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00:00This one, got to tell you, hard to believe.
00:02I know that's been sort of investigated already.
00:06They'll be looking at it some more, but boy, I mean,
00:10a player of this magnitude in terms of financially, Sam,
00:14and I want to underline that, financially speaking,
00:16it's not that Rozier is, you know,
00:18going to go on the hall of fame or anything like that,
00:20but when you're making 20, $30 million,
00:23and it's on a single game prop where, I mean,
00:27I'm guessing six figures was in play for several people,
00:30maybe, I mean, that's a heck of a favor.
00:33Why not just give those people the money, man?
00:35Like, I don't know, to me, this one doesn't add up.
00:38I'm going to hope, by the way,
00:40that this one is completely false.
00:42Yeah, it's definitely a head scratcher, Craig,
00:45when you talk about a guy like Terry Rozier,
00:47who at the time, I think,
00:49was the Charlotte Hornets' highest paid player in history.
00:52So this was a guy making,
00:54it was a year into his four-year $96 million extension.
00:59Wall Street Journal broke the news this week
01:01that he's been named,
01:02or is currently being investigated, rather,
01:04by federal agents
01:05as part of a larger sports betting conspiracy scheme,
01:09a network of gamblers and bettors across the country
01:13that they're looking into allegedly
01:15manipulating these outcomes of games
01:17across not only the NBA,
01:19but also college sports as well.
01:21We've talked recently on this show
01:22about the Eastern Michigan College basketball games
01:25that have been under scrutiny as well.
01:27That is potentially part of this investigation.
01:30So it could kind of all be connected.
01:33This was the same investigation, of course, last year
01:37that led to Jonte Porter,
01:38the former Toronto Raptors swingman,
01:41who, as you point out,
01:43was not a guy like Rozier making $25 million a year.
01:46This was a guy on a veteran minimum contract
01:48who had kind of been fighting his way to stay in the league.
01:52Had been on five teams,
01:53who was in significant gambling debt,
01:55and would text these gamblers
01:58who'd been named in this criminal investigation,
02:00hey, I know I'm not gonna play tonight much,
02:03or I'm gonna fake an injury,
02:04bet on my unders, that sort of thing.
02:06And that set off red flags
02:08because you've got a guy named Jonte Porter,
02:10who nobody really knows who that is.
02:12All of a sudden, he's the most bet player
02:14at all these sports books.
02:15So that was pretty easy for investigators to catch.
02:18It's a little different with Rozier.
02:20He's not a LeBron James by any means,
02:22but there are gonna be nights
02:23when because of the matchup or something like that,
02:27people are gonna bet a lot on Rozier.
02:29So it was really interesting to see
02:32them kind of catch this one game in question
02:34is when he was a member of the Charlotte Hornets
02:37in March, 2023 against a game against the Pelicans,
02:42in which he only played nine minutes.
02:44There was some weird social media
02:46kind of discourse at the time.
02:47A lot of people wondering,
02:48hey, it's like a minute to game time.
02:50Why have Rozier's markets been pulled?
02:52This wasn't a guy who had been injured recently.
02:55There was no questionability.
02:56So anytime a guy gets pulled before game time,
02:59it's usually because some last minute injury reporting,
03:02but there was no reporting surrounding that.
03:04So a lot of people were wondering why.
03:06A lot of people actually posted on social media
03:07that I don't know whether it was a joke
03:10or whether there's some truth to this
03:11that they had inside info
03:12that he wasn't gonna play much.
03:13Of course, what does that really mean?
03:16Does that mean,
03:17oh, I just have been following the NBA closely.
03:19I have a buddy who works for the team.
03:20I know Rozier.
03:21We don't know all these things yet.
03:23So we're kind of still figuring out
03:24exactly what is going on.
03:26All we really know is that this one game
03:28where he went from playing 30 minutes all season
03:30to just nine saw a sizable amount of action
03:33on all of his unders specifically.
03:35So his lawyer has come out
03:37and denied pretty much any wrongdoing saying,
03:40you know, there's no way he was involved in anything bad.
03:42We'll let the investigation play out.
03:44I would be frankly shocked if it comes out
03:46that he was purposely throwing the game.
03:49You have to wonder what the incentive here would be.
03:51But of course, there are a lot of dumb people in the world.
03:54And, you know, athletes can be some of them.
03:57You know, we've seen the NFL guys
04:00blatantly breaking the rules by, you know,
04:02they have the team policy on the door.
04:04Don't gamble in the facility.
04:05Guys doing it anyway, saying they didn't know.
04:07Of course, that's different
04:08than actually manipulating an outcome of a game.
04:10So it'll be really interesting to see
04:11what comes out of this.
04:12And I don't think it's, you know,
04:13this could just be the tip of the iceberg.
04:15Again, this is a larger investigation that caught Porter
04:19and allegedly involves college basketball as well.
04:21So possibly other names could come out of this.
04:23We'll see what happens.