NBA player Terry Rozier has been investigated by federal prosecutors over whether he manipulated his performance as part of an illegal sports betting scheme

bsky.app The Wall Street Journal (@wsj.com)

Exclusive: NBA player Terry Rozier has been investigated by federal prosecutors over whether he manipulated his performance as part of an illegal sports betting scheme https://www.wsj.com/sports/basketball/terry-rozier-illegal-betting-probe-nba-63a7170b?mod=bluesky

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The game and performance under scrutiny took place March 23, 2023, when Rozier was still with the Charlotte Hornets. Rozier played just nine minutes and 34 seconds in a game against the New Orleans Pelicans and scored five points. Prior to the game against the Pelicans, Rozier averaged 35.3 minutes and 21.1 points per contest that season. At the time, the reason given for Rozier leaving the game early was due to a sore right foot. He did not play in any of the team’s eight remaining games that season.
Guessing there’s other solid evidence since this looks harder to prove than Porter in that Rozier didn’t play the rest of the season after that which lends some legitimacy to the injury.
- I can sort of understand why the other recent NBA player did something like this (can't remember his name, but he was a bench/rotation type player making near the minimum I think), but at the time, Rozier was a multi-millionaire on a $23M/yr, four-year contract.
  Why on Earth would he get involved in nonsense like this unless... someone was threatening he or his family, I guess?
  
  Yeah this one is a real head scratcher because of his contract size. Like the only way the money is worth it at that point is if they’re putting huge amounts on the game and that’s going to obviously get flagged.
  Like you said maybe someone threatened his family or something else. Given he was out the rest of the season I’m leaning towards there not being anything here but we have almost no info either.

From what I have seen, there was nothing yet about Rozier betting on games either directly or via a proxy. Just that there was an unusual number of betting on the under and Terry leaving the game early. The NBA investigated the issue and cleared him, so I wonder if it was someone other than him that caused the unusual betting pattern. For example, people on the team knew that he was hurting but wanted to see if he could play through it.