Portland, Oregon - The NBA was rocked Thursday by the arrests of Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier, in connection with a massive probe into illegal gambling.

ABC News, citing law enforcement sources, said the arrest of the 49-year-old Billups was linked to an illegal poker operation tied to the Mafia.

Rozier was arrested in a separate but related betting case, the television network said.

"We are here in New York to announce a historic arrest across a wide, sweeping criminal enterprise that envelops both the NBA and La Cosa Nostra," FBI Director Kash Patel said at a press conference in New York, saying four of the five so called "Five Families" which dominate organized crime were involved in the case.

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"We're talking about tens of millions of dollars in fraud and theft and robbery across a multi-year investigation," he claimed, as officials from multiple law enforcement agencies described the two interlinked cases.

Six people are accused of being at the center of a "gambling ring built around professional basketball, where players and associates allegedly used inside information to manipulate prop bets on major sports betting platforms," NYC Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said.

She claimed that, "in some instances, players altered their performance or took themselves out of games to make sure that those bets paid out" – and that Rozier was one of them.

A second investigation identified 31 defendants in a nationwide poker rigging scheme.

A former star player for the Detroit Pistons and a member of the NBA Hall of Fame, Billups retired from the league in 2014.

He has been the head coach of the Trail Blazers since 2021.

Billups was on the bench for the team's first game of the season on Wednesday, a loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves.

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ABC said Billups would make a first court appearance in Oregon later Thursday.

Rozier was the 16th overall pick by the Boston Celtics in the 2015 draft. He has averaged 13.9 points per game playing for three teams over his 11-year NBA career.

The 31-year-old is suffering from a hamstring injury and did not play in the Heat's opening game of the NBA season on Wednesday.

The bombshell revelations come after Jontay Porter of the Toronto Raptors was banned from the league for life last year for his role in a betting scandal. NBA All-Star Gilbert Arenas was arrested in July on charges of running illegal poker games at his mansion in the Los Angeles suburbs.