Recently there has been a scandal in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Two retired NBA players, Damon Jones and Terry Rozier, got arrested for being involved in an illegal gambling ring. 

Jones sold information to bettors about players on the teams he has played on including the Boston Celtics, Toronto Raptors, Denver Nuggets, Minnesota Timberwolves, Detroit Pistons, New York Knicks and Los Angeles Clippers. 

Rozier is a guard who plays for the Miami Heat. He pretended to be hurt during the game so that a small group of people could make money. Most fans are in shock over Rozier’s actions since he has a huge four-year contract totaling 96.3 million dollars. 

¨I was really shocked about Terry, he has a big contract and probably did get a lot of money out of the gambling,¨ Rhys Arnone, freshman basketball fan, said. 

Rozier gave insider intel to his childhood best friend, Deiro Laster. Laster was offered a deal of $100,000if he leaked the insider intel on Rozier. It has been unclear if Rozier may have made money off of this deal. 

Later, Lester gave those details to other people with whom he had made the deal. Those individuals had put a combined total of a $200,000bet on Terry’s under’s that game. Under’s is when you bet on a player’s statistics and he has under what they put on the starting line. Eventually, Rozier faked an injury and all the bets cashed out. 

Jones, who was a coach on the LA Lakers, sold information to sports gamblers about a ¨ prominent ¨ player (Lebron James) that would be out of the game that day. Jones told all the bettors to go for the under’s on that game so their bets would follow through.

¨Selling information on your own team is really not good, but selling it willingly is a lot worse,¨ Brad Powell, senior basketball fan, said.

Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups was also arrested after rigging poker games with four New York mafia families. While Billups was playing those games, he made $7 million with the mafia families..

The mafia families would bring in celebrities such as ex-athletes and they would get big-time poker players and rig the game so the athletes would win. They would threaten the poker players if they didn’t pay up.

¨Really, the poker thing is not getting a lot of attention, but it is a big deal, like the mafia is involved. This is a really big deal that is getting covered by the other news,¨ Arnoone said.

These events have fans wondering if illegal gambling happens in other sports like football and baseball.

¨I think gambling could be hard to do in basketball but easier in other sports I definitely feel that it happens or has happened before in football or baseball,¨ Powell said.