INGLEWOOD – We all have that friend who’s convinced that every airball, every blown call, every boneheaded turnover is evidence that the fix is in.
Maybe it’s you, maybe you’re that friend?
And I’m the one who’s been over here laughing at you, calling you a conspiracy nut. I’m the one rebutting, trying to tell you that mistakes happen by the hundreds in a human game like hoops – which will always be true, but also … I see now what you’ve been saying.
This week jogged my memory – oh yeah, NBC’s Bob Costas totally grilled late commissioner David Stern on air before the 1993 NBA Finals about the latest round of stories about Michael Jordan’s gambling – and so it’s suddenly hard not to unsee things that might or might not be there.
We all absorbed Thursday’s news that Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, current Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and former NBA player Damon Jones were among the 34 defendants swept up in two separate federal investigations into illegal gambling charges. Six are accused of being involved in a sports betting case, and 31 for alleged involvement in rigged poker games.
We learned that Billups, a Basketball Hall of Famer who was previously an assistant coach on Tyronn Lue’s Clippers staff and, before that, a member of the team’s broadcast crew, was indicted for his alleged participation in a scheme to defraud card players in poker games that are said to have involved numerous members of New York crime families.
And, potentially more pertinent to the basketball-watchers who aren’t high-stakes poker players, we learned that Billups appears to be referenced – not by name, but by description – as a co-conspirator who allegedly told a bettor that some Trail Blazers players would miss a March 2023 game before that news was public.
His attorney, Chris Heywood, denied all the allegations, calling Billups “a man of integrity” and saying “men of integrity do not cheat and defraud others.”
Rozier is accused of sharing insider information, including going through with a plan to fake an injury early in a game. Jones is alleged to have passed along news of player availability the public was not privy to.
So, yes, to my long-suspicious sports-watchers: I get why phantom calls spook you. Why curious decisions seem suspicious.
Also, why load management and tanking and teams’ lack of transparency have all been even more damaging to the NBA than I initially considered; those practices make gaming this beautiful game too easy.
Even if the NBA wanted to unwind itself from gambling’s lucrative embrace, how could it possibly put a lid back on it now? The league asked for it, Commissioner Adam Silver writing a 2014 New York Times op-ed pointing out that nearly $400 billion was being illegally wagered on sports each year anyway, so, he asked, why not make it legal? Why not introduce oversight? (And, left unstated, a new revenue stream?)
On Friday’s episode of “The Herd with Colin Cowherd,” longtime NBA reporter Rachel Nichols said the NBA made $170 million directly from betting companies, and hundreds of millions of dollars more from gambling-driven fan engagement.
It seems that a league betting so big on betting, and that’s gotten so many people to play along, has in the process increased the number of bettors who might seek to fix a wager in their favor in what, yes, happens to be a human and corruptible game.
Sure, more legal betting means more regulation. And that should mean better odds of flagging fraud and punishing the bad actors, which theoretically should deter cheating – but at this point, that’s just trying to contain a problem that can’t be stopped.
What can be done? Should sportsbooks outlaw all unders, not just for two-way or 10-day players like Jontay Porter, the former Toronto Raptors’ two-way player who confessed to telling a bettor he was injured before removing himself from a game to control prop bets on his own play?
Should the NBA do more to discourage random days off? Tell teams their players can take a load off for a week and not just a night if they need rest or recovery that badly?
Or do we all just hold our noses and hope that ill-advised pass into traffic was just a brain fart and not something that really stinks?
Because at the moment, the stench is pervasive.
We had the “Inside the NBA” crew – now on ESPN, the network with its own official sportsbook – reaming the defendants in this newly announced federal case: “The notion that guys are making all this money and giving information, come on man, stop that,” Charles Barkley said. “Ain’t got nothing to do with [gambling] addiction, that’s just total stupidity.”
And we had Clippers coach Tyronn Lue expressing concern and support for Billups, his “best friend,” before the Clippers routed the Phoenix Suns, 129-102 – easily beating the 9.5-point spread – at this season’s Intuit Dome-opener Friday.
Lue reminded us that the charges against Billups are, in fact, allegations: “Just sad. Chauncey is my best friend, and having to go through something like this, the allegations. His family, my goddaughters. It was a tough day, seeing your friends go through anything like that.”
But Lue – who investigative podcaster Pablo Torre posted on social media Friday is said to have attended one of the allegedly rigged poker games in Las Vegas in 2019, but not to have sat at the same table as Billups – couldn’t say whether there should be a clear demarcation between the sports leagues and sports gambling.
“If the NBA partners with [betting companies], it must be good for the game or good for the NBA,” Lue said. “I can’t really comment on what’s good and what’s not good.”
Exactly. After this week, it’s harder to tell what’s good and what’s not good.
So maybe it’s me, maybe I’m that suspicious friend now?