It’s been a week since the federal government indicted Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups as part of a two-pronged gambling investigation.
On Tuesday, Rozier’s lawyer spoke at length about the case on Fox News.
“This is an innocent guy who’s getting completely screwed, to use some legal vernacular, in terms of his career,” attorney Jim Trusty said, via the Miami Herald. “It’s an 11-year vet. He’s played 1,000 games. They’re latching onto a game where the NBA literally cleared him two years ago and trying to suggest that somehow they know better and that they know he was a conspirator, as opposed to just somebody who had a hurt foot.”
Trusty admitted that Rozier told De’Niro Laster about Rozier’s plan to exit a March 2023 game with a foot injury. Trusty insisted, however, that there was no effort by Rozier to profit from the information.
“I will just tell you, confiding in a friend, a childhood friend, and saying, ‘Man, I’m banged up, it’s the end of the season, we’re out of the playoffs, I think I’m going to sit early in this game,’ that’s not a crime. That’s nothing. That’s not even prohibited by any sort of statute. That’s simply confiding in a friend. And maybe the league should create rules that say you can only tell a manager or trainer or your priest or your mom. But he told a friend. And whatever that friend did is not on Terry. That’s the difference between being indicted for the trophy of a professional basketball player and having solid evidence.”
Trusty said that Rozier did not fake an injury.
“I’m not seeing anything that makes me think that Terry should have been charged,” Trusty said. “This is a situation where a friend took information and ran with it. Terry didn’t do anything.”
Trusty also is concerned that, instead of the usual practice of starting low on the criminal ladder and working its way up to the top, the government may have started at the top and worked its way down.
“I am concerned the government might have crawled into bed with some horrific people to try to get their cooperation, violent people on the gambling side,” Trusty said. “Again, they’re not going to have anything that’s honest or direct about Terry. But I am concerned that they’re really kind of making deals with the devil to try to work their way down, instead of the opposite direction.”
Trusty will have every right to use all means at his disposal to raise the question of whether the prosecution has failed to prove all elements of the charges against Rozier beyond a reasonable doubt. And the case will attract plenty of media attention as it continues to unfold.
Obviously, Trusty isn’t going to declare to the world that his client did it. Whether his contentions have any merit will be determined if/when the case goes to trial, if/ when Trusty has a chance to poke holes in the government’s case, and if/when Trusty puts Rozier on the witness stand.
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