This season has demonstrated that the threats are …
Laughter filled the ballroom. Except VanVleet wasn’t joking. The 10-year veteran is a throwback: an unheralded recruit who grinded his way to All-American status at Wichita State, an undrafted rookie who willed his way to becoming a world champion. To him, basketball is not merely a business. It is a source of identity, the ticket he claimed to escape a troubled life. Anything that taints its beauty constitutes a threat. This season has demonstrated that the threats are real—and they are multiplying. Teams lost countless games on purpose in the pursuit of better draft positioning. Players—and, even more troubling, a head coach—were caught up in gambling-related scandals. The NBA’s wealthiest owner, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who bought the Clippers after the Sterling fiasco, was accused of funneling payments to his franchise player via a third party to circumvent the salary cap, an allegation that continues to shake the foundations of the league. (Ballmer has denied any wrongdoing; the investigative journalist Pablo Torre’s podcast, which exposed the alleged cheating, was recently awarded a Pulitzer Prize.)
This article originally appeared on Hoops Hype: This season has demonstrated that the threats are …
