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Ex-NBA star Rasheed Wallace accused professional referees of rigging games in a resurfaced interview that’s gone viral in the wake of the gambling scandal that has rocked the league and the sports world.
Wallace, 51, a former Detroit Pistons teammate of accused schemer Chauncey Billups, claimed in a 2023 interview that refs conspired to rig games using “secret emails.”
“With the referees, that’s why I was just saying, as I got older, I didn’t have to do all the cussing or come with attitudes,” Wallace, who has the third most technical fouls in NBA history, told the Underdog NBA.
“Now I’m just hitting them with logic. Like, ‘Oh, so y’all got that email last night, huh?’ Then they flare up,” he said.
“And I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, I know about y’all email s–ts. Let’s not forget that. I know about that.’”
Wallace later said he would tell the refs, “Y’all makin’ it too obvious.”
He did not say which NBA refs were part of the alleged email chains.
The former North Carolina Tarheel, who won a 2004 NBA Championship alongside Billups, also detailed a post-game run-in he had with notorious cheating NBA ref Tim Donaghy prior to his 2007 conviction for fixing games by providing inside information to professional gamblers and manipulating point spreads.
“All three [refs] walked by right so I blurt out, ‘I’m going to get my m—– f—- money back from that bulls–t tech, too,’” Sheed yelled at Donaghy who had hit him with a technical foul during the game.
“I said, ‘I know what the f–k he out there doing. His ass is f–kin’ cheatin’. That’s what the f–k he’s doin’.’”
Donaghy, who was released from prison in 2009 after serving a 15-month sentence, warned that this week’s arrests of Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier, Portland Trailblazer’s head coach Billups, and ex-NBA journey man Damon Jones, are “just the tip of the iceberg.”
“You’re going to see maybe a more of a bigger scandal coming out of the college level, because you have these young athletes that aren’t going to make it to the next level,” Donaghy told NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo on Friday.
“And somebody is going to offer them money to maybe fix a game and only win by 12 rather than 15 and they’re gonna take that money because they’re gonna need a way to support their families.”
Billups is the most high profile name in Thursday’s sweeping indictment from a federal probe into illegal sports betting and rigged poker games backed by the Mafia.
Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier is accused of purposefully sandbagging his performance to cash in on wagers that he would not achieve point totals.
The NBA Referee Association did not respond to a request for comment.
English (US)