On Thursday, October 23, a scandal happened that involved gambling in the NBA, so what happened? The FBI said that “a star player and a Coach in the NBA had been arrested for alleged illegal sports betting.” What happened? The people arrested after the game were Coach Chauncey Billups of the Portland Trail Blazers and Terry Rozier of the Miami Heat. It was said they were arrested for betting on their own teams, one involving players faking injuries to influence betting odds, and one involving illegal poker connected with organized crime.
However, things got worse. Why? Because they were bringing gambling to phones, gambling companies use this to accurately find illegal betting patterns and close off bets away. The issues were said to be that “if players fake injuries for people who are actually gamblers are trying to earn money, and may change how NBA teams report injuries”. Then the NBA sent different teams a memo that “additional scrutiny on the bets may be a solution to the problem”. Apps based on gambling have been ruining the Media’s revenue streams, not just the NBA, and a lot of men are on these gambling apps, making bets on Sunday NFL to activate and get money, which concerns the NBA. This mostly happened because addiction is what brings people to gambling sites, and another concern is that they can’t be funded because of a story as wild as this. Because of our phones, gambling has become more common, and people fake injuries because of it.
The mafia also plays a role in this gambling scandal because they are leading the poker games, which then leads to the stuff that happened already. The crime families listed as involved in the scandal are the Genovese, Gambino, Lucchese, and Bonanno. Using tech and other tools, they were able to cheat in the NBA and earn money. But someone named Scott Burnstein is a Mafia expert and uses a website that can track organized crime. He was able to find out what was happening and was able to catch them and arrest them. He also mentions that “These showcase events are sometimes staged by criminals”. So the important lesson is to make sure you only use sources you can trust because there are a lot of greedy people out there.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/
https://defector.com/the-nba-media-is-not-built-to-cover-a-gambling-scandal
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/46695228/sources-terry-rozier-arrested-part-gambling
