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The NBA’s greatest fear has now ensnared it.
Former commissioner David Stern rescued the NBA from a league that had playoff games telecast on tape delay and suffered at the box office. The great Celtic teams, in the championship days of Bill Russell and Red Auerbach, rarely sold out the old Boston Garden in what was very much a regional sport.
The game of basketball itself was tainted in the 1950s by point-shaving that almost killed the college sport and was rumored to be rampant in the pros. Before betting became legalized, wagers were made with private bookies sometimes in back rooms.
Over the last 50 years, the NBA has changed its image and now is massively popular in this country and worldwide due to so many great foreign players. Revenues, TV rights fees and franchise values grew from millions into billions for owners who bought teams on the cheap and kept them until they cashed out.
Adam Silver, a Duke grad, was Stern’s right-hand man and took over as commissioner after Stern retired in 2014. Stern died in 2020 and must be rolling over in his grave with the new scandal that has seen several assistant coaches and one head coach, Hall of Famer Chauncey Billups, arrested after an FBI probe and are facing indictments for sharing injury info on players.
At the root of this is legalized gambling that has become a billion-dollar industry of its own through betting sites such as FanDuel and DraftKings. After the point shaving of the 1950s by players was cleaned up, coaches and owners started to worry about questionable calls by referees affecting the final results or margins of victory.
College athletes are now allowed to bet on professional sports, which feeds right into the compulsiveness of gambling as much as excess drinking turns out more alcoholics. You can’t win anything by getting blotto and jeopardizing other lives on the road. Meanwhile, you can keep betting from home with your phone on the couch.
It stands to reason if the mafia is involved in crooked poker games, organized sports could be next.
I don’t bet but have seen how many ways – beating the spread, over and under – you can keep playing the odds into the second half of games. Personally, I hate that you can bet on how many points or rebounds college players will get. Armando Bacot used to talk about receiving terrible messages from people who bet on how many points or rebounds he did or didn’t have. Some bettors take losing very seriously and react on social media.
Malcolm Turner, the new chair of UNC’s Board of Trustees, is head of strategy for DraftKings, which if nothing else is a bad look. And Carolina is providing plenty of those lately. Maybe Turner could use influence in his day job to take individual stats off the betting sheet for college athletes, making them safer by doing so.
What do you say, Mr. Chairman?
Featured image via Associated Press/Nate Billings
Art Chansky is a veteran journalist who has written ten books, including best-sellers “Game Changers,” “Blue Bloods,” and “The Dean’s List.” He has contributed to WCHL for decades, having made his first appearance as a student in 1971. His “Sports Notebook” commentary airs daily on the 97.9 The Hill WCHL and his “Art’s Angle” opinion column runs weekly on Chapelboro.Chapelboro.com does not charge subscription fees, and you can directly support our efforts in local journalism here. Want more of what you see on Chapelboro? Let us bring free local news and community information to you by signing up for our newsletter.
