Reining things in?
In the wake of Jontay Porter’s lifetime ban from the NBA for gambling infractions, the league is reportedly talking to sportsbooks about limiting the types of bets that can be offered on games.
Both ESPN and Legal Sports Report have said their sources tell them that some ideas being bounced around are the prohibition of prop bets on two-way players, players on ten-day contracts, players on rookie scale contracts, and those who make the league minimum salary.
Those are the players who make the least amount of money – not that their pay is anything to sneeze at – and thus logic dictates that they would be the ones that would be most susceptible to getting mixed up in betting shenanigans. Porter was a two-way player, shuttling between the Toronto Raptors and the team’s G-League (minor league) squad. He made $2.4 million from 2019-2022 with the Memphis Grizzlies and his salary for this season with the Raptors was over $400,000, so he certainly wasn’t earning poverty wages, but compared to a star who makes tens of millions of dollars per season, someone like him could certainly have more incentive to try to bend the gambling rules.
Another possibility being discussed is the elimination of the “under” portion of prop bets. The reason for this is that it relates specifically to what Jontay Porter did to get banned.
Messed with games to make money
According to the NBA’s investigation, Porter tipped off a known NBA bettor as to his health status prior to a March 20 contest against the Sacramento Kings. He then exited the game after three minutes because he was allegedly sick (we don’t know if he was actually sick or if the whole thing was just a ruse for betting purposes) and thus did not hit the prop bet totals set by sportsbooks.
That bettor he coordinated with wagered $80,000 on Porter unders, which would have won him $1.1 million, but the sportsbook froze the bet after noticing the suspicious activity and never paid out the winnings.
The league has not publicly confirmed a second incident, but reports are another instance in which Porter left a game early, coinciding with heavy betting on his unders, was being investigated. On January 26, he left the game against the L.A. Clippers after four minutes after allegedly aggravating a previous injury. Again, there was lots of action on his unders, which all hit.
The NBA also said that Porter placed “at least” 13 bets on NBA games this year from someone else’s sportsbook account. Three of those games involved the Raptors in a multi-leg parlay and he picked his team to lose in all of them.