Recently, the NBA world was rocked by a scandal that saw Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups, Miami Heat point guard Terry Rozier, and former Cleveland Cavaliers player and coach Damon Jones arrested by the feds as part of separate but related illegal gambling charges. Rozier had already been known to be a target of a gambling investigation, but still, the arrests continued to erode the foundation of trust that the NBA hopes to have with its fanbase.
Recently, former disgraced NBA referee Tim Donaghy, who admitted to betting on games during his time as a league official and was sentenced to prison for doing so, broke down why he thinks this latest scandal is just the tip of the iceberg.
“I received a text from one of the FBI agents that worked my case, and he basically said they're not going to be able to cover this up like they covered up mine…. David Stern really ran that whole investigation and it got shut down by highest level of people,” said Donaghy, per the PBD Podcast, via Fadeaway World.
Donaghy's allegations of a cover-up by the late NBA commissioner David Stern are explosive, to say the least, although it should be noted that Donaghy has a history of making attention-grabbing claims in an attempt to stay in the headlines in the years since his banishment from the league.
A huge scandal for the NBA
Regardless of whether or not Donaghy's claims about the David Stern era are true, the NBA certainly has a massive public relations crisis on its hands in the wake of the latest arrests of Rozier, Billups, Jones, and numerous co-conspirators.
Making matters more embarrassing for the league is the way it has continued to align itself closely with sportsbooks over the last few years, both through its television partners and on its own. In addition to Rozier, former Toronto Raptors big man Jontay Porter was banished from the league for gambling activities, and Malik Beasley is also under investigation for something similar.
In any case, this is certainly not the storyline that Adam Silver wanted in the headlines during the first week of the season.
