Shams Charania on how the NBA can better manage sports gambling
Boardroom co-founder and CEO Rich Kleiman is joined by ESPN Senior NBA Insider Shams Charania who highlights some of the problems the NBA has seen with sports gambling and discusses how they can better manage it.
Video Transcript
The NBA is definitely looking hard at figuring out what the best policies are, what their best internal methods are, whether it's injury reporting, whether it's their communication with the sports books.
Right now, the way it's going, you know, the these prop bets and and different bets of something.
Gets flagged, the NBA and the sports books are alerted immediately and, and the sports books flag it.
The NBA's, you know, in knowledge of that.
That's how Jontay Porter was able to be, be found and, and that situation was able to be accounted for.
That's how Terry Rozier's situation first in March 2023 was even detected.
It was the sports books flagging it, alerting the NBA alerting whoever else needs to know authorities, and I, I think so, so the system is there for alerting.
Now it's just before it even gets to that, is there a way to mitigate it?
Is there a way to regulate it the the proper way?
So the NBA is having those conversations with the sports books.
Is there a way to, uh, figure out prop bets?
Is there a way to figure out, you know, a category of players that should not necessarily be Involved here, like two-way contracts.
Like Jontey Porter was really the player that tipped this all off that a lot of the people, the co-conspirators that were involved in the Jontay Porter case are involved with Damon Jones, Terry Rozierre, Chauncey Billups.
There's so much intertwined.
there.
And so, because they were able to detect that before, because they were able to find that, it's led them to now a bunch of other the, the FBI that is it's led the FBI to so much other stuff, including the illegal poker rigging matches that were mafia led.
And so overall, I, I think that the NBA has to continue to have those conversations.
One thing I think that internally is gonna be addressed and discussed is the injury reporting because, you know, having examples of like, even on Thursday night when Jason Kumpo is declared out for the game after being listed probable all day, but he's listed out 57 minutes before the game.
Is there a way to mitigate that?
Is there a way to solve that for, uh, the fans, the audience, whoever's betting out there?
So these are all things that the NBA sports books, they're all trying to figure out is, is how to regulate it the proper way.
What has to be understood is that this is not like an epidemic.
These are like a few select cases.
The world has changed.
We see examples of this in every walk of life.
The stakes are higher, the connectivity and the knowledge of what's going on has never been greater, and gambling has become a major part in a fabric of the game, and that comes new things that you've got to deal with and, and I, and I would imagine that historically there's always been cases of this that went kind of unnoticed, um, and the prop bets obviously bring a new layer into it because it's more about the player than the game.
But I do think that ultimately the idea that this came to the league's attention, right, is what people should also think about, right?
That the mechanisms are in place to find out who's doing this.
