Brian Windhorst accuses the NBA of secretly benching Terry Rozier during a gambling scandal

The FBI arrested Rozier on Thursday as part of a sports betting investigation.

“The NBA is going to have to explain at some point why Terry Rozier was allowed to continue playing. And I want to point something out. The sportsbooks noticed the erratic betting on Terry Rozier the day it happened, the morning it happened, when suddenly hundreds of thousands of dollars came in on Terry Rozier Unders for a relatively meaningless game in March involving the Charlotte Hornets. The sportsbooks have noticed,” Windhorst said this on Thursday during the ‘Rich Eisen show’.

“They immediately told the NBA, and guess what? The NBA – Rozier didn’t play the rest of the season and he had faked the injury, so it wasn’t because of the injury. The NBA pulled them, they pulled (banned ex-Raptor) Jontay Porter too, they flagged Jontay Porter and pulled Jontay Porter. The NBA’s move, their protections, the protections for sportsbooks caused this, they caught it. “

If Windhorst’s allegations are true, it exposes the league — and commissioner Adam Silver — to many questions about how it handled the situation and what actions it took to investigate the matter.

Rozier’s arrest on Thursday revealed details that he allegedly informed members of organized crime that he would be leaving the game against the Pelicans early.

That led to more than $200,000 being bet on Under markets for his props, meaning bettors placed money that his stats showed would perform worse than the established Over/Under.

Rozier played just 9:34 before leaving, scoring five points with four rebounds, two assists and one steal, well below his season averages of 21.1 points, 5.1 assists, 4.1 rebounds and 1.2 steals per game.

The FBI claims the connoisseurs made tens of thousands of profits, and “the defendants and Rozier counted the money at his home.”

Windhorst claims this is when the NBA stepped in to end Rozier’s season, preventing him from playing in the final eight games.

The stated reason is said to be the presumed right foot injury, with the injury report for the Hornets’ final game that year stating that Rozier did not play due to “Injury/illness – right foot; discomfort.”

In an interesting wrinkle, the NBA previously said it received a tip in March 2023 about possible illegal gambling activity involving Rozier and investigated the subject, although there was no evidence of wrongdoing.

However, the league’s January statement did not mention Rozier being barred from playing while the NBA investigated the matter or when the investigation took place.

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“In March 2023, the NBA was alerted to unusual gambling activity related to Terry Rozier’s performance in a game between Charlotte and New Orleans,” NBA spokesman Mike Bass said in January.

“The league conducted an investigation and found no violation of NBA rules. We are now aware of an investigation by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York regarding this matter and have cooperated with that investigation.”

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Any alleged NBA action continued into the 2023-2024 season, as Rozier suited up for the Hornets before being traded to the Heat, his current team.

Rozier was placed on leave by the NBA after his arrest, and his attorney, Jim Trusty, criticized the FBI for his client’s arrest.

“We contacted these prosecutors a long time ago to tell them that we need to have an open line of communication. They characterized Terry as a subject and not a target, but at 6 a.m. this morning they called me to tell me that FBI agents were trying to arrest him at a hotel,” Trusty told The Post Thursday morning.

“It’s a shame that instead of allowing him to surrender, they opted for a photo op. They wanted the misplaced glory of embarrassing a professional athlete with a perp walk. That says a lot about the motivations in this case.”