You cannot watch a game on TV these days without being inundated with gambling promotions. The rise of legal app-driven sports betting is changing the culture of sports. But new FBI arrests of prominent NBA figures raise questions about whether this gambling threatens the integrity of the game.
Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and former Cleveland Cavaliers player and assistant coach Damon Jones were arrested last week as part of “wide-ranging investigations related to illegal sports betting and rigged poker games,” said ESPN. And the arrests have put a damper on the start of the league’s 2025-26 season. There's “nothing more important to the league and its fans than the integrity of the competition,” said Commissioner Adam Silver.
Some observers believe Silver is responsible. The commissioner “put the NBA in bed with sports betting,” said Gary Washburn at The Boston Globe. The arrests are the “league’s worst nightmare,” but they are also “what many observers expected” when Silver decided to partner with legalized sports betting outfits. The league earned lots of money as a result, but the decision “may taint his legacy.”
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Is the genie out of the bottle?
It “wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call this the worst scandal in NBA history” if the charges prove true, said Keith Reed at MSNBC. Now this season will be played “under the shadow of a federal investigation” that will make it difficult for some fans not to “question the integrity of every game they watch.” The league “may never be able to wash away the stench of these allegations.”
The arrests are “not shocking,” said Ian O’Connor at The Athletic. Sports gambling is an “all-American drug” and online technology is the “needle that instantly injects it into the vein.” You can blame the Supreme Court for its 2018 decision to “effectively open the floodgates” to betting, “but all the major sports leagues eagerly hopped on that bus.” Now the genie is out of the bottle and there is “no chance of bringing it back.”
“The NBA asked for this embarrassment,” said Nancy Armour at USA Today. It was “only too happy” to partner with betting companies, believing it could reap the profits but also “inoculate itself from its seedy underbelly” by issuing warnings to players and fans. That embrace by the NBA and other professional sports leagues has “fostered an environment where there are no guardrails.” The league knew the dangers and decided it wanted the gambling industry’s money anyway. “There's no more damning indictment than that.”
More regulation?
More regulation will be needed to “reduce opportunities for game manipulation,” Silver said to ESPN. The league is “learning as we go and working with the betting companies,” the commissioner said.
Sports betting is “bad for sports” as well as for the millions of Americans who “gamble past the point of prudence and move directly to the point of pain,” said David French at The New York Times. The “sports gambling revolution” may require more than regulation. “It may even need termination.”
