Pete Rose and the Cincinnati Reds...The 1919 Black Sox Scandal... The Arizona State basketball betting scandal... Illegal wagering and sports have crossed paths several times over the decades, and it's never pretty when it happens. Unfortunately, the NBA was the latest dramatic casualty.
The league recently handed down a lifetime ban to forward Jontay Porter. Get the ins and outs of this breaking story below.
Porter, the brother of Denver Nuggets guard Michael Porter Jr., placed bets against his former team, the Toronto Raptors. The NBA first opened an investigation into Porter's gambling habits when legal online sportsbooks alerted the league about significant bets on Porter's player prop lines.
According to a statement released by the NBA, one of Porter's associates placed a player prop parlay involving a whole slew of Unders on a March 20th game. The $80,000 wager would have paid out $1.1 million, but the sports betting operator froze the bet and never paid it out due to suspicious activity.
What was the suspicious activity you might ask? Porter only played three minutes in that game on March 20th before asking to be removed because of "sickness". Gee, talk about things that make you go "hmmm".
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">BREAKING: Jontay Porter has received a lifetime ban for violating the league’s gaming rules <a href="https://t.co/bLyJuP8dXZ">pic.twitter.com/bLyJuP8dXZ</a></p>— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) <a href="https://twitter.com/BleacherReport/status/1780632492023702014?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 17, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Yes! According to multiple reports, Porter placed 13 bets on NBA games using a fake account. Shams Charania said that Porter had "net winnings of $21,965 from those 13 wagers.
It's hard to believe that a professional athlete would risk an entire career for that amount of money. The odd thing about these 13 bets was that Porter didn't play in any of them.
However, Porter did bet that the Raptors would lose as part of a 3-team parlay. During this stint, Porter also shared confidential information about the Raptors with some of his sports betting acquaintances.
As crazy as this may sound, this type of unfortunate occurrence just proves that legalizing sports betting was a sound decision. Legal online sportsbook operators were the ones who blew the whistle on Jontay Porter's shady betting activity.
While some may argue that pro sports leagues should stay as far away from gambling as possible, the fact is that the the legal sportsbooks are the greatest watchdogs for the leagues. If this type of thing had went on before legalization, there's no telling how long it would have taken the NBA to take action.