The NBA playing scandal that rocked the league seems to be chopping deeper and deeper with every passing day.
After the FBI arrested Path Blazers coach Chauncey Billups for his alleged involvement in a rigged poker recreation scandal that included X-ray imaginative and prescient tables and altered shuffling machines spearheaded by the syndicated crime households, investigative journalist Pablo Torre is now reporting that Clippers head coach Tyrone Lue was concerned in one of many allegedly rigged poker video games.
“In response to a number of sources with direct information of that April 2019 recreation in Vegas that we’ve been discussing — the identical one the place Billups was allegedly profiting off of an especially suspicious hand and a rigged shuffling machine — one other ‘face card’ in attendance was present Los Angeles Clippers head coach Ty Lue, who was on the time an assistant coach for the Clippers,” Torre mentioned on his “Pablo Torre Finds Out” podcast.
Torre dove into Lue’s seemingly extremely shut ties to Billups.
“Now, sources say that Lue didn’t play on the identical desk as Chauncey Billups — the person Lue lately known as his finest buddy, and in addition the person whom Lue would rent as a Clippers assistant himself the very subsequent yr, 2020, as soon as Lue bought his present head job,” Torre continued on his podcast.
After Billups’ arrest was introduced, Lue defended his buddy, calling Billups “my brother.”
“I do know who he’s as an individual,” Lue informed reporters early this week. “I’ve been with him since I used to be 17 years outdated.”
Lue’s love for poker is well-known in the neighborhood, however he additionally has shut ties to Damon Jones, who’s implicated on this scheme after allegedly tipping off gamblers that LeBron James wouldn’t play in a Feb. 9, 2023 recreation towards the Milwaukee Bucks.
“An open secret across the NBA is that Ty Lue, who lives in Vegas throughout the offseason, additionally loves poker,” Torre mentioned, “and is commonly seen at what is taken into account the nexus of the NBA poker world — the Aria Excessive Restrict Bar — typically alongside one other retired NBA participant whom Lue had individually employed to his teaching employees in Cleveland and who has known as Lue his finest buddy, Damon Jones.”
Jones has repeatedly known as Lue his finest buddy in interviews, and Lue even employed and promoted Jones to the Cavaliers teaching employees when he took over as head coach for David Blatt.
“In June of 2024, each Ty Lue and Damon Jones sat subsequent to one another on the rail — the poker equal of courtside at a playoff recreation — to look at one other buddy of theirs compete on the World Collection of Poker, as seen on the printed of that occasion,” Torre mentioned.
Jones tried twice to file for Chapter 13 chapter in Texas in 2013 and ’15, however each instances have been dismissed, leaving collectors free to proceed pursuing the money owed owed, amongst them the Bellagio on line casino, which he owed almost $50,000.
Jones and Billups are part of a bigger investigation surrounding the NBA’s playing scandal that additionally consists of Jontay Porter and Terry Rozier, who allegedly manipulated their very own stats in order that others may guess and win on their Unders at DraftKings, amongst different sportsbooks
