The NBA — not a foot injury — allegedly ended Terry Rozier’s controversial 2022-23 season.
ESPN insider Brian Windhorst claimed the NBA knew of the betting irregularities regarding Rozier’s March 23, 2023 game while with the Hornets and “pulled him.”
Rozier did not play in the Hornets’ final eight games that season after exiting the contest in question, in which the Unders on his prop bets cashed due to his exit caused by a supposed right foot injury.
The FBI arrested Rozier on Thursday as part of a sports betting probe.
“The NBA, at some point, is going to have to explain why Terry Rozier was allowed to keep playing. And I want to point something out. The sportsbooks caught the irregular betting on Terry Rozier the day it happened, the morning it happened, when all of a sudden there was hundreds of thousands of dollars coming in on Terry Rozier Unders for a relatively meaningless game in March involving the Charlotte Hornets. The sportsbooks caught it,” Windhorst said on the “Rich Eisen show” on Thursday.
“They told the NBA right away, and guess what? The NBA — Rozier didn’t play the rest of the season and he had faked the injury, so it wasn’t because of the injury. The NBA pulled them, they pulled (banned ex-Raptor) Jontay Porter too, they flagged Jontay Porter and pulled Jontay Porter. The NBA’s measure, their protection measures, the sportsbook protecting measures triggered this, they caught it.”
If Windhorst’s allegations are true, it opens the league — and commissioner Adam Silver — to plenty of questioning about how it handled the situation and what measures it took to investigate the matter.
Details emerged from Rozier’s arrest on Thursday that he supposedly informed organized crime members he would be exiting said game against the Pelicans early.
That led to more than $200,000 being wagered on Under markets for his props, which means bettors placed money that he would underperform the established Over/Under for his statistics.
Rozier played just 9:34 before exiting, scoring five points with four rebounds, two assists and one steal, figures well below his season averages of 21.1 points, 5.1 assists, 4.1 rebounds and 1.2 steals per game.
The FBI alleges that those in the know made tens of thousands in profit, and “the defendants and Rozier counted the money at his house.”
The FBI has arrested 31 people involved in a rigged poker game ring backed by the New York City organized crime families.
- Ernest Aiello — reputed Bonanno mobster
- Nelson “Spanish G” Alvarez
- Louis “Lou Ap” Apicella
- Ammar “Flapper Poker” Awawdeh
- Saul Becher — professional poker player
- Chauncey Billups — Portland Trail Blazers coach, NBA Hall of Famer and 2004 NBA champion
- Matthew “The Wrestler” Daddino
- Eric “Spooky” Earnest
- Lee Fama — professional poker player
- John Gallo
- Marco Garzon
- Thomas “Tommy Juice” Gelardo — reputed Lucchese mobster charged in 2013 for beating porn star girlfriend
- Jamie Gilet
- Tony “Black Tony” Goodson
- Kenny Han
- Shane “Sugar” Henne
- Osman “Albanian Bruce” Hoti
- Horatio Hu
- Zhen “Scruli” Hu
- Damon “Dee Jones” Jones — NBA player from 1998 to 2009
- Joseph Lanni
- John “John South” Mazzola
- Curtis Meeks
- Nicholas Minucci
- Michael Renzulli
- Anthony Ruggiero Jr.
- Anthony “Doc” Shnayderman
- Robert “Black Rob” Stroud
- Seth Trustman
- Sophia “Pookie” Wei
- Julius Ziliani
Windhorst claims this is when the NBA stepped in to end Rozier’s season, preventing him from playing in the final eight games.
The stated reason would be the supposed right foot injury, with the injury report for the Hornets’ final game that year stating Rozier did not play due to “Injury/Illness – Right foot; Discomfort.”
An interesting wrinkle is that the NBA previously said it received a tip in March 2023 about potential illegal gambling activities involving Rozier and investigated the topic, though it did not find any wrongdoing.
However, the league’s statement from January did not mention Rozier not being allowed to play while the NBA investigated the issue or when the investigation took place.
Follow The Post’s latest on the gambling scandal rocking the NBA:
“In March 2023, the NBA was alerted to unusual betting activity related to Terry Rozier’s performance in a game between Charlotte and New Orleans,” NBA spokesman Mike Bass said in January
“The league conducted an investigation and did not find a violation of NBA rules. We are now aware of an investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York related to this matter and have been cooperating with that investigation.”
Follow The Post’s live updates on the bombshell NBA, Mafia gambling scandal
Any supposed NBA action did carry over into the 2023-24 season, when Rozier suited up for the Hornets before being traded to the Heat, his current team.
Rozier has been placed on leave by the NBA following his arrest, and his attorney, Jim Trusty, criticized the FBI for arresting his client.
“A long time ago we reached out to these prosecutors to tell them we should have an open line of communication. They characterized Terry as a subject, not a target, but at 6 a.m. this morning they called to tell me FBI agents were trying to arrest him in a hotel,” Trusty told The Post on Thursday morning.
“It is unfortunate that instead of allowing him to self-surrender they opted for a photo op. They wanted the misplaced glory of embarrassing a professional athlete with a perp walk. That tells you a lot about the motivations in this case.”
