Was Deni Avdija an unwitting victim of the NBA betting scandal?
After the Blazers’ head coach was arrested for fraud, his Israeli star’s playing time comes into focus
Something smells fishy in Portland. Photo by Scott Taetsch/Getty Images
By Louis Keene October 23, 2025
In a generally grim 2024-25 season for the Portland Trail Blazers, fifth-year Israeli swingman Deni Avdija was a bright spot, achieving career-high numbers in points, rebounds and assists.
But the arrest of Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups has people pointing to a suspicious pattern in Avdija’s playing time — and wondering whether the fix was in.
Billups, 49, was one of 31 people arrested across 11 states Thursday in what the FBI says was a multimillion-dollar, Mafia-run illegal gambling and sports betting conspiracy. Also arrested was NBA player Terry Rozier, whom the FBI alleged faked an injury to make sure coordinated bets against his individual stats — that he wouldn’t reach points or rebounds totals, for example — would pay out.
Billups, who was inducted to the NBA Hall of Fame as a player in 2024, is accused in a conspiracy that took place off the court, in which he allegedly participated in rigged poker games, serving as a celebrity “face” who would lure high-stakes bettors into the trap. Billups and the other players would know what cards were coming and eventually split the take, which could be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for a single game.
While the alleged poker games involving Billups occurred before he became the Blazers’ coach, the indictment against Rozier does allege that Billups was involved. Prior to a March 24, 2023 game against Chicago, the FBI says Billups passed insider information to Eric Earnest, one of the alleged poker scheme organizers, that he planned to bench the Blazers’ best players. Earnest then acted on this information, facilitating more than $100,000 in bets against the team.
The indictment does not say whether Billups profited directly from sharing the information, and he was not charged in the Rozier indictment. But after Billups’ arrest, other stories started coming out about odd coaching decisions he made more recently relating to Avdija, the league’s longest-tenured active Jewish player, who joined the Blazers in summer 2024.
In a Jan. 30 social media post that went viral after it resurfaced Thursday, X user @FtblRocco wrote, “If Terry Rozier is being investigated, Chauncey Billups needs to be as well.” (The NBA had announced that day it was investigating Rozier for suspicious sports betting activity on his games.)
@FtblRocco’s suspicion stemmed from Billups’ rotations. In five of Avdija’s six previous games up to that day, Avdija had played 35, 39, 34, 38 and 38 minutes. In the other, a Jan. 23 game against Orlando, he played only 26 minutes — without any injury or foul trouble. The same thing happened against the Magic a week later: He played only 25 minutes. “Billups clearly deciding to bet the under on him v Orlando,” the account posted Jan. 30 on X.
The evidence is hardly ironclad: Avdija also played only 22 minutes the next game, against Phoenix. But @FtblRocco wasn’t the only account asking questions about Billups.
Following the arrest, another account said it had noticed “large liquidity spikes” in bets related to Avdija, Donovan Clingan, and other Blazers players. A liquidity spike is a sign of increased action — more money being placed — on a particular betting line.
If the FBI was investigating Billups for this, it didn’t find enough to charge him. But one has to wonder whether Avdija’s career year might have been even better without these odd fluctuations.
The Trail Blazers put Billups on leave Thursday and said the franchise was cooperating with the FBI’s investigation. Meanwhile, in the Blazers’ opening game of the 2025-26 season on Wednesday — a loss to Minnesota — Avdija picked up where he left off: 20 points and 7 rebounds in 33 minutes.
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the number of arrests made related to the poker and sports gambling schemes. It was 31, not 30.
