Key Takeaways
- Terry Rozier and longtime friend Deniro Laster want separate trials because Rozier plans to argue that Laster used inside information without his knowledge.
- Prosecutors allege Rozier planned an early exit from a March 2023 NBA game and told Laster, who sold the information for $100,000, so bettors could wager on Rozier underperforming.
- Both men face conspiracy charges for wire fraud and money laundering, while Rozier’s attorney insists, “Whatever that friend did is not on Terry.”
Attorneys for Terry Rozier and Deniro Laster, his lifelong friend and last remaining co-defendant in the NBA illegal gambling case, are requesting separate trials, as the former intends on placing the blame on the latter.
In the legal filing obtained by Complex, the two argued in favor of splitting their trials because Rozier’s attorney “will spend as much effort prosecuting Mr. Laster in this trial as the government.”
Rozier and Laster are accused of teaming up in a scheme to take advantage of the former’s leg injury during a March, 2023 NBA game between Rozier’s Charlotte Hornets and the New Orleans Pelicans. In exchange for a $100,000 bribe, Rozier, Laster, and other alleged co-conspirators (some of whom have already pleaded guilty in the sprawling multi-defendant case) are accused of planning for Rozier to take himself out of the game in the first quarter, so that the others could bet using that information, which was not yet public.
In Wednesday’s letter, Rozier lays out his defense: the injury was real, and he didn’t know anything about any gambling plans — but Laster did.
“[Rozier] did not know about any bets,” the document reads. “He left the March 23 game because he was hurt (the NBA recently produced objective medical records which demonstrate conclusively that Mr. Rozier was hurt), and not because of any arrangement with Mr. Laster.”
“Mr. Rozier’s counsel…will argue that Mr. Laster is guilty,” the document continues.
There should be two separate trials, it argues, because, if there was just one, “Mr. Laster would face two prosecutors, and the jury would hear the case against him twice.”
Prosecutors have long been wary of Rozier using Laster as a scapegoat, expressing these concerns to Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall way back in a Dec. 2025 letter upon finding out that the former NBA player was paying for his friend’s lawyer.
In their letter, prosecutors cited comments made by Rozier's attorney James Trusty in an appearance on Fox News.
“Confiding in a friend, a childhood friend and saying man it’s the end of the season, we are out of the playoffs, I’ll sit early in this game, that’s not a crime . . . that is confiding in a friend," Trusty said. "But [Rozier] told a friend, and whatever that friend did is not on Terry . . . This is a situation where a friend took information, ran with it, Terry didn’t do anything.”
Rozier and Laster are charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The two have been close friends since childhood, and Laster has even lived with Rozier at times, court documents reveal.
