PRO SPORTS FACE A RECKONING ON GAMBLING
JLEAGUES IN BED WITH COMPANIES PEDDLING PROP BETS HAVE MADE SCANDALS INEVITABLE
ontay Porter has played parts of 26 games for the Toronto Raptors, 37 NBA games in all. He may never play another one.
If found guilty or even found to be involved at all regarding the possibility of prop bet manipulation, he shouldn’t just be suspended from the NBA. He should be expelled.
This is the built-in problem that now exists in numerous layers among legalized gambling, professional sports and the involvement of television. Everybody is looking to see where they can make their money.
That there are scandals now is absolutely expected — and there will he more. There will be damage to athletes, to the sports themselves, and to the television networks, which have tried to find a way to broadcast sports, advocate gambling on sports and maintain some kind of uncomfortable distance.
The business of gambling is fine. The juxtaposition between gambling, professional athletes, team sports and the Big Four Major Leagues is not fine. It may never be fine.
The Jontay Porter story, if true, is more than troubling. It underscores how easily one can cheat and at the same time how easily someone can get caught.
Prop bets — betting on portions of games while the game is going on, who will score, when will they score, how many rebounds or assists any player will get in a quarter or a half or a period — are all part of the daily obsession of legalized gambling.
And the NBA is fortunate that if this is its largest scandal to date, it features a player next to no one has ever heard of.
That isn’t the story in Major League Baseball right now, where commissioner Rob Manfred is covering his eyes and ears and hoping the messy Shohei Ohtani story will just go away quickly. Ohtani is the largest name in the sport, the highest paid player.
But trying to understand exactly what happened with Ohtani, with his fired translator, with millions of dollars disappearing from his bank account, with lies being told, with questions not being answered, with bets being lost, is still in need of context and greater accuracy.
Whatever the truth happens to be in the Ohtani case, we don’t know it — yet. We know that somehow US$4.5 million has gone missing, or was stolen, or somehow withdrawn out of his bank account.
How does that much money disappear, in nine separate withdrawals, without anyone noticing? This is professional sports. There’s no shortage of pro athletes who have been taken for millions of dollars. Many of them are not sophisticated from an economic point of view. Many go broke or bankrupt or get taken by greedy agents, investment dealers or anyone with a pitch to sell.
But the built-in naivete of pro athletes — likely part of the case of Ohtani — is quite different than whatever might have happened with Porter the basketball player.
In both cases, what’s missing is truth that makes any sense.
Years ago, I was talking with a professional athlete about their lives and how so much of their daily activities are controlled by the team they play for. When is the game, when is the practice, when is the bus to the airport, when is the flight, where is the hotel ... none of it is their decision. It’s all controlled around them.
“No athlete,” this one told me, “should make any decision more complicated than window or aisle.”
That was a flight joke. It remains relevant today.
On that same team, a young athlete in his third professional season asked me a question one day: “Do you know what a mortgage is?”
I explained that I did, that I had one and that I’d probably have one for years.
“Everyone I know bought their house for cash,” the pro athlete told me. “We don’t know about mortgages.”
And that was years before multi-million-dollar deals invaded pro sports. Ohtani is paid more money than anyone in baseball to play for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Jontay Porter is on a twoway deal with the Raptors and would be one of the lowest paid players in the NBA.
If there was a chance for him to make money on the side, by taking a dive, by missing out on a prop bet, then there is some motivation for that, especially not knowing what kind of future you might have in the NBA.
No doubt the NBA will complete its investigation into the prop bet challenge involving Porter and come up with a decision of some kind.
There have already been point-shaving scandals in basketball, referees manipulating scores, tennis players tanking matches, football players betting on games, hockey players caught gambling.
Clarification is needed from all who are profiting from illegal and legalized sports gambling.