Having an NBA player and active head coach — Miami’s Terry Rozier, Portland’s Chauncey Billups, respectively — arrested and appearing in court on federal illegal gambling charges shook the NBA. Soon after, the league’s executives and lawyers were reviewing old cases and looking ahead, trying to close loopholes that fueled the gambling charges in the first place.
All of which has led to a change in the league’s injury-reporting rules, something the league informed teams by memo on Friday, which was reported by Shams Charania of ESPN.
Teams currently only have to update their injury report every hour on game days. Both Rozier and former NBA player and coach Damon Jones have been charged in federal court with sharing inside information on injuries with bettors, who were able to profit by betting proposition unders.
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Commissioner Adam Silver said this week that the league was thinking big-picture about how it can address loopholes such as the ones involving Rozier and Jones
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“We’re in the process, as I said right now, in working with our teams, thinking about anything else we can be doing, if there’s any aspect of our system that needs to be shored up, and that includes working with the regulators on some, certain kinds of problematic betting,” Silver said before the NBA Cup Final Tuesday night in Las Vegas. “For example, we know unders and prop bets are where we are most vulnerable. As I think you know, we don’t control the bets that are placed on our own sport right now. We’re left to lobby regulators or try to convince the legal sports betting companies that that’s bad for them, as well.”
The memo from the league told teams this (via The Athletic): “Core to the NBA’s position is that sports leagues should have control over the types of bets offered on their games. Because leagues currently do not have such control, any changes will need to be pursued via negotiation with sports betting operations, requests to state gaming regulators, legislative action, or some combination of these avenues.”
While the league might be able to influence its partners — such as DraftKings or FanDuel — to eliminate or significantly reduce the amount that can be wagered on prop bets, there are increasingly popular prediction markets that are much more like the Wild West and over which the league has no say. There is no easy answer here for the league, although better injury reporting would help.
All of this also has the league also undertaking “a renewed review of league policy changes concerning ‘tanking’ — such as potential modifications to rules regarding Draft pick protections, revised Draft lottery rules, and other approaches,” Charania reports. That news comes as we pass the 1/3 mark of the NBA season, and with some teams looking ahead to what is considered a talented, deep draft at the top, there will be a temptation to field nightly lineups with a lower chance of winning. The league already has a policy on resting star players — the Cleveland Cavaliers have been fined twice this season — but that is just part of the challenge.
