Chauncey Billups Arrested for Role in Poker Scheme | Trail Blazers Name Tiago Splitter Interim Coach
Chauncey Billups was arrested for money laundering and wire fraud conspiracy in the alleged poker scheme. He is also likely implicated in another federal case. And like that the Billups era ends in complete disarray.
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36 Comments
Sad for Blazer players and fans, they don't deserve this. Pro poker player Matt Berkey long ago outed Billups as running a crooked poker game in Vegas on a podcast. Glad that the Trailblazers will get an honest, stand-up guy like Tiago to coach the team. Don't sell Tiago short, he's a champion.
Can the team sale be rushed please
I don't know why fans are acting like this is such a bad thing for us as a team. It's a bad thing for Fraud Chauncey, but not necessarily for us as a team. He wasn't even that great of a coach in the first place, and I refuse to believe we can't go on without him. In my opinion the FBI just buffed the Blazers by saving us from Chauncey Billups throwing more games in the 4th quarter. Regardless the lore thickens…Being a Blazers fan is wild.
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I keep hearing accusations that the Blazer organization didn't do their due diligence on Billups or turned their heads to the shady background.
I don't understand how Cronin was realistically supposed to have seen this coming. Even sophisticated back ground checks cannot uncover illegal activity like this. Billups had some shady things in his past before coming to Portland, but didn't that have to do with an alleged sexual assault? All the more reason why Cronin would have been blind to this. The focus rightly would have been about how Billups conducts himself around women.
For a year that I've been following you and watching all the podcasts you've done without missing a single one, I think this podcast is the most successful, well done
As a card carrying Chauncey hater since the beginning of his tenure I feel completely vindicated
Well done Mike. This had to be one of the hardest episodes to do but you nailed it. After watching many other channels takes, yours is on a different level. Now let's move on and see how the season unfolds. I think the Blazers will be okay and so will we.
Yikes, Super sad news.
Well done Mike!
I hope Chauncey will be acquitted , and we will see him back on the lines
I will never understand why they doubled down on this coach….I've had it with the Billups era…Lets focus on the players and the coaching stuff who have busted their tails off to be competitive
gambling is an awful drug that destroys peoples lives. period. i see it every day. pro sports becoming fully embedded with gambling will likely end up destroying them in the same way.
Start the investigation since '04 Finals!!! smells fishy to me
4 years of the worst basketball in Portland history. What did it finally take to stop the bad coaching ?? The FBI arrested Billups, and the NBA suspended him.. not the Blazers. We get "No Comment" official team statement.
I think Mike is being diplomatic here in talking about solutions to sports gambling. The solution is the law. While Chauncey's actions were clearly illegal, the thing driving the popularity of sports gambling and thereby inventivizing more egregious illegal activity like this shit was the Supreme Court's 2018 decision legalizing sports betting. This is just another example of the arrogance of the Roberts Court in ignoring public policy, and reality in general, in their reasoning. We knew at the time this would be terrible and lead to this type of garbage. And this is just the beginning yall! This will continue to get worse in all professional sports until congress decides to act.
man, i hope you personally will get through it, you look disturbed.
Dark stuff. Betrayed and anger is how I imagine the team feels. Hard to find out your coach is not who you thought he was. As fans, you wonder how far this sort of stuff goes. Books will be written, movies will be made, talking heads will talk and at the end of the day the NBA took a direct hit below the water line of credibility.
best thing to happen to blazers, he was terrible
Praying for a Mark Jackson to Steve Kerr kind of year. Props to Mike, our pass first pg having our backs on the hard days.
The way I see it, this year just got a whole lot more interesting.
It’s fairly normal for things to go as planned and to watch how people react and respond in those situations. But it’s in times of crisis that people’s — and teams’ — true character really comes to the surface. I’m genuinely intrigued to see how the team responds to this challenge.
I have hope for them. I like this team. I really like Jrue Holiday and Dame, and I also like Jerami Grant. I like the young guys too — Scoot and Sharpe. Honestly, I like a lot of these players, or at least the image I have of them. Now, things that were hidden will come to the surface — maybe positive, maybe negative — but either way, it’s going to be interesting. And I’ll be rooting for them. I’ll be watching, that much I can assure you.
The sad truth is that my first reaction when I heard about this was a sense of relief that Chauncey Billups was no longer the coach. I never really liked that hire, and I never really liked him as a coach. The whole sexual assault issue from his past never sat right with me. It always felt like it was being swept under the rug.
At the time, I even left a message for Damian Lillard asking how he, as a father, could support such a hire — even if it was only a possibility — and how much of their profession depends on optics and public trust. Of course, he never replied, and honestly, I probably wouldn’t send that message today. But that’s not the point.
The point is that Chauncey is gone, and I don’t even care that much about who the new coach is right now. What I care about is how the team responds — how they come together and galvanize within themselves.
It’s going to be fascinating to watch, and I’m rooting for them to succeed in this moment. Whatever comes of it later, let it come to that.
Not a great way to start the season. Just a damn shame all around.
Billups is old news. He's a loser
if the mob is involved, Billups may need protective custody. Those guys don't fuck around. It is my belief that back in the day, MJ's father was killed by the mod over gambling debts that he had. I think many more athletes are doing shady shit. The temptation is too great, the sums of money being won in sports gambling is astronomical. You are never going to separate sports and gambling.
The statement the Blazers DID make might as well have been rushed out cause it was a generic statement.
Will this drive the team even closer together or is all hope lost? Being a NBA fan is hard enough, but then you gotta throw scandal on top? My heart can't take this! Go Blazers!
Joe’s gotta go; fair or not.
I think this will galvanize the team. The team will be vilified in the press and it will seem like it's us against the world. I think Dame Lillard steps into a more leadership role despite him not playing.
Jail Blazers 2.0
His career is over in the NBA.. The man has soiled the Blazers and the NBA for decades to come. I sure hope he goes to prison with a lengthy sentence.
As a woman, and realistically…I never thought Billups was 100% innocent with his SA allegation. But as the public, we tried to say we didn't want a coach like that in charge of our team… Everyone said our voices didn't matter.
April 4 2025. Pulled Deni and Shae with 3 minutes left down 5. Still pushing for the play-in, Deni on 37. He rigged that game.
We've had a coach that clearly had his priorities in a place other than pursuing a championship. I hope he does time and never shows his face in PDX again
I have no idea what went down, but I do know that the FBI is as corrupt as you get. They have been under a ton of pressure lately because of the Epstein affair where they have said that there was no criminal activity- which is a complete lie and cover-up. They have been dirty for decades (JFK, MLK, RFK, Ruby Ridge, Waco, …..). Going after one group of mobsters to perhaps protect another group currently in favor with the FBI is not that far fetched. Las Vegas is really struggling right now. I'll wait for more details before I make my mind up.
Interesting how the fbi can do everything else besides get the Epstein list out like trump and googly eyed Patel shouted nonstop that they’d release once in power. But they love them some pedophiles so gotta protect them at all costs.
Let's be real. Gambling is something you can choose to do or not to do. Addictive? Yes. But let's not all just put the ownness on a sportsbook. These are individuals who made incredibly stupid decisions, when they had more money that 99.99% of you or I will ever have. I don't feel sorry at all. These are individuals who knowingly lied, deceived and defrauded other human beings, so they should not get an ounce of sympathy.
Chauncey sucked as a coach and it looks like as a person. We will all still see this team play hard, grow together and we will be able to see how Tiago does for this year. The stain isn't on the franchise, it's on Chauncey and his horrible decisions he made in his personal life.
Go Blazers!
I know you have a life outside of this, Mike, but I wish you would do another video today on the team! The team is still there, the guys are still fun and I am still rooting for them. Billups is history. On with the program!