If you have no interest in Flagrant, Andrew Schulz or the NBA, I have one thing that definitely will interest you: mafia crime. Specifically, of the La Cosa Nostra variety. Kind of like jewel heists, this is a variety of criminal activity we’ve been largely deprived of in an era when the Trump administration is the mafia, the con man, the abductor and the predator. The MAGA guys kind of sucked up all the air in the room for good ole fashioned schemin’.
But maybe it’s the recession we’re about to enter or the 1920s brand of fascism we’re courting, but some more classic crime has finally made headlines. There was the theft of the Louvre, and then, maybe a little more confusingly, the whole NBA-Mafia-Card-Game scheme that a perpetually surprised-looking Kash Patel announced last week.
The FBI Director was part of a major press conference announcing the arrest of multiple people, including an NBA coach and players and members for the real, still existing crime families. If you want a meaty breakdown of the hustles that were being run, Sports Illustrated did a pretty good job.
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If you want a quick and dirty explanation, Schulz’s podcast with Akaash Singh, Flagrant, could cover you at your next dinner party conversation. This week’s guest, NBA insider Shams Charania, took the time to provide a breakdown for all of us who perked up at “mafia” but who’s frame of reference for the NBA is the time Draymond Green punched that one guy in the face.
Schulz introduced Charania, who is widely known as Shams, as “the top insider in the NBA right now, which means that you have access to probably the most information that nobody else has access to.”
About nine minutes into the episode, Shams broke down some of the ways that gambling has affected the league more broadly, before diving into the nitty-gritty of how the mafia and the NBA got involved with each other in the first place.
“So that’s the illegal poker games,” Shams explained. “What they did is they made a connection with Chauncey Billups, Damon Jones and Terry Rozier. They have a relationship like going back to their playing days, coaching.”
After a little bit of back-and-forth about circumstances where the NBA big names could be innocent, Shams gave a simple breakdown of what the FBI is alleging happened with Billups and Jones in particular. “The FBI is alleging that (Billups) was in on it, that he knew everything was going on and that he was purposefully going about cheating the game and cheating, you know, the fish as they called it,” Shams explained. “That’s the allegation. Now, the FBI is gonna have to prove that in court.”
At one point, Schulz asked, “I mean, who wants to play poker with Chauncey Billups that bad?”
To which Singh reliably replied: “I love Chauncey Billups.”
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