Q: What’s a prop bet? A: How the Heat’s Rozier is accused of betting on himself
Sports gambling scandals stretch back to chariot racing days. The latest, involving Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and two others connected to the NBA, is the most updated for our online sports betting saturated time.
READ MORE: Heat’s Terry Rozier arrested as part of FBI gambling investigation
Gamblers paid the 1919 Chicago White Sox to throw a World Series. A century and six years later, Rozier is accused of conspiring in a betting scheme based on his individual performance in an NBA regular season game when he played for the Charlotte Hornets.
Widespread legalized online sports betting made what he’s accused of possible. Online betting did for the popularity of the “prop bet” what Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Michael Jordan did for the popularity of the NBA.
READ MORE: A look at the Miami Heat guard and two other indicted NBA personalities
The kind of bet that allows you to wager on the coin flip
Here’s how prop bets work: The sportsbook establishes a number for a facet of the game and the bettor puts money down on whether that facet will wind up Over the number or Under the number.
This is not to be confused with the Over/Under bet on the total points in a game. Prop bets usually concern anything but a game’s scoreboard result — anything. A player’s number of points. B player’s number of rebounds. C player’s number of tackles. Length of the national anthem is a popular Super Bowl prop bet.
Speaking of the Super Bowl, another popular prop bet is heads or tails on the coin toss.
Before online sports betting, a legal sportsbook or illegal bookie rarely took in enough money on prop bets to make it worth much, if any, attention. But, online sports betting made prop bets more profitable.
Sportsbooks could now reach all kinds of bettors — the very analytical, the very addicted and the bettor who isn’t sure about the game, but is sure about an individual player’s performance.
Rozier, the indictment accuses, made sure some people were sure about his performance in a March 23, 2023, game he played for the Charlotte Hornets against the New Orleans Pelicans. Or, that he partially played.
Rozier took himself out of the game after 9:34 of playing time with five points, four rebounds and one three-pointer made. Anybody betting the Under on his points, rebounds or assists won their bets.
Rozier is accused of informing Deniro Laster he’d be out of the game after the first quarter. Laster told and sold that information, the indictment said, allowing others to make lucrative Under bets. The indictment said Rozier shared in some of those spoils.
READ MORE: Read FBI’s indictment of Miami Heat’s Terry Rozier, ex-NBA players and the Mafia
How the team you bet on can lose, and you still win your bet
The long-popular way to bet on NFL, NBA and college football and basketball games uses “point spreads.” A sportsbook establishes a betting line on a game by stating who they think will win and by how much, as well as how they think the public will wager.
This week, for example, the Atlanta Falcons are favored over the Miami Dolphins by 7.5 points. The point spread is 7.5. That means if you bet on the Dolphins, you don’t need them to win. You just need them to not lose by more than seven points. Those betting on Atlanta need the Falcons to win by eight points or more.
Sportsbooks, whether brick and mortar or online, will move the line down if there’s heavy betting on the Dolphins or up if there’s heavy betting on Atlanta. Too much money coming in on either side puts the sportsbook or illegal bookie in a more precarious business position than they like.
Point-spread betting, however, allows gamblers to encourage players to “shave points” instead of throwing a game. You don’t have to lose, players are told, just win by less than the spread.
The Boston College basketball scandal of 1978-79, referenced by a throwaway line in “GoodFellas” but deeply involving the real mob-connected people played by Ray Liotta and Robert DeNiro in the film, was a point-shaving scheme.
For years, the late Miami sports talk personality Hank Goldberg spoke about the danger of nationally legal sports gambling to the sports’ integrity. Decentralizing sports gambling, the argument went, makes it harder to spot unusual betting trends that indicate people are betting with a suspicious level of confidence.
As described in various media, including a Netflix “Bad Sport” documentary, that’s how the 1994 Arizona State University basketball point shaving scheme got busted.
Too much money went down on Washington at the Las Vegas sportsbooks before a March 5 game against Arizona State. The sportsbooks noticed. While the sportsbooks moved the betting lines in reaction to the betting — scheme participant Joseph Gagliano told Cronkite News in 2018 that game “remains the largest one-day movement on a betting line” — they also alerted authorities.
Thursday’s indictment says an Orlando Magic player told an unindicted co-conspirator that Orlando wouldn’t be playing all its starters in an April 6, 2023, game against Cleveland. The unindicted co-conspirator told Marves Fairley, one of the people who bought the Rozier information from Deniro Laster, the indictment alleges. Fairley bet $11,000 on Cleveland, a 9.5-point favorite.
The information was good — Orlando didn’t play its starting lineup and Cleveland won by 24.
This story was originally published October 23, 2025 at 5:37 PM.
