To be honest about it. I don't know enough about the particular accusations to address the subject. But, as a general rule of thumb, the mob and its gamblers in particular, bookmakers, etc., have always tried to get close to sports figures. Good examples in relatively recent history were the college basketball bribery scandals with members of the Paul Vario crew, baseball player Pete Rose betting with mob bookies, etc....how bout the "Black Sox" scandal many decades back with Arnold Rothstein. Or the 1930s-1960s era when the likes of Frankie Carbo, Eddie Coco, Blinky Palermo, and dozens of other hoodlums controlled the sport of boxing?

So history is replete with incidents of underworld and the sports world interacting for better or worse (usually for the worse, lol.)