With NBA in crosshairs, commissioner Adam Silver has huge problem on his hands

We’re in the midst of the second-longest government shutdown in modern history, and President Trump decides it’s cool to make the total destruction of the east wing of the White House a priority at the low-low cost of $300 million. Then this comes out of nowhere . . .

The US Justice Department laid out in detail this morning how several NBA players and coaches, including Heat guard Terry Rozier, allegedly used non-public information about upcoming NBA games to allow others to profit on betting. — CNN

The news struck as hard and as abruptly as the arrests seemed to come. One minute we’re all talking about how Victor Wembanyama is about to become the NBA’s Shohei Ohtani; the next minute (literally) the windbreakers (FBI, DOJ, etc.) metaphorically are on our phones, TVs and computer screens breaking the news to us that the beginning of the collapse — “takedown” — of the NBA is officially upon us.

We didn’t know that Rozier’s was just the first name being dropped. The next name was about to be “the one.”

When Trail Blazers coach and Hall of Famer Chauncey Billups’ name surfaced less than an hour later in an unrelated gambling investigation along with the names of four of the five major New York mob families (Gambino, Lucchese, Bonanno and Genovese), that’s when the “uh-oh” set in.

Especially once ESPN removed the ESPN BET ticker from the bottom of the screens as the news broke on the network.

Two indictments. Massive probes. “Operation Royal Flush.” “Operation Nothing But Bet.” Well-executed operations that infiltrated pro sports in a manner we’ve not seen at this level in a while. Bigger than basic overs-and-unders and prop bets. This is wire fraud and money laundering; this involves the mob. White-collar (alleged) crimes. The old having a connection with a bookie to erase a debt, this ain’t that.

At this point, NBA commissioner Adam Silver has an official problem, a real one that is bigger than this latest round of breaking news involving Billups, Rozier and former player Damon Jones, whose name also made it to the top-layer mention level Thursday morning and who allegedly dropped a Le-Bron James “phantom” name bomb to “facilitate illegal sports betting.’’

There is connective tissue: from last season’s Malik Beasley indictment and ongoing federal investigation for gambling “misconduct” to this summer’s arrest of Gilbert Arenas after playing host to “a suspected high-level member of an Israeli transnational organized crime group” for running high-stakes poker games at his house to Nets forward Michael Porter Jr.’s brother Jontay being banned from the NBA for life last year for violating NBA gambling policies and going back to felonious former official Tim Donaghy’s 2007 arrest and conviction for betting on games in which he refereed. In the past, until Thursday morning, all of these were looked at as individual, isolated incidents that just happened to happen inside the NBA. Not anymore.

The single thread of how all will now be related is Silver’s biggest crisis as commissioner. And under the current circumstances, the shadow it will cast as the investigations continue and as more allegations from other investigations come out will create a darkness over the NBA that has the power to become the league’s worst PR nightmare ever.

One that won’t be defused or dismissed like MLB’s Ohtani situation with his interpreter or like the NFL’s concerning Calvin Ridley or even Art Schlichter, who in the late ’80s was the poster child for sports and illegal gambling. No, the entire scope of what just came down on the NBA is far more damaging. And irrecoverably damning.

Athletes gamble. But the lines for them between the personal and professional levels of how to gamble have been blurred for a while and have become more blurred as gambling has become not only legal but big business — and business partners — in every aspect of sports.

Let’s be real: What the feds did by making the public arrests of Billups, Rozier and Jones the morning after the “true” full NBA season-opening night was not coincidence. A coincidence is us seeing Ohtani and Wembanyama within a week of one another put on singular performances that will be regarded as the moments we all saw what the future of their respective sports can and will be. What the FBI and DOJ did was calculated and strategic in timing.

Because as wrong and possibly guilty as the players and coaches accused in this may be, what cannot be lost or ignored is how the NBA by not being the NFL or WWE or MLB in the eyes of the people within the current administration (think FBI director Kash Patel and his allegiance and relationship to the current White House regime; think the same in relation to the attorney general who leads the DOJ, Pam Bondi) of federal decision-makers is being told it’s screwed.

The watchdogs are off the leash. You can bet the findings and unveilings won’t end here.

All of which play significant roles in the totality of the problem Silver has. His problem is not unilateral; it has layers. Onion layers. Wedding-cake layers. Trump-related layers. Mob-connected layers. “This may never be over” layers.