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Indeed, a duo of federal indictments filed last week will make Scorsese’s job a lot easier. Basketball star Terry Rozier and Hall of Famer–turned-coach Chauncey Billups were caught up in high-roller card games rigged with x-ray tables, hidden cameras, and loaded decks. Celebrities used as bait. Information passed to a “quarterback,” a mob-connected player who never lost. And when the high-rollers couldn’t pay, the threats came. Violence, blackmail, and worse.

In a separate indictment, players were involved in passing confidential information about injuries, etc., so insiders could win lucrative “prop bets,” a popular sports gambling innovation where you wage on how many yards a running back makes in a game, or how many free throws are completed by LeBron.

Jack Forbes / NY Post Design

These so-called “victims” lost tens of thousands, sometimes millions, through these scams, the Feds say. But the real damage runs much deeper. The leagues’ unholy marriage to gambling—and by extension, to organized crime—exposes how the moral rot that has infected every level of American sport because some of the most woke executives in America saw green instead of danger when they went there.

Sport gambling’s scope is indeed staggering. Globally, it’s a $100 billion business–and growing. It used to be confined to back alleys, bookie shops and of course in Vegas. The leagues forbade their players from engaging; Pete Rose famously denied a Hall of Fame entry because he went there.

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That all changed in 2018, when the Supreme Court ruled that states could legalize, and now it’s ubiquitous. Sports books advertise before and after games. Sponsored content commingled with analysts touting betting lines. Stadiums proudly display the logos of the various sports book companies so fans can wager bets on their i-Phones while they’re swigging a beer or enjoying a hot dog.

Even players can indulge as long as they don’t bet on their games. The leagues believe it’s a healthy outlet for their aggressive personalities.

Silver, Goodell and the rest moralize about “equity” all day long, but their social conscience stops at the cash register. And that register keeps ringing thanks to their lucrative alliances with gambling operators, advertising partners, and the fan engagement numbers that follow.

Follow The Post’s latest on the gambling scandal rocking the NBA:

Sounds like a lot of fun until you understand the downside. Players are restricted from betting on their own games, but that doesn’t stop them because it’s so easy to evade; leagues test for steroids, not where players are placing their bets.

Then there’s the Mob. I grew up in a gambling family. My father and grandfather were near degenerates. They gambled on everything, football, horse races and more. Fortunately, my family didn’t go without food or heating during my dad’s gambling binges, but I know of people who did.

Portland Trailblazers head coach Chauncey Billups leaving a federal court on Oct. 23. AP

Financing it all: Organized crime, which knows more about the business of gambling than any sports book or league official because it’s specialized in this stuff for decades.

Which brings me back to Silver and Goodell and the idiocy behind their embrace of this abhorrent lifestyle. I’m not saying the Five Families are regularly consulting with the leagues, or have infiltrated the sports book companies, but the Mob knows its clientele.

Neighborhood guys like my pops, high rollers who don’t want to follow Vegas rules, and also sports figures. The reason sports figures make such enticing targets is pretty simple: The same addictive personality that fuels their drive on the gridiron or basketball court carries over to their recreational activities like gambling.

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver. AP

Normalize gambling, as has been done, and it’s no surprise here that NBAers found themselves in the middle of those sprawling federal indictments last week. Members of the Cosa Nostra and so-called “betfluencers” supplied the so-called “faces” or professional athletes who allegedly took part in the rigged card games and the money-good “prop bets” based on inside information on injuries etc.

Yet they were just “Shocked! Shocked!” to find that gambling is going on under their collective nose.

There are, of course, no bigger social justice warriors in America than the people who run professional sports. The NFL, NBA, and MLB have spent the past decade competing to out-woke one another, funding DEI bureaucracies, cutting checks to Black Lives Matter. They’ve even imposed gender quotas in hiring, requiring teams to interview women for coaching positions.

They pose as enlightened visionaries reshaping American culture for the better. The dirty secret is that those same do-gooders have been feeding one of the most destructive habits in American life, and unwittingly, organized crime.

True, no NFL players have been named, but my sources say it’s only a matter of time for all of the reasons I cited earlier.

Yes, only the willfully ignorant would be shocked by any of this, which is why I got a good laugh from the reactions of Silver or Goodell. Both men are among the highest paid executives in corporate America, Silver earns $10 million a year. Goodell six times that much.

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As much as Amazon may have wanted to dodge the spotlight in President Trump’s trade war, there was no avoiding it for America’s largest online retailer.

First, the e-commerce company was entangled in the fleeting spat Tuesday with the White House over a faulty report that Amazon was going to show shoppers the costs of tariffs.

Two days later, the economic reality arrived when Amazon reported among the slowest growth ever in its North American retail business.

The region, Amazon’s largest, contributed to first-quarter financial results that showed the slowest overall sales growth since the depths of the pandemic, the company reported Thursday. Sales from January through March rose to $155.7 billion, 9 percent more than the same period a year earlier. Profit was $17.1 billion, up 64 percent.

For the current quarter, which ends in June, Amazon told investors to expect sales of $159 billion to $164 billion, and for operating profits to shrink to as low as $13 billion. Amazon added “tariff and trade policies” to the list of factors it says can make its forecasts uncertain.

The results were mixed compared with Wall Street’s expectations. Amazon’s stock price was down more than 3 percent in aftermarket trading following the earnings release.

“Obviously, none of us know exactly where tariffs will settle or when,” Andy Jassy, the chief executive of Amazon, said on a call with investors. He said the company is “pretty maniacally focused” on keeping prices down, by purchasing extra inventory in advance of tariffs and will be helping sellers on Amazon’s marketplace do the same.

Investors have been trying to untangle how President Trump’s on-again-off-again tariffs would affect Amazon customers. Some speculated that consumers may have accelerated purchases in March and April ahead of more tariffs kicking in, boosting spending in an otherwise uncertain environment.

Mr. Jassy said Amazon customers have done some “heightened buying” of certain types of products, although he did not specify which ones.

Many different components drive revenue in Amazon’s retail business. The online sales of products it offers directly to customers grew 5 percent to $57.4 billion, and the services it provides to sellers who list products on its site grew 6 percent to $36.5 billion.

Advertising, which investors view as a promising and profitable business, grew 18 percent to $13.9 billion.

Investors have long focused on Amazon’s cloud computing business, which generates most of the company’s profit. Mr. Jassy, who ran the cloud business before his promotion to chief executive, has been building up the company’s artificial intelligence offerings. The cloud business grew 17 percent, to $29.3 billion, in the first quarter.

Mr. Jassy said Amazon could have sold more cloud services if it had more capacity at its data centers, the remote buildings filled with computers that power the modern internet and A.I. He added that he expects the constraints to ease in the coming months. The company has been racing to build more infrastructure, and the release on Thursday showed Amazon spent more than $24 billion on capital expenses in the first three months of the year, about $2 billion less than the previous quarter. In February, Amazon said it was planning to spend about $100 billion on capital expenditures in 2025.

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