Gambling is a big no-no in sports, a big NO-NO when players (or those with insider info on things like player injuries) are implicated in betting scandals.
Baseball had a recent brush with a gambling scandal when Shohei Ohtani's interpreter was caught siphoning money out of Ohtani's bank account to pay off gambling debts. MLB breathed a sigh of relief that Ohtani himself - the league's super-most superstar - wasn't doing any of the gambling.
In basketball, the Toronto Raptors' Jontay Porter recently received a lifetime ban for not just betting on NBA games while he was playing in the G League (basketball's minor league), but - far worse - providing bettors with confidential info and limiting the amount of time he was on the court while playing in an actual NBA game.
The scheme was discovered when sportsbooks (legal bookies like DraftKings and FanDuel) picked up on some irregularities on the over/under on Porter's stats in a couple of games. Porter could obviously exercise some control over his performance by getting himself taken out of a game for a spurious injury.
The NBA's investigation found that Porter revealed information about his own health to a known sports bettor ahead of a March 20 game against the Sacramento Kings. Another bettor privy to the information placed an $80,000 same-game parlay bet that featured unders on Porter's statistics and would win $1.1 million, according to the NBA. Porter played three minutes before leaving the game with an illness. The bet, which was placed at DraftKings, was not paid. (Source: ESPN)
Porter was also caught betting on NBA games through someone else's online betting account. In the 13 games he bet on (none of which he played in), he netted about $22K in winnings.
$22K?
Jontay Porter isn't one of the big ballers. He's not Golden State's Steph Curry, who's making $52M this season. Or Jaylen Brown of the Celtics, who's got a five-year contract worth $304M.
Still, during his tenure in the league, when he bounced back and forth between the NBA and the G League, Porter earned several million dollars. And he was likely to earn over $2M next season with the Raptors.
Sacrificing $2M for a measly $22K worth of betting wins (plus, whatever the bettors were slipping him for insider info) is not a very smart career move. Jontay Porter is only 24, so he has plenty of time to figure out something else to do with his life. Or play in a European league or somewhere else. But where was he going to make the kind of money he stood to make, even as a second-tier player, in the NBA?
I'm sure it doesn't help his mood that his brother Michael, who's a year older, is having himself a pretty good NBA career with the Denver Nuggets, working off a multi-year contract worth between $172M and $210M.
I don't imagine holiday gatherings chez Porter are joyfests.
Then there's the NBA and betting. Like all the professional sports leagues, the NBA works hand in glove with sportsbooks, making tons of dough off of the incessant betting opportunities that the sportsbooks offer. If you watch any professional sports on TV - and I mostly watch baseball - you're going to be inundated with ads for the sportsbooks, encouraging you to bet on anything and everything.
And:
[NBA Commissioner Adam] Silver was the first major U.S. sports league commissioner to advocate for legalizing and regulating sports betting.
But of course.
Which is not to say that the major leagues invite bettors to bet more and better. It's just that...This hand and glove-ness doesn't seem like all that great an idea.
Meanwhile, Jontay Porter is left to contemplate the hand he's dealt himself and look at the cards he's holding. Read 'em and weep, Jontay. Read 'em and weep.
No comments:
Post a Comment