SAN FRANCISCO — Shortly before the season tipped off, the Warriors welcomed the organization’s legal counsel for a meeting with players and staff that has become a routine part of the preseason in the modern NBA.

It was on Sunday that Woodie Dixon, Golden State’s chief legal officer, reminded the team of the potential pitfalls of fixing games, sharing proprietary information and other ways they could help bettors illicitly gain an upper hand. Just four days later, the league was rocked by a gambling scandal.

An active player and an active head coach were arrested early Thursday morning, just hours after participating in their respective season openers, in a federal sting that rounded up 34 alleged participants in an illegal sports gambling ring.

“Every team in the league does this, goes through bullet points of what’s not allowed,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said before his team tipped off against the Nuggets. “So our players are well aware. All players are well aware of what they’re allowed to do and what they’re not allowed to do.”

No Warriors were involved, but Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups — as well as Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier — was arrested and charged with scheming to rig underground poker games. The charging documents also indicate Billups shared information about the injury status of his Blazers players before a 2023 game.

Billups’ brother, Rodney, is a member of the Nuggets’ coaching staff.

Denver coach David Adelman said “whatever Rodney needs for his family is all I care about” but added that “I only know what I read.”

“Obviously it’s a tricky situation with some of the don’t text, don’t talk, all this kind of stuff,” Adelman said of the league’s guidance. “You just have to careful in casual conversation with what you say. It’s a story that’s evolving. … This is not how we want to start the season in the NBA.”

Rozier, who was arrested at the Heat’s hotel in Orlando following their game against the Magic, is accused of providing nonpublic information to gamblers that involved at least seven games from 2023 to 2024. Kerr was asked if he was concerned about the integrity of the league.

“No,” he said.

That said, Adelman noted, sports betting “is a part of our culture now; it’s not going anywhere.” The NBA, like other major profession leagues, has “co-official gambling partners” in DraftKings and FanDuel. The optics weren’t any better on ESPN, a key rightsholder, where pundits discussed the scandal while an advertisement for ESPN Bet, the company’s gambling service, ran on the ticker below.

Nowadays, every team has its own preseason legal meeting. Those didn’t take place in Kerr’s playing days, which ended in 2003, he said.

The biggest difference between now and then, rather than the hand-in-hand relationship between leagues and sports betting companies, are the messages he and his players receive from the bettors themselves. Kerr doesn’t have social media, but losing gamblers have managed to voice their displeasure in his email inbox.

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“That’s the thing that I don’t like about (legal sports betting) the most,” Kerr said. “Our players should not have to deal with that, but they do. They probably would anyway, even if we didn’t have these partnerships with these companies.”

Moody, vets expected to play in Portland

The only player expected to sit out the second half of the Warriors’ first back-to-back of the season is veteran center Al Horford.

Moses Moody is trending toward making his season debut Friday night in Portland, Kerr said, and the remainder of the Warriors’ veterans are also expected to play. Moody missed his second game of the season Thursday with a calf injury, but Kerr said he was “hopeful” that he would be available against the Blazers.

“He scrimmaged (Wednesday) and I talked to Moses today and he said he’s feeling good,” Kerr said. “That’s the plan.”