Brown criticizes the NBA for lack of player protection against sports betting

Jaylen Brown Alerts on Player Protection Against Sports Betting

Boston Celtics forward Jaylen Brown has expressed his concern about the NBA’s lack of measures to protect players in relation to issues arising from sports betting. His statements come after the arrest of a renowned player and coach for their alleged involvement in a nationwide betting scandal.

“They’re like, ‘You make X amount of money or X, Y, and Z, you should be able to deal with all the extra negativity, people coming at you for bets,'” Brown commented on Friday at Madison Square Garden, before the Celtics’ game against the New York Knicks. “This creates a negative discourse around the game and the players when money is involved… It’s leading to situations that we can avoid if they were talked about more right now.”

Jaylen Brown

Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier were among those accused in two federal investigations. Rozier is alleged to have informed a friend that he would withdraw from a game in March 2023, when he played with the Charlotte Hornets, with bets of hundreds of thousands of dollars placed on Rozier’s performances in that match. While the charges against Billups are related to his alleged involvement in rigged poker games, he also matches the description of a co-conspirator who allegedly informed a bettor in advance that several Trail Blazers starters would miss a game in March 2023. The lawyers for both Billups and Rozier have stated that their clients deny the accusations against them. Brown, who is vice president of the National Basketball Players Association, stated that he wants to help clarify what happened. However, he also lamented that the NBA is not doing enough proactively or reactively to help the players.

“I don’t think that even once, in my conversations with the union, the NBA has said, ‘How can we protect the players more in this environment?'”, Brown said. “There has been little to no conversation about it. A lot of times, it’s all about ‘How can we increase business and revenue?’ I don’t think we’re having enough conversations about what the consequences of some of those things are.”

Jaylen Brown

Brown and Rozier were teammates on the Celtics from 2016 to 2019. Brown said the accusations against Rozier “are not in his character,” but noted that the union has an investigative team to analyze the matter. “Obviously, if those guys are innocent, it’s not a good image for them publicly and in the media, so we have to make sure that, if they are exonerated, their images are cleaned up,” Brown said. “But I think right now, getting all the information and getting to the bottom of the matter is the most important thing.”