The 2025 NBA season isn’t a week old yet, but the FBI and federal prosecutors have just let a little air out of the ball with a breathless unveiling of gambling corruption indictments involving current and former players, a coach and New York mobsters.

And, of course, there’s a mention of Las Vegas.

With alleged illegal sports gambling and rigged high-stakes poker games backed by the Mafia, this NBA scandal might be hard to beat. If the world’s premier basketball league kept statistics on such things, this one would chart as a triple-double. All that’s missing is a horse’s head in the commissioner’s bed.

But, hey, the season’s just begun.

Speaking of the commissioner, Adam Silver was in all-star spin mode this week as a guest on Pat McAfee’s ESPN show, assuring skeptics that the league is doing its utmost to ensure its games are above board and its players understand the rules. In fact, the commissioner is for more regulation — even on the federal level.

So far, at least 30 people across 11 states have been charged in the Eastern District of New York with wire fraud, money laundering, extortion and illegal gambling, but the multipronged investigation is ongoing. Knowledgeable sources tell me other players and illegal bookmakers remain subjects of the investigation.

Miami heat guard Terry Rozier, who has earned an estimated $150 million in his professional career, is among the marquee names in the indictment. He is accused of tanking at least one game late in the 2023 season. Those in on the deal spread $200,000 in a proposition bet on Rozier to underperform in the game, according to the indictment.

Las Vegan Shane “Sugar” Hennen, 40, is named as a co-conspirator in the Rozier case. The Pittsburgh native is a convicted cocaine dealer with a long criminal history, according to published reports.

“Rozier exited the game after nine minutes, and many of the bets paid off, generating tens of thousands of dollars in profits,” prosecutors allege. “(Deniro) Laster collected the cash and drove through the night to Rozier’s house, where together they counted the profits together.”

NBA Hall-of-Famer and Portland Trailblazers coach Chauncey Billups is the other headline-grabbing name among the indicted. Billups allegedly participated in illegal and rigged poker games backed by members of the Bonanno, Genovese, and Gambino crime families. The games employed a variety of high-tech devices to cheat players.

For Las Vegas legal bookmaking insiders, the alleged Rozier dump raises questions.

First, the size and specificity of the proposition bet should have raised a red flag immediately. One veteran of the legal side of the sports betting industry puts it bluntly: If the bookies used were legal, they were dangerously unsophisticated. If they were illegal, they were asking for trouble — or were in on the conspiracy and getting a piece of the action.

Las Vegas books didn’t see the prop bet anomalies described in the indictment, one source tells me. Most wouldn’t accept a player prop bet that high on a regular season game. The above-board bookies ask the obvious question: Why so much money on a late regular-season game based on the performance of one player? As one experienced bookmaker observes, the immediate reaction should be to hold up because “maybe something’s wrong here.”

One beef among legal bookmakers tasked to set a stable line is why the NBA continues to allow teams to delay announcing their lineups until late on game night. It gives insiders with special — and often illegal — knowledge an edge that lets them take advantage of the system. Even when it’s innocent, it adds to the overall suspicion.

Says one legal bookmaking source, “Everybody needs to know that the games are on the up-and-up, the bettor and bookmaker alike.”

It should be noted that when the basketball game-fixing scandal at Arizona State occurred in 1994, it was the Las Vegas bookmaking fraternity that spotted it and passed the information to the authorities.

Now, about that mob thing.

The only element of the indictment that’s less surprising than finding shady gambling associated with the NBA is discovering mobsters involved with the operation of clandestine New York card rooms. Insert your “gambling in Casablanca” one-liner here.

X-ray tables? False card shufflers? Magic shades revealing marked cards? It’s juicy stuff that reveals not only the latest cheating gadgetry, but also the grim face of organized crime.

Mob members and associates are well-known to arrange the games, rope the players, secure the room, lend the money and collect the debts. Brooklyn third-graders know this. The idea that some of the card games are crooked should surprise no one.

And yet, authorities managed to sound shocked — shocked! — to find hoodlums associated with a cardroom hustle. For FBI Director and Las Vegas resident Kash Patel and the other officials to overdramatize this fact of life is pretty corny.

While we’re on the subject of lucrative private poker games, it’s long past time for Nevada gaming authorities to scrutinize them since many take place in Strip high-roller suites and traditionally have been arranged with management’s knowledge.

On the court, sources remind me that this latest announcement doesn’t name some other players on West Coast teams whose shady pals and erratic on-court efforts have raised red flags in recent years. So, want to bet there’s another expensive basketball sneaker to drop in this case?

My window’s open.

It’s all a reminder that legalizing sports betting hasn’t driven out the illegal bookies. But it certainly has raised the stakes now that the stigma surrounding sports gambling has faded. With the leagues and teams partnered with traditional and online bookmakers and billions hanging in the balance, don’t look for anything to change soon.

In other words, expect more scandals despite pious marketing by the leagues and the best efforts of the good guys. 

John L. Smith is an author and longtime columnist. He was born in Henderson and his family’s Nevada roots go back to 1881. His stories have appeared in New Lines, Time, Readers Digest, Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, Reuters and Desert Companion, among others.