Chauncey Billups, Terry Rozier, and Damon Jones’ arrest earlier this week, linked to illegal gambling with ties to the mafia, has shook the NBA world. Some are disgusted, most are shocked. And when former player Channing Frye got around to assess the news, he explained how things like this could so easily destroy lives of NBA players.
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There could be more arrests to come soon with this story. But for now, Billups, Rozier, and Jones remain the focal points. For Billups, his job as the head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers has been thrown into the air. Rozier’s NBA career could come to an early end due to a ban. And the same can be said for Jones, who was last assistant coach for the Cavaliers.
However, when Frye recently talked about gambling in a recent episode of his podcast Road Trippin’, he attacked the story from a different angle, bringing Draymond Green’s infamous incident with Jordan Poole into the picture. His question was simple: who leaked that?
“Gambling could be as easy as this: You got your boys from back home who have been with you forever,” Frye began. “You’re sitting here, shooting the sh*t and talking, and they’ll be like, ‘You gonna play?’ And you be like, ‘I don’t know, this dude, my guy.’ You could just be saying what you saw in practice. They could then go talk to somebody, cash, boom. Here’s $50, here’s $100. Go play this guy more. So, how is your house being protected?”
As tough as it sounds, players shouldn’t always feel free to be so open about the goings on of their organization. That’s why many players keep a tight, close-knit group around them. But sometimes, not even they are privy to information about what’s going on with the team. This all led the former center to question how information in the locker room is going out into the public.
“The information that should be in a locker room is escaping that locker room,” Frye said. “You think the guy doing film doesn’t know? Or he’s not getting hit off by somebody doing bets? The guy who’s just making the minimum on that team. Maybe he’s an intern.”
It’s a great point. Not many are considering that players aren’t the only ones being held to this standard. No NBA employee is allowed to gamble on games. Yet, while those unsung heroes continue to do their due diligence, some players and coaches continue to gamble.
“The money is so big when it comes to gambling for the NBA, NFL, things like that, even WNBA, that it’s hard to check everyone within your organization,” he pointed out.
This led Frye to talk about where he believes the whole leaking controversy in the NBA first started. “Here’s another example that I think was kind of the beginning of all this type of stuff getting leaked: How did Draymond Green’s punching Jordan Poole get out? That should’ve never got leaked out,” Frye stated. “How much money did TMZ, and how did somebody know to buy that?”
It’s another great question that we probably will never know the answer to. The Golden State Warriors investigated who leaked the video in 2022, but never shared the findings. Still, it was one of TMZ’s most popular sports stories in recent memory.
At the end of the day, it’s all interesting questions and inferences that Frye made. The NBA is under quite some fire right now for all of this gambling controversy. It’s all anybody can talk about.
