The legend of “Mr. Big Shot” took a wicked hit from the FBI.

After the Feds busted an illegal poker game where Chauncey Billups was seated at the table, the greatest basketball player in Colorado history stood accused of money laundering and wire fraud on behalf of a team of nefarious gentlemen known as “Flapper Poker,” “Albanian Bruce” and “Juice.”

Doing business with mobsters?

Say it ain’t so, Chauncey.

Why would a man who earned more than $100 million and a championship ring in the NBA gamble with his Hall of Fame reputation?

I fell out of bed Thursday and drank a cup, then nearly choked on my coffee while reading the shocking news of the day.

Oh, boy.

The 22-page indictment that led to Billups’ arrest made me sick.

Not just because it was the worst day in the professional life of a Denver sports icon who has long been the King of Park Hill and the pride of the CU Buffaloes.

The scandalous allegations shook me to the core, because when I think of Billups, I still see the 15-year-old kid I hauled out of class for an interview, treating him and his buddies to cheeseburgers and Frostys at a Wendy’s down the street from George Washington High School.

At this point, let’s slow down and remember it’s yet to be conclusively determined in a court of law that Billups was a celebrity “face card” paid to lure rich rubes to the table for a rigged poker game that shook down an untold number of victims for more than $7 million since 2019.

There’s so much we don’t know, from the level of familiarity Billups had with crime families that perpetrated this scheme to how much he understood about a card-shuffling machine wired to stack the deck against the unsuspecting “whales” ensnared in a big-money trap.

But we all know the ice-cold way justice is served on the internet in 2025:

Presumed guilty until proven innocent.

“The pressure thing is nothing to me, man,” Billups said Wednesday night, after a Trail Blazers team he has coached since 2021 lost its season-opening game to Minnesota. “I do the best I can and let the chips fall where they may.”

Ouch.

Barely 12 hours later, Blazers management put Billups on indefinite leave after his arrest.

Newsflash: Big-time sports are not any more immune to corruption or scandal than Washington politics or the Catholic church.

It doesn’t require anywhere close to six degrees of separation to bring the inherent dangers of sports gambling home to roost.

Throughout an up-and-down final NBA season in Denver, Michael Porter Jr. dealt with the anguish of brother Jontay receiving a lifetime ban from the league and possible time in prison for conspiring with gamblers to profit from proposition bets tied to his individual statistics as a member of the Toronto Raptors.

When the Nuggets began their championship pursuit Thursday night at Golden State, among the new assistant coaches of David Adelman’s staff was Rodney Billups, who realized a family dream when he worked alongside his big brother as a Trail Blazers assistant from 2022-24.

Gambling by pro athletes, who have a jones for competition and wholeheartedly believe losing isn’t an option, is as old as laughter at the back of the team bus.

Through the years, more than one Broncos player you know and love has been recruited for a chair at the poker table for private games that have long been a staple of Denver’s social scene.

As certainly as insider stock tips have been surreptitiously exchanged among those who walk the halls of congress in our nation’s Capitol, privileged information about player health is relentlessly sought by gamblers looking for an edge. 

Over the past 40 years, from arena hallways to restaurants on the road, I’ve felt more than a little uneasy with the knowledge a member of a pro sports franchise has either willingly or unwittingly given an aquaintance injury info not generally known by the betting public before a game.

In a separate indictment that shook the NBA’s world with allegations of gamblers’ hands on the scoreboard, unnamed co-conspirator No. 8 was identified as a player in the league from 1997-2014 and a coach for the the last four seasons.

Hmm. Does that description bear any resemblance to a certain Colorado hoops legend that did two stints as a point guard for the Nuggets?

One of the games under investigation is a Chicago-Portland date in March 2023, lost by the Trail Blazers when several of their top players were held out. Ahead of tipoff, co-conspirator No. 8 allegedly told Eric “Spook” Earnest that Portland was tanking to get a better draft pick.

The coach of the Blazers at the time?

Billups.

Is that piece of evidence a nothing burger or a big freakin’ deal?

Let the pure among us volunteer to cast the first stone at Billups.

I’m willing to bet it won’t be a long line.

In the unrelenting greed of American sports leagues for the next big financial score, movers and shakers have grown so cozy under the bedcovers with omnipresent, corporate gambling that a cynic might begin to wonder if NBA commissioner Adam Silver has forgotten where his tushie ends and the hands of DraftKings begin.

For those of you looking to score from home: In his game at Golden State, Nuggets forward Aaron Gordon was listed as a -111 favorite to go over 8.5 rebounds plus assists.

If you truly cared about that esoteric tidbit, maybe your real passion is something other than basketball.

Vince Lombardi would roll over in his grave if he could see gamblers glued to their cellphones, frantically hunting prop bets with the new golden rule of sports:

Covering the spread isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.

That’s more than a little sick.

And it’s an indictment of what sports in America has become.