Scattered Scandal Thoughts: The Vision Imperative
You can't catch what you can't see
If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, help is available and it works Call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-848-1880.
Some thoughts in the wake of the FBI’s arrest and indictment of Chauncey Billups and Terry Rozier on Thursday…
Most people don’t gamble. And most people aren’t interested in the details of things they don’t do or don't care about. I’m not a car guy. I’m not interested in the exact mechanisms that caused my engine light to come on. I just want the engine light to go off.
The difference is that I am also not equipped to tell the mechanic what he did or did not do wrong if I don’t learn about the thing he fixed.
So I want to talk about how some of this stuff works and the problem with blanket statements.
YOU CAN’T CATCH WHAT YOU DON’T SEE
The depth of most fans’ interaction with betting markets is annoyance at the number of commercials during games, pre-games, post-games, and podcasts.
They might be bothered by stories of players being yelled at, threatened, or harassed by idiot fans for failing to win them a parlay.1
So there’s no way for people to know how these things work.
When the Supreme Court struck down PASPA in 2018, it didn’t legalize sports betting. It removed its federal illegality and opened the door for states to legalize and regulate it.
This, honestly, is not the preferred outcome for the NBA. The result is a mishmash hodgepodge of regulatory agencies and operators across states.2
The league would prefer national regulation, which would then entail a federal office of regulation and enforcement, simplifying and increasing oversight.
The biggest reason the NBA needs to partner with these books, beyond the millions they clearly want most, is access to information. The NBA can provide the books with information on irregularities and contexts for things.3 The books provide an open line of communication with both the league, its reporting consultants, and regulatory agencies on suspicious betting.
That doesn’t mean you need to see a promo code every 30 seconds or have to watch networks that carry the names of these companies, but there is value in these partnerships to protect the integrity of the game.
Mostly, though, the biggest thing non-bettors fail to understand is betting behavior before PASPA was overturned. There were and continue to be offshore sportsbooks that citizens could log into to bet on events, including props.
Those books are not subject to regulatory agencies. They don’t operate within the confines of US law. They don’t have an open line of communication with the NBA, nor would they be open to sharing information. Offshore sportsbooks, as well as brick-and-mortar illegal books, have been operating for decades.
The idea that most non-bettors get is that none of this happened until sports betting became legal.
And that may be true. It’s possible that while several players have risked their livelihoods and very freedom, violating the law through bets made in broad daylight on publicly traded companies because the temptation of money was so great, no one ever did anything of the sort through illegal books with no oversight using untraceable means.
That’s certainly possible. But do you think it is?
This is uncomfortable because it opens the door for a complete questioning of NBA history. If your position is “betting means this stuff happens,” then you have to accept that betting predated the NBA and has existed in parallel for the entirety of the league’s existence.
They were just able to catch it now.
You can’t catch what you can’t see, and legalization, along with heavy, HEAVY regulation, is the only pathway to reinforcing the integrity of the league.
THE LEAGUE-ALITY
The NBA’s biggest problem in all this is the attack on game integrity. The second-biggest problem for the league is the perception that their investigations are worthless.
One thing to remember, however, is the basis for the allegations against Rozier and Jontay Porter. Both players had their associates place unders on their props and then left the game with injury.
How do you prevent this? You can make it impossible for people to bet on their props, which we’ll come back to, or bet at all, which we discussed above. The other way is to increase injury transparency.
But teams will fight this until the end of time. They treat injury information like it is state secrets. And the players’ union will always resist anything that tries to deny players the ability to control their availability and autonomy to decide what’s best for their bodies and careers.
You can’t tell Terry Rozier he wasn’t too injured to play.
There’s also this idea that the league just takes the books’ money and doesn’t care about the details. This isn’t true. On top of all the monitoring and regulatory compliance that goes on, the league posts a sign in every single locker room saying no betting, no tipping.
That last part is key here. They openly make it clear you can’t give information about injuries, availability or anything else game-related.
They don’t just post the plaques. They hold seminars with the players with mandatory attendance before the season. They send emails. They perform outreach. They do what they can but there’s only so much you can tell 20-year-old celebrities making tens of millions of dollars per year4 and living famous-person lifestyles.
At the same time, the league will have to clean up its reputation. It never suspended Rozier pending an investigation; it just had him pulled, and he didn’t play. The league has to show it has teeth here, to whatever degree it is legally afforded.
Some of this is perception. It will have to limit the public exposure of its partnerships… which lessens their value.
THE PROP-OSAL
There’s going to be a lot of discussion about the abolition of prop bets. They’re too easy to manipulate or tip off.
It’s… a lot of money. Like, a lot of money. There’s a lot more money in those markets than sides and totals in the NBA because of the volume.5
You can not care about that. But many of the same people who don’t care about that are also player advocates. You want these players to make the most they can because of how incredible they are and how hard they work?6 They make less if this money goes away. The cap goes down, if only a little.
Content providers lose money.7 Even those who don’t have any involvement with the books work for entities that do. If you’re cool with that — and it’s totally reasonable to be so — then we’re straight. But don’t lament the loss of revenue for people you support, then.
THE MORAL ROT
As someone who a. bets and b. writes for a betting website, I’m in no position to argue against the criticism of sports betting as a societal evil. I’m inherently biased.
I also don’t object to anyone who feels that way. Problem gambling has destroyed people and families. It is a major societal concern. Promoting responsible gambling should be more strictly enforced, and there should be more resources for people struggling with addiction. 89
A lot of great bettors very understandably don’t want any limitations. There’s a huge overlap in libertarianism and sports bettors. But these are all self-driven positions.
I like gambling because I like thinking through games in number terms. I know the Thunder should beat the Wizards. But should they beat them by 15? Or 10? Should the teams score 120-130 points or 105-115? It’s performance vs. expectation.
I’m also resistant to ideas that restrict behavior on moral grounds because they align with an evangelism I grew up around, which was often harmful and laden with hypocrisy.
Ultimately, I take no quarrel with someone who feels gambling is a net harm to society. But if you’re going to talk about the problem of violations like those alleged in Thursday’s indictments, you need to understand the mechanisms.
I cannot stress how much this bothers me as someone who is both a bettor and an analyst. You understand the risks you take when entering these markets and if you don’t, you should not be betting into them. You are betting on whether events will occur, not sponsoring someone’s performance.
The automated system that alerts agencies if a suspicious bet is placed might have no idea that multiple bets were placed in one state and then another bordering state minutes apart after a person drove across state lines to place the same bet in multiple locations. It effectively makes the system into a bunch of different FanDuels and DraftKings, all with different agencies they report to, through coordinating monitoring companies the league partners with.
Now, this causes a whole other series of problems creating questions about the league offering their sponsor partners information that isn’t available to the public either, but that’s a whole other hornets nest.
Which apparently isn’t enough?
And the fact that sides and totals are a nightmarish hellscape in which trying to accurately bet into it is a fool’s errand but that could just be me. I’m also not good at props, either.
They are and they do.
Like me; I’ll cop to my bias here in a second.
Non-bettors also aren’t aware that when you log into a betting site repeatedly or for a long time, it will ask you if you want to take a site-enforced break, set a deposit limit, or contact support. It’s not enough, but again, people just act like the books don’t do anything and that’s not correct either.
This should also be true for addictions of all kinds; it’s a health issue not a moral one.
One last thing: this is a justice department is not the model of competence. There’s another very public investigation they’d like people to give less attention and the administration is quite vindictive. Innocent until proven guilty and there’s still more to come that might even vindicate the NBA. Just to be fair and intellectually honest.
Finally, I believe you to be an intelligent, interesting person of high moral character. I don't like wasting my time with people who don't check those boxes. Moreover, most people in sports media aren't good looking enough to get me to bend those requirements. As a fight fan I see the value in consuming gambling analysis. It provides a different view on the game (or fight) than a typical Xs and Os breakdown or a statistical breakdown. When the Nuggets made the finals I looked at the Sharp analysis on the match up. It's all very interesting. I have a degree in mathematics so the numbers and prediction odds are all pretty interesting to me at a professional/personal level.
It's an easy way to gauge an upset. If a team was favored by 20 but lost that's a major upset. The NCAA does rankings and perhaps professional sports should too, but I'd imagine every commissioner would rather die than allow that.
I think there are people who discuss this responsibly. You are one of them. Action does a pretty good job too, I wouldn't take financial advice from everyone there but they are all professionals who put a ton of work into their predictions. Perhaps another solution is to have a Series 7 equivalent for gambling sharps. You need to pass a test to give stock advice, why not to broadcast gambling advice to a wide audience?
This isn't going away. This scandal will get bigger and there will be others. Eventually one will ensnare a big enough name in a way that's impossible to wiggle out of and it'll be impossible to ignore. Anyone who says otherwise is lying to themselves. Draymond Green said that gambling grows the pot. In other words a kid from Saginaw that's made over a quarter of a billion dollars is saying that he needs another way to take more money from fans. There's something perverse about this that is going completely under discussed. The people that watch him play and paid that quarter of a billion dollars are struggling to pay rent and put food on the table, meanwhile he's pushing an addictive hobby to get more money out of them. Crazy world.
End of the day I think we need to look at what we're consuming and what we're selling to others. Why should my day be ruined or made if the Nuggets win or lose? Why should I be so invested? What does it say when your podcast reads are all dick pills, gambling reads and booze? What are we selling to our audience? What are the advertisers saying about who they think listens to this show? If I listen to that show what does that say about me? This isn't to say you shouldn't take their money. It's a fuck ugly world out there and it's hard to just get by let alone thrive, but perhaps some thought should be put into this.
I enjoy the community aspect of sports, but I don't think that's what's being sold. Feels like we've had this conversation for decades but gambling might be the breaking point. I think there's a reason this was banned before and limited to a place called "Sin City." To the extent we have monoculture in the United States these days it's sports. We award our modern day betters with sports franchises as representatives of the community. We've been through decades of constant growth of sports but the great Jake Shapiro mentioned we might have hit peak sports. There's consequences to that. Just feels like we never really take a step back and think about the macro in all of this.