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Pat McAfee didn’t hesitate to bring up the biggest story in sports during “College GameDay” on Saturday.
When discussing College Football Playoff odds for undefeated and one-loss teams — everyone with at least a 2 percent chance, according to the graphic — with the rest of the ESPN panel, McAfee, who hosts his eponymous show during the week, made a joke about Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups, who was arrested Thursday after allegedly being one of the “face cards” in a high-stakes poker scheme that was rigged.
“Not a lot of people are betting on two percent chances unless you’re Chauncey Billups at a Chauncey Billups poker game,” McAfee said from the show’s set in Nashville ahead of the Vanderbilt-Missouri game. “He was making some big bets allegedly on things that were just not likely, and everybody kind of knew they were rigged games.”
The scandal emerged as a stunning development this week, as Billups, Heat guard Terry Rozier and former NBA player and coach Damon Jones were all arrested following two investigations into separate schemes — for the alleged rigged poker games and for a sports gambling operation that federal investigators say relied on insider tips.
Billups, who the Trail Blazers placed on leave following his arrest, was allegedly part of the ring with connections to the Mafia that used X-ray card tables, special glasses, special contact lenses and card shuffles to fix the poker games.
Follow The Post’s latest on the gambling scandal rocking the NBA:
The FBI has arrested 31 people involved in a rigged poker game ring backed by the New York City organized crime families.
- Ernest Aiello — reputed Bonanno mobster
- Nelson “Spanish G” Alvarez
- Louis “Lou Ap” Apicella
- Ammar “Flapper Poker” Awawdeh
- Saul Becher — professional poker player
- Chauncey Billups — Portland Trail Blazers coach, NBA Hall of Famer and 2004 NBA champion
- Matthew “The Wrestler” Daddino
- Eric “Spooky” Earnest
- Lee Fama — professional poker player
- John Gallo
- Marco Garzon
- Thomas “Tommy Juice” Gelardo — reputed Lucchese mobster charged in 2013 for beating porn star girlfriend
- Jamie Gilet
- Tony “Black Tony” Goodson
- Kenny Han
- Shane “Sugar” Henne
- Osman “Albanian Bruce” Hoti
- Horatio Hu
- Zhen “Scruli” Hu
- Damon “Dee Jones” Jones — NBA player from 1998 to 2009
- Joseph Lanni
- John “John South” Mazzola
- Curtis Meeks
- Nicholas Minucci
- Michael Renzulli
- Anthony Ruggiero Jr.
- Anthony “Doc” Shnayderman
- Robert “Black Rob” Stroud
- Seth Trustman
- Sophia “Pookie” Wei
- Julius Ziliani
Attorney Chris Heywood told ESPN that Billups is a “man of integrity” and plans to “fight” the case in court.
“Anyone who knows Chauncey Billups knows he is a man of integrity; men of integrity do not cheat and defraud others,” Heywood told the outlet.
“To believe that Chauncey Billups did what the federal government is accusing him of is to believe that he would risk his hall-of-fame legacy, his reputation, and his freedom. He would not jeopardize those things for anything, let alone a card game.”
But it has also left the Trail Blazers without their head coach just games into the season, as interim head coach Tiago Splitter coached the team for their win against the Warriors on Friday.
