He Miami Heat remains silent and in standby mode, after one of its stars, Terry Rozierwas arrested by the FBI in a bet-fixing scandal.
Rozier was arrested on Thursday, October 23, in an operation that involved around 30 people, most of them linked to the NBAincluding Portland Trail Blazers coach and Basketball Hall of Famer Chauncey Billups.
That same Thursday, Rozier was in federal court in Orlando, Florida, and was released after posting his Fort Lauderdale home valued at six million dollars as bail and surrendering his passport.
At 31 years old, 10 of them in the NBA where he has played 665 games and has earned $135 million, one wonders how Rozier could have gotten involved in illegal betting?
James Trusty, the Heat point guard’s attorney, denied the allegations.
“Terry is not a gambler,” Trusty assured. “He is not afraid to fight and we are going to win this fight.”
The Heat carry the cross
Of all this mess, the Heat are the most harmed. The NBA decided to immediately suspend Rozier, but with pay.
The Miami franchise will no longer have to pay Rozier $1.1 million as part of the salary for the final year of his $26.6 million contract, in the 2025-26 campaign.
Until the investigations are concluded and a sentence is handed down, the Heat will put Rozier’s salary in an account, but will not be able to count on it.
In addition, he already gave up his first-round selection in the 2027 or 2028 NBA draft as part of the January 2024 trade for the point guard, who was then playing with the Charlotte Hornets.
At the time of the change, Rozier was already being investigated by the FBI and the NBA after 2023 leaked secret information about an injury that would prevent him from playing at his real level in a game. The bettors took advantage of the information and won $100,000, money they counted along with the player.
Ten months after this incident, Rozier was traded to the Heat. The NBA knew that the player was under investigation, but did not warn the Miami franchise. The regulations do not require it.
Although he has not made a statement, it emerged that the Heat’s goal is to recover the first-round draft pick, not pay the player for the last year of his contract and be able to replace him with another player.
A pact with the devil
Since the Supreme Court decided in May 2018 that states regulate sports betting, and 38 of them legalized it in addition to Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico, this business has become a pact with the devil.
Betting companies spend billions on advertising and partnerships with major sports leagues. It is an additional income without any extra investment, but at the same time the integrity of the game is jeopardized.
Distant is the time when the great Pete Rose was excommunicated from Major League Baseball in 1989 when it was discovered that as a player and as manager of the Cincinnati Reds he had bet from 1985 to 1987. It was not until 2025 that the sanction was lifted posthumously.
In March 2024, it was revealed that Ippei Mizuhara, Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter, had stolen $17 million from the Los Angeles Dodgers star to cover his sports betting debts.
Mizuhara was sentenced to 57 months in federal prison.
The stains, however, remain forever. Especially now that betting focuses far beyond the outcome of a match. The objective is also individual performance, which is much easier to control. It is enough to have information about the protagonist or his environment to know fundamental details.
In reality, in the world of bettors you can’t trust anyone.
