07:04You can no longer bet on players like that.
07:06You're seeing the menu of NBA players that you're able to bet on really shrink, where it's only where the starters and a few key players.
07:14I think sports books have themselves been a lot more hesitant to offer that just from an optics standpoint.
07:19And certainly one other thing that's being floated out there is why are we even letting people bet on the unders?
07:24If someone has inside information, for example, that LeBron James is going to miss the game but play five minutes and check out as soon as he scores his 50,000th point or whatever, why are we allowing people to bet on their underperformance?
07:39Let's only allow them to bet on our overperformance.
07:42And I think that's something that you're probably going to see resonate with lawmakers as a more palpable kind of solution to this rather than just banning prop bets altogether.
07:50Because while it might look good politically, I think if you get rid of prop bets altogether, it just pushes this stuff even more to the black market.
07:57And hopefully, you know, what comes out of this is something good, you know, players are kind of, they see now that you really can't do this, you're really going to get caught and you're really going to get screwed if you do.
08:07Yeah.
08:07So, you know, the other surprising part for me, Sam, is to hear that Chauncey Billups is, you know, heavily involved in this.
08:14It's just, like, it makes me want to be a little bit skeptical and say it just doesn't add up that a player of his stature with championships and Hall of Fames and rings and a head coach would get involved.
08:28It almost seems like maybe at some point, I'm going to guess his defense is just like, I didn't know, you know, like, I just can't, I can't believe it.
08:37Like, that to me is the biggest surprise from this story.
08:40Rozier, I don't know a ton about, obviously, but Billups, I've known forever.
08:43Yeah, we've known Billups forever.
08:46He has a reputation across the league as a guy of integrity, and that's something that his lawyer reiterated in the statement they put out where they essentially denied all wrongdoing and said they're going to fight the case.
08:55So, I agree.
08:56It is very strange to see him involved there as well, and especially from the standpoint of he was a current head coach in the NBA while this was happening.
09:05We get back to the conversation of why would someone sacrifice all this for so little?
09:09You also don't know what exploitation or extortion was at hand here.
09:13We're talking about the mafia.
09:14These guys might not have been doing it to make an extra buck.
09:17They might have, you know, been doing it to save somebody or save themselves from some sort of impending threat.
09:23Have a great weekend, Sam.
09:25Thanks for coming on.
09:26You too.
09:26Thanks.
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