Raptors' Jontay Porter banned from NBA for betting on games
- Thread starter DannyDarwinism
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Action sports with more details here: https://www.actionnetwork.com/nba/jontay-porter-banned-from-nba-for-life.
Apparently, Porter was betting millions of dollars prior to be signed by TOR in 2023.
The most damning stories:
Apparently, Porter was betting millions of dollars prior to be signed by TOR in 2023.
The most damning stories:
The NBA said its investigation found that prior to the Raptors' March 20 game vs. the Kings, Porter informed an individual "he knew to be an NBA bettor" about his health status. A different person who Porter knew to be an NBA bettor then placed an $80,000 parlay to win $1.1 million on Porter to underperform several different prop bets in one game.
Porter went on to play just three minutes before reporting an illness and leaving the game vs. the Kings. The $80,000 same game parlay was frozen and not paid out amid this irregular activity.
The NBA added that while he was a member of the Raptors and the Raptors' G League affiliate Raptors 905, he placed at least 13 bets on NBA games through an "associate's online betting account."
This activity from Jan. to March 2024 included a total of $54,094 in bets which resulted in a net win of just under $22,000. None of these wagers, the league said, involved games in which Porter participated.
Gotta send a message every now and then to remind people. All the better if it's a bench player and not, like, Shohei Ohtani.
What an idiot. And I bet the Feds aren't done with him, either.
"This activity from Jan. to March 2024 included a total of $54,094 in bets which resulted in a net win of just under $22,000."
An NBA career for $22k. Well, not including any money he might have gotten from the other winning bettors he may have sold information to.
If you were a fringe NBA player lacking ethics, knowing what you know about the sports betting markets, how would you best leverage your inside information for profit? Injury / player-rest info? Expected rotations?
edit: that's weird. not sure what happened in the post above since I can't edit it.
WAG based on no evidence whatsoever but I wonder if he had to do that to cover gambling debts. He bet millions without a real source of income if I understand things correctly.
Well $22K plus giving information out to a bettor for a huge payday.
WAG based on no evidence whatsoever but I wonder if he had to do that to cover gambling debts. He bet millions without a real source of income if I understand things correctly.
The bolded is what I was referring to. We don't know exactly what kind of arrangement he had with that person nor anyone else who won big betting on his unders.
Heh. No I'm just idly curious if there are weak points in the system as it stands today. Not long ago, they probably never would have thought much of those bets. Though maybe that's not true - I still have no idea how they first got wind of Pete Rose's shenanigans, Wikipedia is no help there.
Both point shaving and what Tim Donaghy did (calling more fouls, but evenly, to back a bet on the Over while not favoring either team) seem way easier to pull off than what Porter was doing, both in terms of detection and also in terms of how deep a market there is for those bets, so you can get more money down / hide your activity more easily. It seems to me like Porter was opting for basically the stupidest, brashest possible means of corruptly influencing games - and it occurred to me that I probably don't even know what "doing it smart" would look like.
Yeah, what he did -- betting on his own player props at high stakes (and then pulling himself out of games) -- is probably the worst from a sportsbook detection standpoint. He's a nobody, so why is anyone betting that much on him, and under suspcious circumstances to boot?
The problem for him is that he's a shitty player who doesn't have the ball in his hands very much, so he has very little ability to reliably influence a game in any other way. The players who are routinely in a position to influence games are paid handsomely enough to not have to risk anything.
Knowing that your star teammate might be taking an off day before the info becomes public is going to earn you a few points worth of value on your betting odds. Not anything that's going to make you rich quick, and you could still lose for a while due to variance.
Re your last point, just look at the Celts last two games where the top 6 sat and they still covered the spread. Maybe you would have won a bet on the final game fading them, unsure what the spread was prior to the news that the starters would sit, but you’d have lost on game 81 regardless.
https://www.cbc.ca/sports/basketball/nba/nba-jontay-porter-gambling-banned-1.7176364
I suspect this won't be the last time this happens. I know there is no way to stop online gambling, but I hate the ubiquitous nature of betting apps and the NBA's moral failure by embracing the $$$. When as Kenny and Charles are giving their picks before the game and checking them at half, not surprising a dumb kid thinks it isn't a big deal. And only guys as dumb as this guy are getting likely to get caught.
I suspect this won't be the last time this happens. I know there is no way to stop online gambling, but I hate the ubiquitous nature of betting apps and the NBA's moral failure by embracing the $$$. When as Kenny and Charles are giving their picks before the game and checking them at half, not surprising a dumb kid thinks it isn't a big deal. And only guys as dumb as this guy are getting likely to get caught.
The thread title doesn't tell the whole story -- the larger crime isn't that Porter bet on games, it's that he manipulated the games themselves. This wasn't just a kid trying to win $50 on FanDuel when the league told him not to bet, this was about opening a path to real game fixing and racketeering. That's a whole 'nuther level of dumb.
An $80,000 +1600 player prop parlay for a random Wednesday game, where the player ducks out of the game, was never going to escape inquiry. Draft kings isn't going to just start paying out $1.1 million tickets on bets like that without some inquiry. It's really hard to see a guy banned for life for something that was dumb and so destined to be flagged. I read somewhere that it was by far the highest prop bet placed on the entire platform on player props that night by something like 10x.
It looks as though they couldn't find evidence that he had personally bet on himself or had a financial arrangement with the guy who made the bet. It sounds like they could only nail him for providing information. But that coupled with the NBA bets are enough to bring down the hammer. The Kings won the game by a ton, so I'm not sure there's much actual effect on competition. But, you know, one game was the difference between the Kings hosting Golden State or Golden State hosting the play in game last night.
Whatever, it's a real tragic story and seems so unnecessary, but I'm sure we're going to get stories like this now given the ubiquity of sports betting.
It looks as though they couldn't find evidence that he had personally bet on himself or had a financial arrangement with the guy who made the bet. It sounds like they could only nail him for providing information. But that coupled with the NBA bets are enough to bring down the hammer. The Kings won the game by a ton, so I'm not sure there's much actual effect on competition. But, you know, one game was the difference between the Kings hosting Golden State or Golden State hosting the play in game last night.
Whatever, it's a real tragic story and seems so unnecessary, but I'm sure we're going to get stories like this now given the ubiquity of sports betting.
Probably less likely now than it was when most sports gambling was illegal and tied to organized crime.
Stories railing against sports leagues’ supposed hypocrisy must generate clicks, but I find them to be insipid. For better or worse, our society has decided the benefits of legalized gambling outweigh the detriments. More gambling means more opportunities for things like this to happen, but aside from being vigilant, there’s not much the leagues can do. This scandal happens whether the league has a deal with Draft Kings or not.
What Porter did was so obvious that we can’t really tell whether the NBA has gotten better at oversight since Tim Donaghy went from the least whistle-happy ref in the Association to the most overnight with no one noticing.
Correct. The other side of legalized gambling is that watchdogs are now out in full force and working with the leagues whenever there is suspicious wagering activity. In the case of Porter the larger wagers ($80k) have been frozen and surely will not be paid out while several attempted $10-20k wagers from different accounts involving Porter props were declined.
In layman’s terms….if legalized gambling was around when Donaghy was officiating there would not have been compromised games once the red flags were raised.
Looks to me as though Draft Kings figured this one out, and the truth is I probably could have even without an algorithm. By and large, I think that's the way this stuff is going to get figured out -- the entity with the financial incentive not to pay bets also is sitting on a mountain of information and data that it is already crunching.
The books spend a lot of time and effort to figure out who the sharp betters are, for a couple of reasons. First, they use their collected information for line setting. Second, they have an economic incentive to limits players who are too good. The result is that they already have extremely robust data analytics systems in place and outlier results are going to be apparent in real time. We learned from the NFL bans of players betting in parking lots that the books have no problem using their terms of service to rat on players. They are not exactly going to require subpoenas. It's in the books' interest as much as the teams to catch the bad guys.
He bet on his team to lose and had people bet unders on his stats when he knew he was going to ask out of game.
He 100% knew this was a big deal.
No one with a brain could possibly think that betting on their own team to lose wasn't a big deal, nevermind the prop bet fixing that was also clearly a big deal. Of course he fucking knew, the dumb part was just thinking he wouldn't get caught or that the NBA wouldn't drop the hammer on him.
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Should these daily prop bets on fringe rotation guys even exist?
I'm generally fine with the legalized sports gambling but some of these bets just seem to be asking for trouble.
The idea that someone in theory could parlay their way to 1.1M on a random individual Jontay Porter game (even ignoring the obvious inquiry it generated), is straight up insane.
I'm generally fine with the legalized sports gambling but some of these bets just seem to be asking for trouble.
The idea that someone in theory could parlay their way to 1.1M on a random individual Jontay Porter game (even ignoring the obvious inquiry it generated), is straight up insane.
I think we need to update this great Chris Carter quote to should have had a translator
Probably, but it is not like Pete Rose when every clubhouse had a sign saying gambling was the ultimate evil and players faced a ban. These guys will walk by multiple ads promoting gambling in every arena and see HOF guys endorsing gambling on TV. As @radsoxfan said it is amazing you can even bet on a G-league guy's stats. The NBA has put themselves in a bad spot and they deserve every scandal they get out of the cash grab for gambling money.
NBA/WNBA/G League makes every employee fill out a background check that includes information about gambling, even the ones that have access to limited info that could be useful in gambling, it's insane to think that every player doesn't know 10000% that BETTING AGAINST THEIR OWN TEAM or FIXING A GAME INVOLVING THEIR OWN STATS is massively wrong and will get you super fucked. They don't need to see a sign or even know who Pete Rose is and they 1000% know that none of the ads or endorsements targeting fans gives the players any sort of green light to get involved themselves.
I live in a non-legalized state, but when I related this story to my friend in Michigan a couple weeks back, the first thing he said was that it made sense it happened at DK since they're the only legal book which puts up player prop lines for scrub players. I can tell you that the offshore sportsbooks don't offer lines on scrubs either, but my guess is that has more to do with demand (which is already low and diluted across many players for player props as it is) than security.
A lot of these fringe guys see a fair amount of betting action I'm sure. The books are super focused on the lines for Lebron, Giannis, Steph etc. Predicting a 7th/8th player is way more of a crapshoot. It's why making halftime bets are considered some of the best bets on the board because the books have a day or two (or a week, in the NFL) to take action, see line movement and betting patterns etc. They don't have that at halftime. They have about 15 minutes till the line is closed.
I'd say when all is said and done there is usually more of an edge betting Payton Pritchard than Jayson Tatum
I'd say when all is said and done there is usually more of an edge betting Payton Pritchard than Jayson Tatum
There was a Real Sport episode about gambling in Tennis years back. I wonder if whoever covered that will have info on the 4 majors. Individual player unders seems like a huge temptation for low paid players.
Yeah, I d
What is far more likely is that the proliferation of gambling partnerships just makes it easier to catch guys. In the NFL a bunch of guys got suspended for betting on their phones at facilities.... guys have been betting on their phones at the facilities for a decade... it's just now the league partners have a contract and report it (where bovada or whatever bet360 site they used to use didn't).
I mean... do we think he didn't know you could bet on basketball until he saw the ads? You could always bet on this stuff, you could get on an international site and bet on the G-League from like the day it started. You've always been able to bet on anything you want. Even in the NBA... remember Donaghy? Even in the internal investigation that the NBA hamstrung... despite the CBA saying refs couldn't gamble on ANYTHING... the investigation found literally every ref did, some only admitted to basic NCAA pools, but plenty admitted (under no pressure) that they bet on other sports.... so the NBA just changed the CBA to let them gamble.
What is far more likely is that the proliferation of gambling partnerships just makes it easier to catch guys. In the NFL a bunch of guys got suspended for betting on their phones at facilities.... guys have been betting on their phones at the facilities for a decade... it's just now the league partners have a contract and report it (where bovada or whatever bet360 site they used to use didn't).
Anecdotally, this is also the kind of bet that is most susceptible to getting you banned or limited on the books. I was part of some discords that were about arbs and promos, and there was a technique that involved hedging with no home run for players likely to be platooned. (All you need is one PA for there to be action.) People with VIP status — who were betting thousands on mainlines each week — got nerfed after one or two no HR bets as low as $50 (to win $50, that is — which is a much bigger bet).
Punters bet overs and “yes”. Books don’t want anything to do with those betting unders on Wednesday night player props or “not to hit a double.” It’s almost like those bets are there to identify sharps or people who have info they shouldn’t.
Edit — also is implicit but to make it explicit, unders are not only unusual for regular players, but unders and not to cover are also much more susceptible to cheating. Overs are hard for any one person to reliably orchestrate.
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A lawyer named Alan Statman, who represented Ron Peters - allegedly Pete's main bookie - contacted SI and was looking for a payout. Statman apparently also contacted MLB.
More info here: Pete Rose gambling exposed: Inside the Sports Illustrated investigation - Sports Illustrated
Broadly speaking what you say is undeniable, I wonder about the proliferation of the types of lines you can bet and how that could affect individuals. I know many years ago I read about some weird soccer lines that I wouldn’t have even thought existed.
I made two mortgage payments on live u/o corners back when fubo was a sportsbook and didn't seem to be taking into account that world cup games were adding double digit extra time!
This is incredible. Wasn’t there an All-Star game (pro bowl, wnba, etc) that was not in the spotlight where they incorporated a running clock and nobody knew until just before the game began? Maybe 10-15 years ago but the closing line wasn’t remotely close to the opener it got so much action.
I do remember something about that. Was before my time. In the world cup, what basically happened was that the fubo algorithm, with a couple of minutes in the game would price corners as though the game was ending in 3 minutes. Or that's what it seemed to be doing. So, if there was like 3 minutes left and there had been 7 corners in the game, over 7.5 would be like +200 or something. If you were paying attention to the games and knew there had been a video review, or a long injury, you would know that there would be as many as 10 or even 12 minutes added on. So it was an easy bet. Not always a winner. But definitely EV+. The fact that fubo was a book that I didn't care if it banned me was icing on the cake.
So that was you being smart and them being dumb. What I recall (assisted by google) is the 2009 scandal and spot-fixing. I can't find any proof but things like timing of throw-ins were mentioned as something that could be bet on and fixed by a player.
edit: also, number of cards type of shit
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2013/dec/08/football-spot-fixing-claims-three-held
"The 34-year-old was filmed describing how he had twice punched an opponent, Oldham Athletic's Jose Baxter, while playing for Portsmouth in a League One match last February as he sought to receive a red card in exchange for £70,000. Asked on Sunday to reflect on the dismissal, the then Portsmouth manager Guy Whittingham told the BBC: "When you see it in the cold light of day afterwards, and you see what he's done, you can't fathom out why he's done it.""
Yeah, I turned a point about how esoteric bets increase the chances for players to try to influence games into a humblebrag!
There also was a thing where guys figured out there was a slight delay on one of the books in tennis and they were able to bet games live by being in the stadium. I think the way it worked was that when a game was 30/40 with the player who was losing serving, the odds for the serving player would be decent. They would still be the favorite, but with odds taking into account the decent chance of a break. Once it got to 30/40, they guys would load up a bet on the serving player winning the game, say $200 at -150. If the serving player won the point to make it deuce, they would immediately place the bet and often could get it before the odds updated to reflect that it was now deuce. They would still lose if the other guy came back to break, but they were getting great odds and by doing it over and over they were crushing it. Not really a way to exploit that, but interesting story.
Yeah lol i'm sure his 4th story is the true one, you go right ahead and believe that!
Here's a Ringer article that has more background on Porter if anyone is interested: https://www.theringer.com/nba/2024/4/18/24134038/jontay-porter-gambling-nba-lifetime-ban-toronto-raptors
So you think the FBI and DOJ were in on shielding Ohtani while framing his interpreter? That’s some creative stuff right there.
I admit I do find something funny about these bets being offered, and then if someone actually bets them, it’s obviously a sign of a bad actor and it must be frozen and investigated
