For the first time in this new age of legal sports betting, NBA free agency was impacted by multiple federal investigations into active players. Just as news was breaking that Detroit Pistons free agent guard Malik Beasley was being looked at by a U.S. Attorney’s office over questionable behavior dating back multiple seasons, ESPN NBA insider Shams Charania reported that Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier had been cleared.
In a segment on The Pat McAfee Show on June 30, leading into free agency, Charania appeared to confirm that Rozier was off the hook.
“Terry Rozier, as of right now, has been cleared,” Charania said. “He finished the season with Miami, there’s nothing really active as of right now with him.”
However, Charania added that an NBA spokesperson referred to the investigation as a “federal matter,” possibly indicating that the league had not found any evidence of wrongdoing itself. That would not necessarily mean Rozier was “cleared” in full, as aggregated reports of Charania’s comments indicated.
Those comments are now under question following an episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out in which Yahoo Sports NBA analyst Tom Haberstroh reported that Rozier is, in fact, still part of a U.S. Attorney probe into Beasley, Jontay Porter, and others.
“What I’m told, contrary to Charania’s reporting, is that Terry Rozier has not been cleared of any wrongdoing,” Haberstroh said. “Only that his name came up in the existing federal investigation.”
Following the release of the episode and Haberstroh’s new reporting, two additional NBA reporters came to the fore.
“Shams (Charania) said something not totally clear a month ago that led some people to believe he was reporting that a federal investigation of Terry Rozier involving gambling had stopped and the matter was closed,” wrote Miami Herald reporter Barry Jackson on X.
“There have [been] no charges filed against Rozier at this time, and a previous NBA investigation uncovered no wrongdoing by the Heat point guard.”
Shams said something not totally clear a month ago that led some people to believe he was reporting that a federal investigation of Terry Rozier involving gambling had stopped and the matter was closed. Pablo Torre reports this week that the federal investigation of Rozier…
— Barry Jackson (@flasportsbuzz) July 15, 2025
Later, former TNT Sports reporter Chris Haynes clarified that Rozier remains under investigation.
It appears that this was an issue of unclear reporting on a sensitive subject being aggregated across the internet, with potentially damaging repercussions. Perhaps Charania meant to report that Rozier was no longer under investigation by the NBA, a semantic difference that would likely not change the way he is viewed by fans or rival front offices in the NBA. What fans took Charania to mean was that Rozier was fully in the clear.
We can’t know what information other NBA teams have about Rozier or the investigation. But, Rozier is likely to have been in trade conversations this summer, as Miami was linked to Kevin Durant and Jonathan Kuminga, among others.
The NBA world may have been operating under faulty pretenses during the transaction period. Although Charania did not say anything factually incorrect, he will likely be clearer the next time he reports on something so specific and touchy.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.