Can the NBA protect the game’s integrity?

They have failed before.

As everyone in the NBA seemed to notice, Chauncey Billups wore a Klutch Sports Group hoodie to his arraignment last week. MATHIEU LEWIS-ROLLAND/GETTY IMAGES

A week ago, a who’s who of law enforcement alleged a massive set of crimes involving the mob, NBA players and one coach, rigged games, and a whole lot of crime.

It nukes the idea that the NBA has competently policed itself. Mobsters, money launderers, drug dealers, and convicts involved in the scheme are years into sitting courtside and posting it on Instagram. Known bad actors are firmly ensconced in NBA circles, and as it has become an absolute norm for league business to take place in casinos.

Meanwhile, the NBA is issuing press releases about who won the NBA Cares Bob Lanier Community Assist Award winner for the offseason. The most recent executive press conference was from the WNBA commissioner nearly a month ago. The NBA’s response, thus far, has been milquetoast. NBA commissioner Adam Silver emoted some concern, and there has been a little discussion of tinkering with the nature of prop bets.

“The recent federal indictments have called into question the integrity of the National Basketball Association,” New York congresswoman Yvette Clark tells Pablo Torre in a statement from Thursday’s must-listen episode. “We will uncover the full scale of this scandal. If/when the NBA fails to protect the integrity of the game, Congress will step in.”

Who can argue they have succeeded?

There have been many security crises and scandals in NBA history, and many ties to the mob. Each threatens to undermine the integrity of the league, which appears to me to have a knee-jerk PR response to pose like they have it all under control. The original sin, in this regard, came in the scandal of corrupt referee Tim Donaghy. When the crisis hit, Stern held the kind of press conference Silver is not holding now. And Stern bowled everyone over with the theory that Donaghy was a lone bad actor (an assertion that did not square at all well with the evidence as it unfolded over the years) and that the NBA was well equipped to police such things.

“We have a security department that is large,” said Stern. And then he detailed it in ways that consume six paragraphs of transcript. “It’s headed by Bernie Tolbert, the senior vice president of security, former FBI, head of the Buffalo office second in command at Philadelphia who has a background in undercover work. We have in-house representatives that are from Secret Service, U.S. Army, New York Police Department, and New York State Police Investigation.” He mentions retired FBI, DEA, and local police departments. Stern said “we are in continuous conversation with DEA, the FBI section on organized crime which deals with sports betting, and with the Homeland Security Department.” He discussed the vendor that does referee background checks: “The agency that we use for that is the Arkin Group, and under the guidance of the former head of worldwide operations for the CIA.” And he added that “we have for many years retained a consultant in Las Vegas whose job it is to inform us whether there are any movements or unusual movements in betting on the NBA about which we should be concerned, and we’re also in contact with the Nevada Gaming Board who monitors that for their own purposes.”

Sounds impressive, right?

Alas: None of it worked. Later we’d learn that much of the gambling world knew about Donaghy’s games (and their massive line moves from all the money being bet) long before the NBA, which only learned about it when it came up on FBI wiretaps from a team investigating the Gambino crime family.

Stern’s big action step was to commission an investigation from the law firm Wachtell Lipton (which has also been investigating Terry Rozier and Steve Ballmer). When that work finally came out, known as the Pedowitz Report, the real behind-the-scenes reporting of how the NBA oversaw referees was nearly impossible to square with Stern’s description.

Pedowitz wrote that after the scandal, “the League has arranged to obtain information on a regular basis from individuals and entities involved in the gambling business about unusual movements in the betting lines and rumors concerning confidential NBA information, such as player injuries and referee assignments. Flagging games for the League to investigate may help the League detect gambling or misuse of confidential information.”

And remember that talk about how former CIA bigwigs were doing background checks? Pedowitz described searches of electronic databases. I used to work in that field, the electronic searches are perfunctory and miss a lot; the next fancier way to do a background check is to get people to physically retrieve the court documents that are only on paper. The NBA started that basically only after the scandal. (The crème de la crème would be hiring an actual investigator to investigate.)

None of it sounded exhaustive. Pedowitz wrote: “In the past, the referees completed a questionnaire that asked for basic information concerning a referee’s employment history, criminal record, civil litigation, debt collection, business ownership or operation and engagement in illegal gambling or drug use. We have worked with the League and the firm conducting background checks to create a new questionnaire that asks for more detailed information on these topics.”

Is this really the plan to keep the mob at bay? Revised forms?

In fact, the man who led the FBI’s Gambino investigation at the time came away thinking that far from stopping the Gambinos, the NBA might have unwittingly helped them. Phil Scala says they never got to the bottom of it, in part because after a meeting with the NBA, the whole thing leaked. Scott Eden writes on ESPN:

Today, Scala considers that meeting a mistake. “If you’re going to ask me if I would do it differently now, the answer is yes. I would not have gone to brief Stern,” Scala told me. (Through the NBA, Stern declined an interview request for this story.) In Donaghy’s many conversations with the Feds through these weeks, he had begun pointing fingers and making allegations about other referees -- other refs who may have been corrupt. So the FBI had worked out a plan. “We were prepared to do some undercover things to corroborate Donaghy’s story,” Scala says. Namely, they were going to wire up Donaghy so he could get other allegedly corrupted NBA referees to incriminate themselves.

About a month after the meeting with Stern, however, the New York Post blared news of the FBI investigation across its front page. “Our plans were blown up by the fact that somebody leaked this,” Scala lamented to me.

All of that is central to understanding the Donaghy scandal and keeping the mob at bay; none of it is in the Pedowitz Report. Evidently, a lot of bad people with NBA connections made a lot of money off Donaghy in 2007 and then were not part of the FBI’s giant takedown of the Gambino crime family in 2008. (Although, interestingly, at least one of the accused in that takedown, Angelo Ruggiero Jr., also appears in the current indictment.)

And now in 2025, the Gambino family plays a central role in this new indictment, and certainly seems to have longtime ties to NBA figures. Sammy “the Bull” Gravano is the most famous mob informant of all time, who made his name by first being a mob assassin, and then ratting on celebrated Gambino boss John Gotti.

Now Gravano is 80, out of prison, and asking you to like and subscribe. In his most recent YouTube, Gravano is livid not that basketball has been corrupted, or that mob people got in trouble. His beef: these poker games were poorly executed. It was bad strategy, he says, to cheat customers, instead of just taking a percentage of their inevitable losses. It was worse strategy to be rough in demanding payments from wealthy customers. And what kind of idiot wouldn’t have known that one of the key participants was a longtime government informant?

Gravano’s bigger point is that the mob has never been far from sports. “I don’t think it’s anything different” he says, and “it’s always been like that.”

Even Gravano, though, wonders how someone like an NBA coach would come to be tangled up in all this. It’s an amazing question that’s only beginning to unravel.

One name that keeps coming up in NBA circles: Andy Miller. Torre reports that Kevin Garnett, and allegedly also Clippers coach Tyronn Lue, were present, at least briefly, at these games. All three are clients of agent Andy Miller, who has long been something of a walking red flag in NBA circles.

When Billups first joined the NBA, he was represented by agent Eric Fleisher. One of Fleisher’s unpaid interns, named Andy Miller, made moves out of a movie and ended up stealing all of Fleisher’s best clients, including Kevin Garnett and Chauncey Billups. Richard Wilner in the New York Post:

Eric Fleisher, who owns Westchester-based Assist Sports Management, said in court papers that Kevin Garnett, Chauncey Billups, Albert Harrington, Tyronn Lue, Harold Jamison and others left ASM for the assistant’s new agency, Wsport, because they were promised “romantic liaisons with beautiful models” at Wilhelmina Model Inc., which they claim is related to WSport.

All but Garnett are named in the suit, which seeks $50 million in damages.

Dieter Esch, Wilhelmina’s president, called the charges “ridiculous.”

The lawsuit resulted in a decision for Fleisher for nearly $5 million, and The New York Times printing this exchange:

In June 1998, Miller sent a faxed letter to Thomas LaVilla, an outside consultant for Wilhelmina, from the Assist Sports Management office. The letter read in part: ‘’Kevin Garnett has a crush on a young black model who was recently seen on a L’Oreal television campaign. Do you have any thoughts on this matter. Let me know. Best regards, Andy.’‘

LaVilla, who no longer works for the company, responded that day with a letter that read in part: ‘’Andy, attached please find Kevin’s new girlfriends. We will be getting back to you on the particulars. If he likes one -- just give me a call. Best regards -- Tommy.’‘

Billups has been represented by Miller, as a player or coach, for the last quarter century, even through Miller’s next scandal. Miller represented big names like Kyle Lowry, Kristaps Porziņģis, and Serge Ibaka. But in 2017, Miller’s offices were raided by the feds. In a press conference much like the one Kash Patel just held, then-US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Joon H. Kim announced a sweeping series of arrests from the world of basketball.

Miller wasn’t charged, but many basketball figures were, including former NBA coach and player Chuck Person. “All of them had the trust of the young men they coached and recruited,” said Kim. “Young men who looked up to them and believed that the coaches had their best interests at heart.”

One of the central figures of that scandal explained, on FBI wiretaps, how it was possible to control young players, and make as much as a million dollars off each one, by taking payments to direct them to this financial advisor or that shoe company. Christian Dawkins went to prison and later starred in a wonderful documentary called The Scheme which makes a convincing case that basketball is passionately, deeply, and broadly corrupt—a problem that may be attracting the interest of Congress.

Dawkins worked for Miller that entire time. Miller first lost clients and then the right to practice as a player agent. And so Miller became a coaching agent, which is a barely regulated wild west and a known refuge for people who don’t want to have their personnel files examined too closely.

It has gone well. Miller’s coaching firm merged with Klutch Sports, which merged with United Talent Agency. Billups is the most featured NBA figure on Miller’s instagram, but hardly the only one. Clippers coach Tyronn Lue is a longtime Miller client. 76ers coach Nick Nurse and Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts are photographed together. Pioneering female coach in the NBA and now in the WNBA Becky Hammon is pictured, as is Chicago Sky head coach Tyler Marsh.

The whole firm is close to the center of the sports world. The official Klutch instagram shows a summer league party with Mavericks coach Jason Kidd, Warriors star Draymond Green, Rockets star Fred VanVleet and, of course, Billups. It didn’t seem weird at the time that the whole party was hosted at a casino.

Meanwhile, an Athletic story by Carson Kessler and Nathan Fenno headlined “How did Chauncey Billups team up with a career criminal?” tells the story of a federal drug bust almost two decades ago.

Thomas Sawyer, a Drug Enforcement Administration task force officer, heard Eric “Spook” Earnest boast about his connections to NBA players and other famous athletes during four months of wiretaps while dismantling a St. Louis drug ring nearly 20 years ago. At the time, he dismissed it as false bravado.

“We all thought he was full of s—,” Sawyer recalled of Earnest’s frequent name-dropping.

Earnest went to prison until 2019, when he emerged and within months, the indictment alleges, was at a rigged card game in Las Vegas with Billups. Was it possible they had just met each other, and quickly established that kind of trust?

The Athletic notes that Billups has been publicly friendly, on social media, with another drug dealer who was wrapped up in business with Earnest. His name is Terry Lee Flenory.

Flenory’s a legend. Terry and his brother Demetrius started selling drugs in the 1980s in Detroit and called themselves the Black Mafia Family. The quantities grew huge, now that they’re out of prison they talk openly about dealing with El Chapo and others. Importantly, they also started a record label, and became a huge force in the music world, especially in Detroit and Atlanta from 2000 until the authorities closed in in 2005.

Michigan-based former NBA star Jalen Rose wrote a story for the New York Post about partying with BMF in their heyday.

Chauncey Billups appears in photos and is mentioned repeatedly on Terry’s amazing instagram account that launched with a photo of his ankle bracelet. Billups’ NBA career brought him to Detroit in 2002, in the heyday of the Black Mafia Family. It’s all a a 50-Cent produced drama that ran four seasons on Starz, and a documentary series to follow. They know everybody! Terry Lee Flenory’s instagram account shows him sitting behind Phil Jackson as the Lakers make a 33-point comeback, with Diddy, Zion Williamson, Al Harrington, and 50 Cent.

On January 9 of 2025, Flenory posted a picture with Draymond Green. “Thanks for the epic pre birthday celebration and court side seats,” posted Flenory. “I definitely had a time 🏴🏴🏴”

Green, who grew up in Michigan, immediately replied: “Yesssir OG!! Much love fam!”

In a very real way, it’s no big deal that anyone would know this man who seems to know everyone, and who is connected enough that he has been pardoned by Joe Biden.

But on the other hand, Earnest is smack dab in the middle of the NBA’s current gambling scandal, and was allegedly a member of the Black Mafia Family. If you’re wondering how Chauncey might have gotten involved in all this, the fact that Billups and Earnest both have ties to BMF can’t be ignored.

NBA games are thick with security–all those wands and pat downs! They didn’t let my stepdad in once because he had a pocket knife. Madison Square Garden made headlines for being pioneers of facial recognition, which James Dolan evidently used to turn away lawyers who annoyed him.

Meanwhile, Torre outlines the wild and terrible life of Shane Hennen. The list of things Hennen has been accused of include a facsimile weapon of mass destruction, rigged dice games, stabbing a guy in the neck, selling cocaine in a casino parking lot, and something involving the Bosnian leader of a Mexican drug cartel and a “cocaine pressing machine.” All of that is from public documents Pablo found and the NBA could have found.

Hennen, now one of the few defendants named in both of the FBI’s new NBA indictments, was arrested with a one-way ticket to Colombia in January. But then in March, as Hennen published on his own Instagram, Hennen was courtside watching Terry Rozier play.

The Department of Justice alleges Hennen led a team of bettors that made a small fortune betting on Rozier to manipulate games. (Later, the government declares, schemers visited Rozier’s house to divide up the money.)

By March of this year, the NBA and Wachtell were months into their investigation into Rozier. I don’t know what they have found, if anything. But a body that didn’t know to keep Hennen from sitting courtside seems poorly equipped to keep the bad guys away from the NBA. (Torre talks to a pro poker player who makes it sound like in his world, many knew to stay away from Hennen.)

Congress is right to question Adam Silver about the integrity of the game; do they have an appetite for everything they’ll find once they turn over those rocks?

The case has often been made that legalized gambling is easier to regulate, and keeps the bad guys at bay. Former Colombo mafioso Michael Franzese has an interesting take. To him, gambling is a “natural extension” of athletes’ competitive spirit. Many of them gamble however they can, on whatever they want. Things get interesting for the mob, though, when players get deep in debt, and get their credit cut off. Then they tend to take their betting to unsanctioned venues, where the mob plays a massive role. Franzese explains exactly how you talk that player into manipulating games.

By this analysis, one thing that would make the NBA less vulnerable to the mob would be less gambling, period. Less shady debt could mean less game manipulation. In a weird way, the NBA’s total incompetence may have a perverse benefit: “Betting will slow down,” Gravano predicts. “This will cure a lot of people from gambling.”

But Gravano’s not counting on these problems going away, saying “this may be the tip of the iceberg.”

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