This is an edition of the newsletter Let’s Get This Dread, in which I, Lester Lee, weigh in on hot topics in culture. Sign up here to get it in your inbox.
2 days into the 2025-26 NBA season. Oklahoma City and Houston have a double overtime banger. Anthony Edwards and Victor Wembanyama start their MVP campaigns with 40-point performances. The Knicks are on pace to go 82-0.
Woke up, league’s on fire.
BREAKING: Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier under arrest. Portland Trailblazers head coach Chauncey Billups under arrest. Former NBA player, and guy who kinda just lingers around the sport, Damon Jones, arrested.
In a Thursday afternoon press conference, FBI Kash Patel announced a multi-year, 11-state, 34-arrest, multi-million-dollar gambling ring involving some minor NBA side characters and the mafia.
This is all very dumb.
Let’s start with my boy Scary Terry.
Terry Rozier
Drafted by the Boston Celtics in 2015, Terry positioned to become a valuable bench scorer for a team getting closer and closer to the championship. In 2016, Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward joined Boston, moving the Celtics closer to the bullseye.
But Terry’s patience waned. He wanted a bigger role and a bigger direct deposit.
Same.
He got paid.
He got more minutes.
His scoring averages went up.
The Charlotte Hornets couldn’t win games.
Then, according to the charges, on March 23, 2023, Terry Rozier took himself out of a game with a foot injury he did not have prior to the game and we now know he did not suffer during the game.
Sportsbooks caught the spike in Terry Rozier under prop bets that night, sounding alarms. How did so many people know that Rozier was going to leave the game early with a faux-ailment?
Terry was paid to share “insider NBA information” with a co-conspirator.
Tough.
Rozier believed he was an All-Star caliber player deserving of the big contract and the big shots.
Terry wasn’t built for it.
Not everyone is.
A burden to be the highest-paid, best player for an NBA franchise. 82 games, all across the country, month after month after month.
You can’t hang with the Yakuza after the games.
Damon Jones
Damon Jones received NBA contracts for 11 seasons. Good for him.
Jones wasn’t drafted out of college, landing in the Continental Basketball Association, a minor (minor) league, for two years, before the New Jersey Nets found him jacking car tires in Gotham City alley. Don’t tell Mark Sanchez.
But Jones’s greatest accomplishment: hanging around the league juuuuust long enough to become LeBron James’s vet in Cleveland, forming a friendship I imagine ended today.
Jones bounced around media gigs, providing sharp, educated, lauded basketball analysis like “LeBron James is really good” and “I know LeBron James”.
Damon was an “assistant coach” for the Cleveland Cavaliers from 2016-2018—but it was more like LeBron getting his buddy something to do during the day. a paycheck and some free team merch.
The hanger-on would continue floating around LeBron—following him to Los Angeles, apparently close enough to the Lakers to be privy to whether or not LeBron James will play on any given day—information he would use to help the same shadowy figures whispering in Terry Rozier’s ear.
By the skin of his teeth, Damon Jones made millions playing basketball.
Invite to LeBron’s whenever he’s in town. A FaceTime call with LeBron away from access to almost any room he wants, and he used that privilege to make a couple thousand dollars with the mafia.
You don’t need more. You need to stop texting La Cosa Nostra.
Chauncey Billups
2004 NBA Finals MVP. Led a pack of wolves over the ‘04 Lakers super team. Shaquille O’Neal. Kobe Bryant. Karl Malone. Gary Payton. 4 future Hall of Famers muted by Chaucney and the Detroit Pistons. Shout out Lindsey Hunter.
Clumsy tenure as the Portland Trailblazers head coach, with some questionable but excusable substitution patterns.
The Blazers were a young team playing the draft to acquire more lottery tickets, hoping one would blossom into a superstar. So those odd late-game decisions could be attempts to lose on purpose, thus increasing their chances of a higher draft pick.
Nope.
Chauncey called the crime hotline to tip off when he was going to bench players so they could bet accordingly.
Killing two birds with one stone.
Chauncey broke federal and NBA rules.
You’re not allowed to lose on purpose.
There’s only like, 3 NBA rules: Don’t hit people. Don’t do drugs. Don’t lose on purpose.
Their handbook is a Post-it note.
But Chauncey’s ties to this network are far greater than Terry’s or Damon’s.
Billups is alleged to have worked with the mafia in rigged poker games in New York.
Let’s take a look at this operation:
Per the DOJ, the games were played using rigged mechanical shufflers that stacked the deck, and that players at the table involved in the scheme knew which cards were coming and who had the winning hand. The dealers were also part of the scheme, according to the allegations.
Per the DOJ, the information from the shufflers would be transmitted wirelessly to an off-site conspirator, who would relay that information back to a person playing in the game known as a “Quarterback.” The “Quarterback” would then use hand signals to communicate information with other conspiring players at the table, per the allegations.
Chauncey Billups was straight-up robbing people, laundering his reputation as an NBA player to lure marks into big-money poker games amongst celebrity pro athletes—poker games they had zero chance of ever winning because Tony Stark rigged the whole room with nanotech.
He coached the Portland Trailblazers on Wednesday. (they lost).
His life is forever altered.
Don’t gamble. (Unless a gambling company is reading this and wants to sponsor me, in which case), gamble responsibly.
Kash Patel
Kash Patel is the hero of this story. He took down white organized crime.
While most of the administration were out trying to hogtie abuela at the laundry mat, imaginary capes blowing in the wind, convincing themselves they’re stopping international drug cartels in those strip malls with the generic Chinese food and the cash checking place—Kash Patel, reclined in his comfy PlayStation gaming chair, local DoorDash drivers memorizing shortcuts to his house—hunted down the biggest Italian crime families in America.
Fortunately for all the aforementioned parties, Kash Patel sucks.
Patel, after spending the entirety of the Biden administration shouting “RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES” into podcast mics, now in charge of the FBI, in possession of those files, shy, Bambi, Epstein-who-ing any mention of the global money laundering/sex trafficking conglomeration.
Kash has turned every mass shooting into a spectacle, launching manhunts for any and all they/thems, before any investigation even begins.
In just 10 months, Kash had demonstrated a diverse and robust portfolio of public failures. I just know this man has lost every single game of Jenga he’s ever played. All he hears is the thunderous sound of those bricks crumbling and his colleagues laughing at him.
Here is a story from The Atlantic about Kash Patel’s origins:
Patel was one of the attorneys from the main Justice Department office who assisted the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington in pursuing foreign militants for the September 11, 2012, attacks that killed four Americans. In his book, Patel writes that as the Justice Department moved to bring the Benghazi terrorists to court, “I was leading the prosecution’s efforts at Main Justice.” He claims that he proceeded to watch firsthand as senior DOJ leadership and other Obama officials—“political gangsters, frauds, and hypocrites” such as Attorney General Eric Holder and his successor, Loretta Lynch—chose to “go soft” on the terrorists by prosecuting only one perpetrator. It was for this reason, Patel writes—a lack of trust in the prosecution’s decisions—that when his supervisors asked him to join the trial team itself, he declined.
Buuuut that’s not what actually happened.
Kash Patel didn’t sniff out corruption and heroically excuse himself from the rot.
Kash didn’t “lead the prosecution’s efforts”. He was in the room, briefly, not leading anything.
The department didn’t only prosecute one perpetrator because Barack Obama and Loretta Lynch wanted to “go soft” on terrorists. They prosecuted the one guy because he was literally the only guy they had physically arrested and could prosecute.
Oh, and Kash didn’t decline the invitation to join the trial team. He was never asked.
The head of the FBI is a guy holding a vendetta for being picked last in gym class.
And I think he may accidentally take down the mafia.
I’m sure everyone will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Kash Patel’s boss is an upstanding citizen, never accused of mob ties, never once in his life muddied an investigation that may reveal his own personal wrongdoing.
Anyway, here’s Kash Patel, under oath, turning into a Tim Robinson character when asked about Trump and Epstein:
FBI Director Kash Patel gets in a heated argument with Rep. Eric Swalwell over Jeffrey Epstein files pic.twitter.com/NcJQHyyGKw
— Janet™ (@Janet_sm145) October 18, 2025
Terry Rozier will be home before the street lights come on.
Thanks for reading.
Let me know what NBA stories you want to write about next. Shoot me an email at Deadseriousmailbag@gmail.com. Let’s yap.
Follow ya boy on social media: Facebook. Twitter. Bluesky. Instagram.
