NBA rocked again as report claims LA Clippers coach was at same alleged Mafia poker game as Chauncey Billups

The NBA has been plunged into further controversy amid a report that LA Clippers head coach Tyronn Lue attended one of the poker games allegedly rigged by members of the Mafia.

However, Lue has not been accused of any wrongdoing by the government and was not named in last week's indictments. Daily Mail has reached out to his agents for comment.

The league descended into chaos last week after the FBI launched a series of overnight arrests that saw Miami Heat star Terry Rozier, Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups and ex-Cleveland Cavaliers player Damon Jones briefly taken into custody.

While Rozier was arrested after being accused of participating in an illegal sports betting scheme, Billups was charged in a separate indictment alleging a wide-ranging scheme to rig underground poker games that were backed by Mafia families. Both Rozier and Billups have denied the allegations through their attorneys.

Meanwhile, in a bombshell twist earlier this week, it was claimed by journalist Pablo Torre that former NFL star Antonio Gates had also 'hosted and played' in an alleged rigged poker game in Miami.

Gates has not been formally accused of any wrongdoing and was not named in the federal indictment released on Thursday. A statement from his representatives, sent to DailyMail.com, said: 'Antonio Gates has not been involved nor has he been accused of any wrong doing, assertions to the contrary are false and without merit. There will be no further comments on this matter.' 

Now, the scandal has taken another turn amid a report alleging that Clippers head coach Lue was also at one of the alleged rigged poker games with Billups. 

According to Torre, who has extensively reported on the scandal, the game took place in April 2019 and both Billups and Lue were used as 'face cards'.

On his show, 'Pablo Torre Finds Out', he said: 'Here's the open secret around the NBA: Ty Lue lives in Vegas during the offseason. He also loves poker. 

'He's often seen at what many insiders consider the nexus of the NBA poker world—the Aria High Limit Bar—often alongside another retired NBA player: Damon Jones'.

Torre alleges that Lue 'did not play' at the same table as Billups but was present at the game. 

DailyMail.com has reached out to the Los Angeles Clippers as well as Lue's agents for comment. 

Back in 2021, a report by The Athletic detailed the close relationship between the trio of Lue, Billups and Jones, who have all worked together at separate points. 

In fact, the report claims that Lue helped school Billups - who had just finished his NBA career - on the nuances of coaching, just before he landed his role in Portland.

The article details how, for six weeks during the Covid-19 pandemic, Billups' home was 'transformed into a coaching camp' by Lue, with Jones also moving in.

Speaking to the outlet at the time, Billups said: 'We just have this really special relationship. I don't know what it is, we have a few things in common — he's down to earth, humble, loves basketball… and is just such a loyal dude. 

'But at the same time, we have different personalities. He's been pretty much a single guy his whole life, and I've been with my wife for what seems like my entire life. But we just started to talk at these tournaments and it just continued to grow.'

The outlet note that the duo became so close that Billups asked Lue to be to godfather to Cydney, the first of his three daughters. 

In the same article, Billups revealed how he was unsatisfied with TV analyst work at the time and needed to satisfy a change in order to satisfy 'competitive edge'. 

'The game was over and I didn't win or lose. It was just… cool, the game is over. So I enjoyed it, liked it, but I was missing something,' he explained. 

Fast forward four years and Billups, who was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame last year, was arrested in relation to an alleged illegal poker operation accused of association with the Mafia.

A photo showing indicted NBA coach Chauncey Billups at a poker table alongside two alleged co-conspirators was obtained by DailyMail.com last week. 

The alleged poker operation is tied to the Gambino, Bonanno and Genovese crime families, the government claims, and saw rigged games take place in Manhattan, the Hamptons and Las Vegas.

It is alleged that New York's notorious crime families would use X-ray tables to tilt games in their favor and wear special high-tech contact lenses to read pre-marked cards.

At a press conference, United States Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. said: 'The defendants used a variety of very sophisticated cheating technologies, some of which were provided by other defendants in exchange for a share of the profits from the scheme.

'They used off the shelf shuffling machines that had been secretly altered in order to read the cards in the deck, predict which player at the table had the best poker hand and relay that information to an off-site operator.

'The off-side operator sent the information via cellphone back to a co-conspirator at the table, who was known as 'the quarterback', and they secretly signaled the information they had received to others at the table and together they used that information in order to win the games and cheat their victims.

'Defendants used other cheating technologies, such as poker chip tray analyzers - which is a poker chip try that secretly reads cards using a hidden camera - special contact lenses or glasses that could read pre-marked cards and an X-ray table that could read cards faced down on the table.'