Read the two federal indictments that involve Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups, and you’ll find that the biggest name in them—his—is mentioned the fewest number of times, or nearly so.
Only one of the indictments names Billups, 49, as a defendant: the one describing rigged poker games put on by 31 alleged co-conspirators, many of them connected to New York mafiosi. The NBA star’s name is mentioned just twice in the indictment’s narrative and places him only at an unspecified number of games in Las Vegas. He is named in just two of the seven counts.
The other indictment, describing a point-shaving conspiracy, doesn’t name Billups as a defendant. But the description of one of the co-conspirators—an Oregon resident who played in the NBA from 1997 to 2014 and has coached since 2021—couldn’t be anyone but him.
Point-shaving schemes seek to capitalize on players who deliberately underperform to achieve a certain result. The federal indictments have spurred a national dialogue about “prop bets”—wagers on a certain player’s performance, not the game overall. The inside information Billups might have provided is alleged to have ensured a win for two gamblers who placed $32,000 in bets on the Chicago Bulls to beat the Blazers while Portland’s stars were sitting out the contest.
Defense lawyers who aren’t involved in the case say the U.S. Department of Justice, now under the supervision of Attorney General Pam Bondi, seems to have reached to get Billups into the cases and may struggle to win a conviction against him if the case goes to trial.
In the poker case, the DOJ alleges that Billups was “face card”: a famous person who gets a cut of the illegal winnings in return for attracting wealthy marks to games. Games were held mostly in New York, with some in Miami and others in Las Vegas, where Billups allegedly played.
“They had better show that Chauncey Billups knew the games were rigged,” says Portland defense lawyer Ron Hoevet. “Getting other people to come and play doesn’t seem like a crime to me.”
Hoevet knows high-profile criminal cases: He was a federal prosecutor and later defended Jeff Gillooly, the ex-husband of figure skater Tonya Harding. Gillooly pleaded guilty to racketeering after arranging an attack on rival skater Nancy Kerrigan to keep her out of competition.
Among the other hurdles for the DOJ, lawyers say, will be proving that Billups remained involved in the scheme past the only games they link to him in the indictment. Those occurred in April 2019, which is beyond the five-year statute of limitations for most federal crimes.
The DOJ also may struggle to prove that Billups committed fraud, a crime that requires the feds to prove Billups made representations that were untruthful, says a criminal defense lawyer in New York who declined to be identified while assessing the case. Even without the cheating, allegedly carried out with high-tech card-reading systems, such games are prohibited by law. So everyone at the table came knowing that they were not engaged in a legitimate enterprise.
“They are playing in an illegal poker game,” the lawyer, also a former federal prosecutor, said. “There’s a certain caveat emptor that comes with that.”
To be sure, the government may have much more evidence in hand. It had enough to convince a grand jury to indict Billups, and more may come out before trial. In cases like this, prosecutors often seek a superseding indictment, which replaces the first one and adds to it.
“Indictments are not meant to be comprehensive,” says Portland defense lawyer Mark Cogan.
Depending on how much money is at stake, and whether he’s convicted, Billups could face years in prison. Players in the Vegas games were cheated out of $50,000, the DOJ says, a rather small amount for federal charges, lawyers say. But in total, the scheme took in an alleged $7.2 million. If prosecutors succeed in tying Billups to all of that, the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s tables assign a penalty of 87 to 108 months in prison, or between seven and nine years.
“I wouldn’t want to have that hanging over my head,” Cogan says.
Billups seemingly had little to gain from his participation. If he did help rig poker games and got even a sizable portion of the $7.2 million, he stood to gain only a fraction of the cash he made playing and coaching basketball. Billups played 17 seasons in the NBA and was MVP when the Detroit Pistons won the championship in 2004. He earned a total of $107 million during his career, according to the website Basketball Reference. He started coaching the Blazers in 2021 and made $4.7 million last season, The Oregonian has reported.
Oregon public records show that he lives in a gated $4.1 million house with a pool in Lake Oswego. While playing for the Denver Nuggets from 2008 to 2011, he lived in a $6.8 million house with 13 bathrooms, a pool and half of a basketball court, according to Colorado public records. He transferred ownership of the property to a limited liability company in 2019.
Moreover, the point-shaving indictment doesn’t suggest Billups benefited financially from leaking information to gamblers about the Blazers benching their players, including “Player 1,” widely believed to be Damian Lillard. The March 24 game came at the end of a losing season, and many fans expected Billups to bench his best players in order to preserve a bad record and thereby get a good pick in the next draft.
“It was common knowledge among Blazer fans like me that the coach was going to sit Damian Lillard and other starters to position for a better draft choice,” Hoevet says.
Beyond the substance of the case, there are some procedural matters that strike lawyers as odd. In almost all federal cases, prosecutors are in touch with a suspect’s attorney before the indictment is issued. The two parties talk and arrange a first appearance before a magistrate judge. In this case, FBI agents stormed Billups’ home early on the morning of Oct. 23. Such raids are usually reserved for defendants who are considered dangerous or likely to flee. “Billups was neither,” Hoevet says.
Another weird thing, lawyers say: DOJ lawyers repeat the nicknames of all the defendants who have them in the list of 31 defendants and in any of the seven counts with which they’re charged. Over and over, a reader learns that Ammar Awawdeh is also known as both “Flappy” and “Flapper Poker”; Tony Goodson is “Black Tony”; and Eric Earnest goes by “Spook.”
The indictment also notes all the defendants’ connections to Mafia families. The Bonannos, Gambinos, Genoveses and Luccheses all make appearances. Yet the DOJ noted no Mafia ties for the four defendants alleged to have worked with Billups in the Vegas games.
“The only reason they give the nicknames,” Hoevet says, “is for publicity.”
