The... Jontay Porter...? Scandal

Now the NBA's got a gambling scandal again too? We're so back

Isaiah J. Downing - USA TODAY Sports

That didn’t take long. Just as Shohei Ohtani went before the media to give his side of the story, forcefully denying any and all involvement with gambling, a far more startling — just way less famous — scandal started a-brewin’ in the NBA.

Before we move onto that, though. On reflection, I don’t find it implausible that Shohei might have gone along with his team’s original story — that he had knowingly paid off his translator Ippei Mizuhara’s debts — if he thought it would make this whole thing go away. Maybe the plan was to get rid of Ippei under some other circumstances once the season started and try to handle this quietly.

Quietly has generally been Shohei’s M.O., which — as Will Leitch pointed out this week for New York Magazine — has not been a huge help to him as this has all unfolded.

That whole telling is still a bit of a stretch for me, but I wouldn’t rule it out. Many have pointed at the immense $4.5M line of credit that Ippei was reportedly extended by this shady bookie, Mathew Bowyer, as proof that Shohei was, in fact, involved.

I think that’s worth taking seriously, but what if we were to entertain the story that Shohei was in fact stolen from, and Ippei simply told Bowyer he could take the money from accounts to which he’d already proven he had access?

I’m not saying this is settled by any means, but it comes together if you squint a little. I could see it.

Back to hoops, though, where there has also been some troubling smoke of late.

ESPN put out a little piece on the Toronto Raptors’ Jontay Porter, a two-way guy who’s probably best known as the younger brother of Michael Porter, Jr., the starting SF for the defending champion Denver Nuggets.

The piece attributes the following to multiple sources: the NBA is investigating Porter for “betting irregularities.” What sort of irregularities?

Sketchy prop bets. In two games, about two months apart, he left the game early (he got four and three minutes of game time, to be specific) as the sportsbooks lost a chunk of change on the unders.

For the non-degenerates, that means people were betting on Porter to underachieve on stats like points, rebounds, three-point attempts, etc. in games that he might have taken himself out of. You know, like, on purpose.

In the first, he exited because of “what the Raptors said was an aggravation of an eye injury he had suffered four days earlier.” In the second, “Porter played just three minutes before exiting because of what the Raptors said was an illness and did not return.”

That doesn’t look so good when, on both nights, sportsbooks reported more bets than usual on Porter’s under props. This quote in particular is alarming:

"People were trying to do whatever they could to bet Jontay Porter props [against the Clippers]," the source said. "And then, just a few days ago, the same thing. We had a bunch of people trying to bet under for more."

When I read between the lines here, I start to think that some funny business around Porter was already on sportsbooks’ radars, and possibly the league’s, but they might have all been willing to chalk it up to a curious one-off had it not happened again.

Then it did. Now we’re here.

We don’t know what’ll happen to Porter yet, but the timing sure is something.

Joe Pompliano

situated this nicely in his piece Wednesday:

“The bigger problem, though, is that all of that hasn’t happened over the last year. It has all happened in the last week. And if we wanted to expand our sports gambling scandal timeline another twelve months, we would have to add in Alabama’s baseball coach receiving a 15-year ban for fixing games, an investigation into the Temple men’s basketball team for betting irregularities, and nine different NFL players being suspended for sports gambling issues last season, including four on the same day.”

There’s the sunshine argument — the Hey, At Least It’s All Out In The Open Now take — that points right at the NBA’s little situation with Tim Donaghy in the mid-00s. And there’s something to that, I think. Lest we forget, we have had sports gambling scandals forever. This ain’t new.

There’s just also something to the fact that we’ve drastically expanded access to sports gambling. Most of it’s still casual. A lot of it’s relatively harmless. But as we’ve (don’t) widened the net, we were always going to catch a few more fish. Some are bigger than others. Jontay Porter’s not even that big, all things considered. For a 6’10” center, he’s small fish.

But he’s an NBA player, and I don’t think it’s impossible or even unlikely that the league straight-up bans him for life. There’s plenty of reasons to make him the cautionary tale before someone more important to the NBA is implicated in something similar.

From where I’m standing? Fair enough. I don’t love a summary execution, but this is a line worth drawing if they want to nip this in the bud.

Frankly, I’m not sure that’s possible. This is going to be around. There’s a counterpoint to worrying about the Porter situation, in so far as how sportsbooks appear to be the ones who caught this, and relatively easily at that. It’s hard to hide from data. Seems like a botched job on Porter’s part.

So I’ll continue to ask the same question. What’s going to be too much?

Combine this Porter situation with Shohei’s profile, and you’re there. I don’t think that’s inevitable, but it feels plenty possible. Sports will live on, even when that does (probably) happen. Buckle up, folks.

Also, This

• In related news, the NCAA is proposing a ban on prop bets for all college athletes, worried about the above situation in the student-athlete ranks. If only there was a podcast series explaining what this Charlie Baker guy is all about. That’d be cool.

  • In all seriousness, though, we’re nearing the end of our run with The Option, so please come through: rate, subscribe, review, etc. It really does help with the ol’ algorithm.
    

• I know the Sweet 16 is all chalk, but that first weekend was still wild. That kind of basketball isn’t for everybody, I guess, but I for one thought the Grand Canyon-Alabama game was my kind of chaos. That double OT Oregon-Creighton clash was a winner too. And that’s before we even get to the Yale win, which was obviously awesome. Long live the Madness.
  

• And now it’s baseball! Wishing everyone a happy Opening Day. My Cardinals are opening the year against the suddenly embattled Dodgers, but I think St. Louis’ finest are embattled themselves. Just more with the like, being good at baseball thing. The division’s never more open than when everybody’s 0-0, so I’m choosing optimism. Go Birds.

  • UPDATE: I have chosen incorrectly. Hooray!
    

• I am deeply confused by the reporting making the rounds this week that the Washington Commanders will likely draft Michigan’s J.J. McCarthy at #2 in about a months’s time. I just don’t get it. I’m all for picking winners, but where’s the tape? The Patriots might just be popping bottles over this development. If Bill were still there, he’d be trading back faster than Jaylen Daniels.
  

• Finally, the repeat champion Chiefs are apparently signing Welsh rugby star Louis Rees-Zammit as he makes his transition to the NFL. The guy’s an athlete, there’s no doubt about that. They’ll probably like the first score in this here tape. They’re listing him as a WR/RB, but I suspect we’d mostly — maybe entirely — see him on special teams. I’m always curious to watch these journeys play out, and the Eagles’ Jordan Mailata shows how successful they can be. Best of luck to the Welshman.