Sports Embraced the Devil, and Now the Devil Is At their Doorstep

If this were just about struggling two-way players betting on their own stats, this would be less of an issue, but Terry Rozier is entering the final year of a $96.2 million contract where he will make $26.6 million by the end of the season. Malik Beasley was not arrested today, but he and his nearly $60 million in career earnings was previously implicated in this probe too, which prompted me to ask how bad is the NBA’s gambling problem?

Today tells us it’s bad. Very very bad. Existential, perhaps. I did not have the word “mafia” showing up on my bingo card of already low expectations. No matter how Kash Patel wants to spin this as some new initiative under his lack of leadership, this is an old investigation that simply fell into his lap.

This Isn’t Just the NBA’s Problem

This existential crisis for sports really began with the greatest athlete alive and possibly ever: Shohei Ohtani. He is the darling of the sports world right now after playing what for my money is the greatest game anyone in any sport has ever played—throwing six shutout innings with 10 strikeouts while going 3 for 3 at the plate with 3 moonshot home runs and a walk. I have coached little league baseball for a decade, and I have never seen a little leaguer play a game like that, let alone someone in Game 4 of the NLCS to send his team to the World Series. He’s not human. Babe Ruth could never.

But Ohtani was embroiled in a pretty touchy gambling scandal last year where his bank account was making payments to an illegal gambling ring being surveilled by the Feds. It was the first sports column I wrote here at Splinter, and gambling has continued to be a bigger and bigger theme in our little sports corner of the web ever since. This investigation into gambling and professional sports by the Feds was big news before any of us even knew what a coconut truly was, let alone the concept of co-president Elon Musk or FBI Director Kash Patel.

Ohtani’s translator wound up pleading guilty for illegally transferring nearly $17 million from the baseball demigod’s account, but that still proves that this whole mess with the Feds and sports gambling began near the very top of the sports hierarchy. This is not some niche thing, it’s a massive black cloud hanging over all of sports raising ever more uncomfortable questions about these leagues’ integrity. Ohtani avoided any criminal liability for this and for all we can say we know about this case, is a victim who had millions stolen from him, but that hasn’t stopped much of the sports world from wondering if Ohtani’s translator fell on his sword for a modern-day Pete Rose. That’s not Ohtani’s fault, that’s MLB’s fault for fostering the environment for thoughts like that to look more rational.

Whatever truly happened in that case is secondary to the fact that Major League Baseball invited that probe into their home they banned Pete Rose from up until he died. The same way the NBA invited Jontay Porter and the rest of this federal probe into players like Terry Rozier into their home. The same way the NFL and NHL are kidding themselves if they think they’re immune to these prop bet problems. This is America, where there is money to be made, someone will find a way.

Now there is one part of this probe that is very NBA-themed, and it’s the investigation that led to Chauncey Billups’ arrest related to a rigged poker game connected to the mafia. Former NBA star Gilbert Arenas was arrested in this probe earlier this year, and this is starting to tell another irresponsible story about the NBA’s embrace of gambling. Arenas famously was part of an “old west”-like incident in December 2009, where Javaris Crittenton pointed a loaded gun at him, prompting Arenas to bring four guns of his own into the locker room—all stemming from a dispute over a card game, per Caron Butler in his memoir Tuff Juice: My Journey from the Streets to the NBA.

There is no indication that famed incident over an $1,100 pot is connected to the current day probe, but it’s hard to not see the potential parallels to an investigation around rigged poker games. What was Crittenton so upset about? The NBA’s charter flights have long been a safe space for degenerate gamblers, as Michael Jordan’s Vegas escapades made famous, and opening their doors to sports betting when their home was already rife with high-stakes poker games allegedly connected to the mob is like pouring gasoline on a controlled burn you thought was held away from everyone’s eyes 30,000 feet up in the air. Now it’s a raging tire fire that Kash Patel and Trump are parading around in front of the whole world. Great job everyone.

The NBA and MLB and NFL and NHL thought they could advertise live odds during the broadcast without creating an existential threat to their business, in defiance of the known history around this subject, and now after inviting the devil into their locker rooms, another different kind of devil has followed them in there. It is going to be increasingly difficult to know what is and is not true from a bureau chief no stranger to telling tall tales under oath to Congress, but this is real. The NBA suspended a player for life over this federal probe last year. Ohtani’s translator pleaded guilty to illegally transferring funds to a betting ring under federal surveillance. Thirteen NCAA basketball players from six schools were found to be involved in a gambling ring too. This problem is accelerating, not slowing down, and sports investigative reporter Pablo Torre who has already reported on this NBA story says there is “a lot more to come.” Whatever happens next, these leagues cannot claim ignorance, and the logical conclusion of their greedy actions has arrived at the NBA’s doorstep, brought to them by one of the least friendly investigators they could ask for.

UPDATE: I had asked BetOnline’s Brand Manager Dave Mason for comment around today’s developments, and he got back to me just as I published the story, so I’ll include this short interview below that may shed more light on what Pablo Torre means when he says there is “a lot more to come.” My questions are in bold, and his responses are in regular text below.

Do you think this issue with prop bets extends beyond the NBA?

I can’t speak personally to any issues, but if it’s happening in the NBA then it will certainly happen in other leagues and sports.

Have you seen any unexplained activity in prop bets that hasn’t been captured by this probe yet? 

BetOnline.ag has not seen any irregular activity in prop bet wagering, but it would be difficult for our book to identify that because our prop limits are low. We keep them low ($100-$500) because of this very reason…it will protect players, teams and organizations from corruption. BetOnline has been in this business for 25 years, so it’s not as if we’re a new book that doesn’t understand the temptations and potential pitfalls these athletes face. The best way to offset these temptations is to implement standard, small limits for prop betting.