Chauncey Billups and Terry Rozier are among more than 30 people charged in connection with two separate but related federal gambling investigations that involved the league and organised crime.
Billups is an NBA Hall of Fame player and head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers while Rozier, who is in his 11th NBA season, plays as a guard with the Miami Heat.
The schemes - one that involved insider sports betting and another that rigged poker games nationwide - spanned years and involved tens of millions of dollars in illicit gains from wire fraud, money laundering, extortion and gambling, FBI Director Kash Patel said at a press conference in Brooklyn.
Rozier was one of several NBA insiders who provided non-public information to their criminal partners, who in turn used straw bettors to place multiple bets based on the tips, authorities said.
"This is the insider trading saga for the NBA," Mr Patel said.
Billups was charged in a separate case with helping to rig poker games to defraud unknowing players who were lured to the games with the promise of playing against celebrities, officials said.
The defendants employed sophisticated technology, including fraudulent card shufflers and x-ray tables.
That scheme involved several organised crime families in New York, who also used extortion and robbery to collect unpaid debts and laundered some of the proceeds through cryptocurrency and other means, according to prosecutors.
While the arrests stemmed from two separate indictments, a handful of defendants were charged in both cases, Brooklyn US Attorney Joseph Nocella said, including former Cleveland Cavaliers player and assistant coach Damon Jones.
Representatives of the Heat, the Blazers and the NBA did not immediately answer requests for comment.
Several players in the "big four" North American men's leagues - the NBA, the National Football League, Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League - have faced punishment for gambling in recent years, as sports betting has expanded after becoming legal in more US states.
Former NBA player Jontay Porter was banned from the league for life and pleaded guilty in 2024 after he was accused of manipulating his performance to help bettors win wagers on his statistics.
Pete Rose, Major League Baseball's all-time hits leader, was barred for life from MLB in 1989 after he was caught betting on games while he was the manager of the Cincinnati Reds.
After repeated calls from US President Donald Trump, Rose was posthumously removed from MLB's permanently ineligible list earlier this year, making him eligible for the Hall of Fame.
Rozier, 31, is in his 11th NBA season and has averaged 13.9 points a game in his career.
He had been under scrutiny for a March 2023 game after several online sports books flagged an unusual number of bets that he would go under his projected stats for the day.
He left the game after only nine minutes, citing an injury.
Rozier's lawyer James Trusty said prosecutors "appear to be taking the word of spectacularly incredible sources rather than relying on actual evidence of wrongdoing. Terry was cleared by the NBA and these prosecutors revived that non-case".
Billups, 49, is in his fifth year as Portland's head coach.
He played for seven teams during his NBA career and won a championship with the Detroit Pistons in 2004, when he was named Most Valuable Player of the NBA Finals.
