FOR A FEW hours final Thursday, it was a comparatively regular morning for Jrue Vacation and his Portland Path Blazers teammates.
Most of them had turned their telephones off hoping to sleep in after a late-night season-opening loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves. The largest concern Vacation confronted was whether or not his youngsters would let him sleep previous 8 a.m.
However when morning got here and he checked his telephone, he knew nothing about this season was ever going to be regular once more. For any of them.
His coach, Chauncey Billups, the Corridor of Fame participant who had been guiding Portland by its rebuild the previous 5 seasons, was in federal custody. Billups had been arrested by the FBI in a predawn raid in reference to a federal probe into rigged poker video games and was implicated in a separate probe into unlawful playing on NBA video games.
The information was in all places.
Vacation did not have an extended historical past with Billups, however he thought he knew his coach nicely sufficient.
Two years in the past, after Vacation had been traded to Portland from the Milwaukee Bucks in a blockbuster deal for Damian Lillard, Billups had referred to as and informed him that he would like to have him as a veteran chief on the staff because it started its rebuild. However he additionally needed to know the place Vacation’s head and coronary heart had been, too. Vacation had gained a championship with the Bucks in 2021 and at 33, was nonetheless a deeply impactful participant.
Vacation informed Billups he most well-liked to be on a contending staff, and the Blazers labored with him and his representatives to discover a commerce (finally to the Boston Celtics) that labored for each side. The Blazers received again promising younger heart Robert Williams III, Malcolm Brogdon and two first-round draft picks. The Celtics received Vacation, who proved vital to their championship run in 2024.
“Chauncey actually did me a stable the primary time I used to be traded right here, simply with the ability to see issues by my lens and ask me what I needed,” Vacation informed ESPN. “Not many coaches would do this. However he understood as a result of he was additionally a participant on this league.”
This summer season, circumstances had modified. The Celtics had been trying to shed wage and retool, whereas famous person ahead Jayson Tatum was out with a torn Achilles’ tendon. And the Blazers had been wanting so as to add veterans akin to Vacation, who may assist elevate their younger core of Deni Avdija, Shaedon Sharpe, Scoot Henderson, Toumani Camara and Donovan Clingan.
They’d additionally signed Billups to a multiyear contract extension in April.
After simply 117 wins in his first 4 seasons, the staff believed its coach, and his roster, may make the flip.
This time, the dialog with Billups went in a different way.
Vacation informed his new coach he was excited concerning the commerce and transferring his household throughout the nation to play for him. Billups came to visit to Vacation’s new home a handful of occasions to verify he was snug.
“We talked on a regular basis,” Vacation mentioned. “Just a little little bit of basketball. Loads of life.”
In no world may Vacation see Billups’ arrest coming. By no means may he image Billups being concerned in what he is been accused of.
It is a line that is been whispered throughout all ranges of the NBA this previous week, from the Blazers’ locker room to opposing coaches and gamers, from folks merely in Billups’ orbit to these in his inside circle. The person portrayed within the FBI indictment will not be the person they thought they knew.
“Actually,” Vacation mentioned, “we had been shocked.”
AS HOLIDAY SPOKE to reporters after the Path Blazers’ 139-119 win over the Golden State Warriors on Friday night time, his teammate, Matisse Thybulle, listened and noddled alongside.
He favored the way in which Vacation described interim coach Tiago Splitter as “stoic” and that Splitter had the correct “demeanor” to step into the nonetheless gorgeous void Billups’ departure had created.
Splitter and normal supervisor Joe Cronin had addressed the staff Thursday afternoon after the information broke to relay no matter particulars and directions they might.
They did not know rather more than the gamers did at that time.
Probably the most salient element they informed the gamers was merely a mandate: that it wasn’t applicable to contact Billups, who had been arraigned and launched on bail Thursday afternoon.
“Everybody thinks we would know greater than everybody else,” Thybulle mentioned. “However it’s like Twitter is telling us simply as a lot as anybody else.”
Thybulle says he and Billups talked on daily basis, generally a number of occasions a day. However it was greater than that.
“Chauncey simply believed in me,” the veteran wing mentioned.
And, in flip, Thybulle desires to consider in Billups now regardless of the accusations.
He has not learn the 22-page indictment documenting Billups’ alleged involvement in rigged poker video games related to the Mafia. Or the 23-page indictment documenting Billups’ alleged involvement in unlawful playing, leaking details about his personal staff to gamblers who then profited off their bets.
“Let’s not mince phrases,” mentioned FBI director Kash Patel at a information convention final Thursday asserting the fees. “That is the insider buying and selling saga for the NBA. That is what that is.”
Again in Portland, Thybulle mentioned that amid the turmoil, he, like the remainder of his teammates, is making an attempt to stay centered on his day job.
“It is not likely one thing I wish to get too misplaced in,” he mentioned. “Hopefully issues can work themselves out and we discover out sooner reasonably than later. However attempt to not let it occupy an excessive amount of of your thoughts and emotional area.”
Nonetheless, there might be a bodily reminder of this uncertainty each time the staff steps foot of their house locker room. The door to Billups’ workplace, close to the doorway, was closed Friday night time. No yellow police tape. No indicators. Only a closed picket door with chilly, white partitions surrounding it, with no promise of it reopening anytime quickly.
When he was the pinnacle coach, that door was by no means closed. He was all the time obtainable, in particular person or on the telephone. However now they cannot name him. Or verify how he’s doing. Or get recommendation on learn how to handle an enormous scandal that has enveloped the league.
That door is now closed.
Earlier than Friday’s sport, Vacation and Lillard gathered the staff contained in the theater room within the follow facility for an impromptu assembly, a number of staff sources mentioned. They needed to ship a message to their younger staff.
Lillard’s was easy:
Keep collectively. It doesn’t matter what occurs. Or how a lot you is perhaps nervous about Billups or his household. Keep collectively. As a result of different groups aren’t going to really feel sorry for us.
ONE PERSON WHO did get by to Billups was his former coach in Detroit, Corridor of Famer Larry Brown. He is texted him virtually on daily basis since Thursday, he says, to let him know he cared and was occupied with him.
One other is LA Clippers coach Tyronn Lue, Billups’ greatest buddy. Sunday night time in Los Angeles was alleged to be a reunion for Billups and Lue. The 2 males have been shut since they had been youngsters enjoying on AAU groups within the late Nineties. Lue was a scrappy level guard for the Kansas Metropolis Blue. Billups was an All-American for the Oakland Troopers. They received even nearer in faculty when Lue went to Nebraska and Billups starred for Colorado. Lue would come stick with Billups within the summers and they’d play on daily basis.
After their enjoying careers had been over, Lue even helped spark Billups’ need to start out teaching.
“It is exhausting to course of,” Lue mentioned earlier than the sport, later including, “I consider in Chauncey’s character. I do know who he’s as an individual. I have been with him since I used to be 17 years outdated. So, it is simply exhausting to see one thing like this occur.”
Brown, for his half, is struggling to consider too.
“He can be one of many final folks I’d take into consideration involving himself with unhealthy folks,” Brown informed ESPN. “For those who talked to anyone that was concerned with Chauncey, that frolicked with him and knew his household, knew his youngsters, I believe they’d be saying the identical factor.”
It is a round chorus dominating conversations contained in the Blazers’ locker room and throughout the league — the issue of reconciling a person so many thought of to be a colleague, a buddy, a coach, and the person the federal authorities presents as a legal.
Why would a Corridor of Famer threat his fame, to not point out thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of {dollars} in present and future wage, to play in allegedly rigged poker video games and leak data to gamblers?
How may he even know the mobsters who’re alleged to have run these video games?
How may he become involved in one thing like this?
May this simply be a misunderstanding?
Did I actually know him in addition to I believed I did?
Investigators clarify they consider Billups offered nonpublic data to gamblers in a single indictment. Within the second, they allege he was not solely conscious the poker video games he was collaborating in had been rigged, however that he helped arrange them, deceiving unknowing members whom investigators confer with as “fish.”
Billups is known as within the indictment as “a member of the dishonest staff.” And in a single notably detailed part, investigators produce textual content messages between a 40-year-old Queens, New York, girl with deep ties within the music, leisure and sports activities world named Sophie “Pookie” Wei and a 67-year outdated man with ties to the Gambino crime household, Robert Stroud, during which they mentioned the necessity to lose purposefully occasionally to keep away from suspicion of dishonest.
Billups and one other member of the dishonest staff, 53-year-old Eric “Spook” Earnest, had every apparently put a nasty beat on the identical rich fish.
Wei instructed that they carry one other member of the dishonest staff over to the desk and have “Chauncey and/ spook lose to him.” Stroud agreed with the concept, to which Wei responded in textual content, “They already know all of the indicators.”
The “they” in Wei’s textual content message refers to Billups and Earnest, that means investigators consider Billups was not simply the well-known athlete on the desk introduced in to attract rich gamers to the sport, however a member of the dishonest staff who not knew the indicators they used to cheat, and adopted them to defraud victims.
“The factor that scares me for Chauncey is that he is coping with these mob guys,” one shut affiliate of Billups informed ESPN. “If that is true, if he set folks up. … It may get nasty.”
The textual content messages had been pulled from Stroud’s iCloud account and included within the indictment. Investigators didn’t, nonetheless, embody any direct textual content messages from Billups corroborating Wei’s assertions. Nor did they specify what the $50,000 fee they’ve financial institution data displaying he obtained from Wei after he participated in a rigged poker sport in October 2020 was for.
Billups’ lawyer Chris Heywood offered a press release to ESPN’s Shams Charania, which made clear that Billups will problem the accusations.
“Anybody who is aware of Chauncey Billups is aware of he’s a person of integrity; males of integrity don’t cheat and defraud others,” Heywood mentioned. “To consider that Chauncey Billups did what the federal authorities is accusing him of is to consider that he would threat his hall-of-fame legacy, his fame, and his freedom. He wouldn’t jeopardize these issues for something, not to mention a card sport.”
Billups’ subsequent court docket date is Nov. 24 in Brooklyn, New York. Since he was launched on bail final Thursday, he is been house together with his household or interviewing attorneys to be a part of his protection staff.
He is been positioned on indefinite go away by the Blazers.
THE SHOCK AND awe of the arrests left the NBA world reeling and on the lookout for solutions.
Have been Billups, Miami Warmth guard Terry Rozier and former Cleveland Cavaliers assistant coach Damon Jones the one folks with NBA ties who’re implicated within the probes? Or may the record develop longer?
Requested by Amazon’s Cassidy Hubbarth about his response to the federal investigations and arrests, NBA commissioner Adam Silver mentioned he was “deeply disturbed.”
“There’s nothing extra vital to the league and its followers than the integrity of the competitors, so I had a pit in my abdomen. It was very upsetting.”
On Monday, the league despatched a memo to all 30 groups, outlining the “dire dangers that playing can impose upon their careers and livelihoods.”
Billups is barely talked about by identify within the rigged poker investigation. Nevertheless, he matches the outline of a former participant and present coach who offered nonpublic data to gamblers who then used that data to wager.
However they weren’t simply any gamblers. They had been the identical males he had allegedly collaborated with within the rigged poker video games three years earlier. Investigators allege that Billups gave that nonpublic data earlier than the sport to Earnest, the identical 53-year-old St. Louis man he allegedly misplaced arms on function with within the October 2020 poker sport in order to not arouse suspicion.
All of this has shocked individuals who thought they had been near him.
“I did not even know he was a gambler,” the shut affiliate mentioned.
After he obtained the data from Billups, Earnest allegedly then informed a 40-year-old sports activities betting guru from Las Vegas, Shane Hennen, the identical man who the indictment says offered know-how for the dishonest staff to make use of within the rigged poker video games. Court docket data point out that Hennen was arrested in January at Las Vegas’ Harry Reid Worldwide Airport, making an attempt to flee the nation on a one-way ticket to Colombia.
Hennen was additionally a central determine within the case of former Toronto Raptors participant Jontay Porter final yr, that means that two of the largest unlawful playing instances in current NBA historical past are linked.
Hennen and one other man then positioned $100,000 on the sport for which Billups had allegedly leaked nonpublic data.
The sport described in these allegations, on March 24, 2023, was a reasonably meaningless contest between the Chicago Bulls, who had been battling for tenth place and a spot within the Japanese Convention play-in event, and the Path Blazers, who had been steadily falling within the Western Convention standings regardless of some epic scoring performances by Lillard down the stretch.
It additionally set the stage for one of the painful chapters in franchise historical past.
Two nights earlier, Lillard had scored 30 in Portland’s win over the Utah Jazz, leaving the Blazers with the sixth-worst file within the league, however nonetheless simply 3.5 video games out of tenth place with 9 video games left to play.
Lillard was listed as possible to play towards the Bulls with proper calf tightness as of the 4:30 p.m. PT harm report. On the 6:30 p.m. harm report — simply half-hour earlier than the sport — he was switched to out together with 4 different starters. The betting strains moved dramatically all through the day, from the Bulls being favored by simply 2.5 factors within the morning to 7.5 by tipoff.
The bets cashed. The Blazers misplaced 124-96.
The story in The Oregonian the following morning wrote that the Path Blazers had “basically waved the white flag on the 2022-23 season by sitting Damian Lillard and Jusuf Nurkic, with Anfernee Simons and Jerami Grant already out and whereas going through a really winnable sport at house towards the Chicago Bulls.”
After the sport, Billups was requested concerning the place the staff was in, tanking the ultimate 10 video games of the season to enhance lottery positioning for a second season in a row.
“Sadly, it’s acquainted,” he mentioned. “It is not one of the best, it isn’t the best, however it’s what it’s. Whoever is obtainable, I will coach them.”
At some point later, Charania — then with The Athletic — reported that the Blazers had been “leaning towards shutting down” Lillard for the ultimate 9 video games with the calf harm. 4 days afterward March 28, Chris Haynes, then of Turner Sports activities, reported Lillard can be held out for the rest of the season.
This was a disappointment to Lillard, sources mentioned. Whereas that calf harm had bothered him at numerous factors all through the season, he didn’t like the concept of surrendering whereas he was nonetheless within the prime of his profession.
Lillard had been distinctive that season, however particularly so within the second half. Over his prior 20 video games, he had averaged 36 factors, 8 assists and 6 rebounds. He had a 71-point sport towards the Rockets, a 60-point sport towards the Jazz. In 9 of them, he had scored greater than 40.
He was voted as a third-team All-NBA choice, regardless of enjoying simply 53 video games.
After the season, Lillard affirmed his dedication and need to remain in Portland, however he needed the staff to do no matter it may — together with buying and selling what ended up being the No. 3 decide within the draft — to enhance the staff.
When Portland didn’t discover a commerce it favored and, as an alternative, took guard Scoot Henderson at No. 3 — one spot forward of the kind of defensive-minded however nonetheless growing wing Amen Thompson that the Blazers had been in search of to pair with Lillard — he lastly began to contemplate asking the franchise to commerce him.
That course of was uncomfortable. And it took months to resolve. Lillard hoped to be routed to the Warmth to play with Jimmy Butler III and Bam Adebayo, whereas the Blazers dug in and vowed to attend for one of the best return.
In late September 2023, they discovered it. Lillard was despatched to the Bucks in a three-team deal that returned the Blazers Vacation, Deandre Ayton, Camara and future draft picks.
The departure was unceremonious and unhappy. However Lillard by no means moved his youngsters from Portland to Milwaukee. So when the chance to return introduced itself this summer season, after the Bucks waived and stretched the ultimate two years and $113 million on his contract to clear sufficient wage cap area to signal free agent heart Myles Turner, Cronin and Billups had been fast to succeed in out to Lillard to see if they might all construct a bridge again.
It was as stunning because it was tantalizing — a foundational icon returning to the franchise he had constructed, on the precise second they had been set to start a resurgence.
“It by no means felt proper seeing Damian in a distinct jersey,” Cronin mentioned on the information convention in September, welcoming Lillard again. “[We’re] simply actually grateful to Damian for trusting in us, for believing in us, and for coming again.”
THE REUNION WITH Lillard was simply one of many nice tales the Path Blazers introduced with them into this season, although he is anticipated to overlook the whole thing of it with a torn Achilles.
Avdija had been a revelation within the second half of the season, following a commerce from the Washington Wizards. Camara, a late second-round decide who was one thing of a throw-in to the Lillard commerce, had developed into an All-Defensive Staff participant. Sharpe, the previous lottery decide, appeared poised for a leap in his fourth yr after a superb preseason.
Earlier this yr, Billups had recruited Splitter — recent off teaching Paris Basketball to a French Cup championship — to assist velocity up and modernize the staff’s offense.
As a substitute, Splitter ended up being the man to take over for Billups because the Blazers interim head coach.
Splitter, 40, had performed towards Billups throughout his personal enjoying profession. However that they had actually solely recognized one another within the few months since he joined the Blazers workers. Now he was being requested to steer Billups’ staff within the wake of a scandal with no imminent decision.
There was no method to put together and never almost sufficient time. He referred to as his former coaches with the Spurs, Gregg Popovich and Brett Brown. He confirmed up on the coaching facility and informed the staff he was there for them however mentioned one of the best ways all of them may take care of the feelings of the second was to channel them into the one factor they might management: the sport.
In the course of the previous few seasons, because the Blazers misplaced Lillard and continued to overlook the playoffs, the group usually booed Billups throughout pregame introductions.
Splitter’s first sport Friday night time was very completely different. It was Latin American Heritage night time, so the pregame introductions had been all in Spanish — a pleasant unintentional contact for Splitter, a Brazilian native who speaks fluent Spanish from his time enjoying in Spain.
“Y Tiago Splitter es el director tecnico de los Path Blaaaaaazers!”
The gang roared with approval. And when Splitter delivered a win in his first sport as an NBA head coach, the group and the gamers needed to verify it was celebrated correctly.
Vacation and others hatched a plan. Every participant would fill a cup with ice water. After Splitter addressed the staff within the postgame locker room and introduced the staff in for a huddle, they might nail him.
“First win beneath these circumstances,” Vacation mentioned. “It is an awesome factor. We waited till he received in the midst of all people, so he could not get away.
“We nonetheless should go on, so that is what we do.”