Ramona ShelburneOct 30, 2025, 07:00 AM ETCloseSenior writer for ESPN.comSpent seven years at the Los Angeles Daily NewsFollow on X
play1:52Shams: Billups, Rozier will not be paid while on leaveShams Charania reports that Blazers coach Chauncey Billups and Heat guard Terry Rozier will not be paid while on leave.
How are the Trail Blazers dealing with Chauncey Billups’ absence? (1:09)Ramona Shelburne explains how Chauncey Billups’ leave is impacting the Trail Blazers. (1:09)
Shams: Billups, Rozier will not be paid while on leaveShams Charania reports that Blazers coach Chauncey Billups and Heat guard Terry Rozier will not be paid while on leave.
Shams Charania reports that Blazers coach Chauncey Billups and Heat guard Terry Rozier will not be paid while on leave.
FOR A FEW hours last Thursday, it was a relatively normal morning for Jrue Holiday and his Portland Trail Blazers teammates.
Most of them had turned their phones off hoping to sleep in after a late-night season-opening loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves. The biggest issue Holiday faced was whether his kids would let him sleep past 8 a.m.
His coach, Chauncey Billups, the Hall of Fame player who had been guiding Portland through its rebuild the past five seasons, was in federal custody. Billups had been arrested by the FBI in a predawn raid in connection with a federal probe into rigged poker games and was implicated in a separate probe into illegal gambling on NBA games.
Two years ago, after Holiday had been traded to Portland from the Milwaukee Bucks in a blockbuster deal for Damian Lillard, Billups had called to tell him that he would love to have Holiday as a veteran leader on the team as it began its rebuild. But he also wanted to know where Holiday’s head and heart were, too. Holiday had won a championship with the Bucks in 2021 and at 33, was still a deeply impactful player.
Holiday told Billups he preferred to be on a contending team, and the Blazers worked with him and his representatives to find a trade (ultimately to the Boston Celtics) that worked for both sides. The Blazers got back promising young center Robert Williams III, Malcolm Brogdon and two first-round draft picks. The Celtics got Holiday, who proved critical to their championship run in 2024.
“Chauncey really did me a solid the first time I was traded here, just being able to see things through my lens and ask me what I wanted,” Holiday told ESPN. “Not many coaches would do that. But he understood because he was also a player in this league.”
This summer, circumstances had changed. The Celtics were looking to shed salary and retool, while superstar forward Jayson Tatum was out with a torn Achilles’ tendon. And the Blazers were looking to add veterans such as Holiday, who could help elevate their young core of Deni Avdija, Shaedon Sharpe, Scoot Henderson, Toumani Camara and Donovan Clingan.
After just 117 wins in his first four seasons, the team believed its coach, and his roster, could make the turn.
In no world could Holiday see Billups’ arrest coming. In no way could he picture Billups being involved in what he has been accused of.
It’s a line that has been whispered across all levels of the NBA this past week, from the Blazers’ locker room to opposing coaches and players, from people merely in Billups’ orbit to those in his inner circle. The man portrayed in the FBI indictment is not the man they thought they knew.
AS HOLIDAY SPOKE to reporters after the Trail Blazers’ 139-119 win over the Golden State Warriors on Friday night, his teammate, Matisse Thybulle, listened and nodded along.
He liked the way Holiday described interim coach Tiago Splitter as “stoic” and that Splitter had the right “demeanor” to step into the still stunning void Billups’ departure had created.
Splitter and general manager Joe Cronin had addressed the team Thursday afternoon after the news broke to relay whatever details and instructions they could.
“Everyone thinks we might know more than everyone else,” Thybulle said. “But it’s like Twitter is telling us just as much as anyone else.”
Thybulle says he and Billups talked every day, sometimes multiple times a day. But it was more than that.
“Let’s not mince words,” said FBI director Kash Patel at a news conference last Thursday announcing the charges. “This is the insider trading saga for the NBA. That’s what this is.”
Back in Portland, Thybulle said that amid the turmoil, he, like the rest of his teammates, is trying to remain focused on his day job.
“It’s not really something I want to get too lost in,” he said. “Hopefully things can work themselves out and we find out sooner rather than later. But try not to let it occupy too much of your mind and emotional space.”
When he was the head coach, that door was never closed. He was always available, in person or on the phone. But now they can’t call him. Or check how he is doing. Or get advice on how to manage a massive scandal that has enveloped the league.
Before Friday’s game, Holiday and Lillard gathered the team inside the theater room in the practice facility for an impromptu meeting, multiple team sources said. They wanted to send a message to their young team.
“It’s hard to process,” Lue said before the game, later adding, “I believe in Chauncey’s character. I know who he is as a person. I’ve been with him since I was 17 years old. So, it’s just hard to see something like this happen.”
It’s a circular refrain dominating conversations inside the Blazers’ locker room and across the league — the difficulty of reconciling a man so many considered to be a colleague, a friend, a coach, and the man the federal government presents as a criminal.
Why would a Hall of Famer risk his reputation, not to mention millions and millions of dollars in current and future salary, to play in allegedly rigged poker games and leak information to gamblers?
Investigators make clear they believe Billups provided nonpublic information to gamblers in one indictment. In the second, they allege he was not only aware that the poker games he was participating in were rigged, but that he helped organize them, deceiving unknowing participants whom investigators refer to as “fish.”
Billups and another member of the cheating team, 53-year-old Eric “Spook” Earnest, had each apparently put a bad beat on the same wealthy fish.
Wei suggested that they bring another member of the cheating team over to the table and have “Chauncey and/ spook lose to him.” Stroud agreed with the idea, to which Wei responded in text, “They already know all the signals.”
“The thing that scares me for Chauncey is that he’s dealing with these mob guys,” one close associate of Billups told ESPN. “If this is true, if he set people up. … It could get nasty.”
The text messages were pulled from Stroud’s iCloud account and included in the indictment. Investigators did not, however, include any direct text messages from Billups corroborating Wei’s assertions. Nor did they specify what the $50,000 payment they have bank records showing he received from Wei after he participated in a rigged poker game in October 2020 was for.
Billups’ attorney Chris Heywood provided a statement to ESPN’s Shams Charania, which made clear that Billups will challenge the accusations.
“Anyone who knows Chauncey Billups knows he is a man of integrity; men of integrity do not cheat and defraud others,” Heywood said. “To believe that Chauncey Billups did what the federal government is accusing him of is to believe that he would risk his hall-of-fame legacy, his reputation, and his freedom. He would not jeopardize those things for anything, let alone a card game.”
Were Billups, Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and former Cleveland Cavaliers assistant coach Damon Jones the only people with NBA ties who are implicated in the probes? Or could the list grow longer?
“There’s nothing more important to the league and its fans than the integrity of the competition, so I had a pit in my stomach. It was very upsetting.”
On Monday, the league sent a memo to all 30 teams, outlining the “dire risks that gambling can impose upon their careers and livelihoods.”
Billups is only mentioned by name in the rigged poker investigation. However, he matches the description of a former player and current coach who allegedly provided nonpublic information to gamblers who then used that information to wager.
But they weren’t just any gamblers. They were the same men he had allegedly collaborated with in the rigged poker games three years earlier. Investigators allege that Billups gave that nonpublic information before the game to Earnest, the same 53-year-old St. Louis man he allegedly lost hands on purpose with in the October 2020 poker game so as not to arouse suspicion.
After Earnest received the information from Billups, he allegedly then told a 40-year-old sports betting guru from Las Vegas, Shane Hennen, the same man who the indictment says provided technology for the cheating team to use in the rigged poker games. Court records indicate that Hennen was arrested in January at Las Vegas’ Harry Reid International Airport, trying to flee the country on a one-way ticket to Colombia.
Hennen was also a central figure in the case of former Toronto Raptors player Jontay Porter last year, meaning that two of the biggest illegal gambling cases in recent NBA history are connected.
Hennen and another man then placed $100,000 on the game for which Billups had allegedly leaked nonpublic information.
Two nights earlier, Lillard had scored 30 in Portland’s win over the Utah Jazz, leaving the Blazers with the sixth-worst record in the league, but still just 3.5 games out of 10th place with nine games left to play.
Lillard was listed as probable to play against the Bulls with right calf tightness as of the 4:30 p.m. PT injury report. On the 6:30 p.m. injury report — just 30 minutes before the game — he was switched to out along with four other starters. The betting lines moved dramatically throughout the day, from the Bulls being favored by just 2.5 points in the morning to 7.5 by tipoff.