Six words on a phone screen have blown the defense table in half and handed Terry Rozier the one alibi that could save his career.
For a full year after federal agents arrested Rozier in October 2025 while he was playing for the Miami Heat, the public narrative around this FBI gambling indictment treated the 32-year-old guard and his longtime friend Deniro Laster as a single operation. Federal prosecutors charged Rozier with four counts, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, sports bribery, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and honest services fraud. The government alleges Rozier tipped off Laster that he would pull himself out of a March 23, 2023 game for the Charlotte Hornets early, allowing Laster, alleged coconspirator Marves Fairley, and a group of bettors to hammer over $250,000 onto Rozier’s player prop unders at U.S. sportsbooks.
Now look at the court filing obtained by Los Angeles Magazine this week, and look at the joint request Rozier’s attorney David Markus and Laster’s lawyer Evan Corcoran filed on Wednesday to split their February 8, 2027 trial in two. According to the defense filing, six days after that Hornets game, on March 29, 2023, Laster allegedly texted an associate: “Don’t tell chum bout the bet.” The recipient allegedly answered, “Hell no.” Rozier’s camp says “chum” is Rozier’s nickname, and I look at that exchange as a seismic fracture in the government’s theory of the case.
The Prop Market Mechanics Expose the Flaw in the Fix
Consider how player prop markets and injury reporting actually function on an NBA game day. Because sportsbooks price points, rebounds, and assists unders assuming a starter’s full minute allocation, an unreported early exit is the ultimate blind spot for oddsmakers. According to the indictment, neither Hornets officials nor betting companies were notified of any plan for Rozier to leave after nine minutes, and he was absent from the pregame injury report. Yet in those nine minutes, Rozier posted five points, two assists, and one three-pointer while exceeding his projected rebound total, a statistical quirk that Markus noted caused some wagers tied to the alleged scheme to lose.
David Markus went straight for the jugular in his motion to dismiss two of the four charges against his client. “Terry Rozier is innocent. He is a basketball player, not a gambler. He never bet on anything, never agreed to underperform, never did underperform, and did not know that anyone was wagering on his statistics in the Charlotte Hornets’ March 23, 2023, game… This should end the case. One does not hide a bet from the person who supposedly sold it,” Markus wrote in the filing.
I read that line alongside the newly produced NBA medical records that Markus says “demonstrate conclusively” Rozier was nursing a genuine foot injury, and the defense’s strategy becomes unmistakable. If a player is really nursing a bad wheel and tells a close friend in private that he doubts his foot will hold up for four quarters, an opportunist can monetize that medical secret at the betting window without the athlete ever agreeing to throw a possession. According to Rozier’s attorney, Laster sent that March 29 text on the exact same day he allegedly acted as a middleman, collecting $70,000 in betting proceeds from Fairley before visiting Rozier at his home. Why warn an associate to keep quiet on the way to the player’s house if the player is in on the cut?
Turning the Courtroom Into a Two-Front War
Federal prosecutors oppose separate trials and counter that they have evidence showing the March 29 text did not relate to sports gambling at all. Furthermore, the government already secured a guilty plea on October 14 from sports bettor and poker player Shane Hennen for his role as an alleged fixer in the broader scheme, giving prosecutors cooperating momentum heading toward February.
Even if prosecutors argue that text was about something else, they cannot stop David Markus from putting that message on a giant screen in front of a federal jury and indicting Deniro Laster from the defense table. Evan Corcoran sees the train coming down the tracks. “Rozier’s lawyers will spend as much effort prosecuting Mr. Laster in this trial as the government,” Laster’s legal team wrote in their filing to U.S. District Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall.
That filing is an admission of total war between two longtime friends. Forcing two codefendants into the same courtroom when one man’s innocence relies on proving his longtime friend betrayed him behind his back is a constitutional circus. Rozier has already lost a year of his basketball life after the NBA placed him on indefinite leave and the Heat waived him at the end of last season, leaving him off an NBA roster while fighting for his name.
Judge DeArcy Hall now holds the gavel on a severance ruling that will dictate whether February 8, 2027 features one consolidated federal prosecution or two consecutive week-and-a-half trials where Rozier’s lawyers spend every cross-examination pinning the entire alleged $250,000 prop scheme on the friend who walked into his house after allegedly telling an associate to keep him in the dark.
21+. Commentary, not betting advice. Gambling problem? Call or text 1-800-MY-RESET (in Wisconsin, 1-800-GAMBLE-5).
