Kevin Love, former teammate of Terry Rozier, discusses gambling issues in NBA: 'Such a stain on our game'

On just the third day of the 2025-26 NBA season, the association was hit with disturbing news when three of its figures were arrested for alleged roles in alleged illegal gambling schemes.

Chauncey Billups and Damon Jones were indicted on charges related to illegal poker games, while Jones and Terry Rozier were arrested for their alleged involvement in sports gambling.

Rozier was a member of the Miami Heat when he was first investigated by both the NBA and the FBI. He missed most of the second half of last season and was set to play for Miami this year, but was arrested the morning after the team’s first game, which he did not play in.

 

Kevin Love was in the Heat locker room when they received word of Rozier’s investigation. He has since been traded to the Utah Jazz, but the controversy still lingers throughout the league.

“It’s very complex. I mean, there’s so many things that are unanswered, and you take the NBA by its word. They do their due diligence, and they had looked into Terry’s situation and came back, and it was kind of just left where it was. Terry was able to come back and play, and then he went through training camp and now all this stuff comes out. It’s an interesting space we find ourselves in because, obviously, sports betting is such a huge part of sports culture now,” Love said in a recent interview with Fox News Digital. 

“And the gambling stuff, I think, is such a stain on our game. And I think you find yourself betting, tipping, fixing, and you go down a really dark space in dark area. So being able to move past that, I can’t imagine what it’s like for the Blazers, right? And I can’t imagine what it’s like having to respond to that as the Miami Heat. It just creates such a distraction. And yet, we don’t know what’s real, right? This has to continue to play itself out, and we’re seeing it across different sports now, but I think for the NBA’s sake and the greater sports fraternity that it gets resolved in a way that we can move on, and we can have, I guess, a healthier relationship with all this sports betting.

“I don’t know what the answer is with all of this, but at the league office, Adam [Silver] is really smart. There will be a way to resolve this in a way that’s positive. I’m a believer in that.”

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Love has been in the league since long before player props existed. But as gambling has become more prevalent, he’s heard far more outrage from fans in arenas and seen more of it online.

“You see it all the time now, if somebody is betting on you, and you don’t score or you go out of a game, or you don’t get as many rebounds on the over, it becomes something that can be really ugly. You see it in your messages or your DMs. When there’s money involved, things get messy…” Love said. “It’s so lucrative, and there’s so much money to be made that, like, I get it from a business standpoint, but I do think there’s a dark side, and there’s a negative side to this that I think people need to know, and it needs to be a little bit more transparent and out in the open so that maybe we can start to foster a more healthy relationship with it. 

“But again, sports gambling and sports betting and all that has been around forever. But now it’s just a click of a button away, right? I have friends that do it and have a healthy relationship with it and then others that don’t. I think it’s a space I’m not super well-versed in.”

Hindsight is 20/20, but it probably should have been obvious that increased fan tension would follow. Even Love admitted he “didn’t consider” how much fan behavior might change.

“I said, ‘OK, this is new,’” he admitted. “I think gambling at its essence, people go to Vegas and they built these huge casinos and resorts with people losing their money. It’s very convoluted, very layered, very complex space. I’m sure it was considered, but when it is this lucrative and there’s so much money to be made, business, you have to do it. I hope that there’s a better way forward, and I hope it’s mostly healthy and just the negative outweighs the positive and just makes for sexier headlines. But I do think the negative definitely leaves huge stain.”

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