Jontay Porter only erred by betting on himself, allegedly: Wrong Answers Only Wednesday
Spare the integrity-of-the-game finger-wagging. Pro sports orgs such as the MLSE and Toronto Raptors, who profit off gambling, must figure out how to deter players from betting on games (allegedly).
A new emoji — half fiery and half cry-laughter — was commissioned amid the Jontay Porter gambling story, which is also why you get the ’Bag one day early.
The Toronto Raptors are my team, if only since the day the franchise was created, and will remain so after Porter is cut loose. I can be real.
The Raptors are a wing of Maple Leaf Sports Entertainment Ltd. (MLSE), which announced three gambling partnerships within a week of Ontario becoming the first province or state to push legal private-sector sports betting two years ago next week.1 MLSE, which doubtlessly lobbied for the, uh, ‘onboarding’ of legal gambling, is also based in the only place in North America that has okayed playing the slots on your smartphone.2 They are also a large corporation in a nation, Canada, that is softer and more passive about white-collar crime and other acts of self-dealing than these Raptors are with defence and rebounding — hey now!3 (They are 24th of 30 teams in DRtg so that checks out.4)
Long story short: ESPN, which has gambling partnerships, reported Monday that the NBA, which has gambling partnerships, has cast “eyes” on “betting issues” with Porter.5 As an uncorded sports fan, I have no idea, nor do I care, how this was framed last night on the Canadian sportscasts, which have gambling partnerships and also are properties on the networks owned by the telcos that also own a stake in MLSE, the Raptors, and, pretty please with maple syrup on top, a WNBA team to be named later.
What does jump out is both games that were flagged, on Jan. 26 and March 20, were at home in (Insert Big Five Bank Here) Arena. So plenty of MLSE employees in the arena could have wondered what was up with Porter. So after the first instance, no one called Porter for a meeting? Then after the second instance last week, no one at MLSE immediately made a report to the RCMP, even though it is the “dedicated and fully integrated police bureau attached to the gaming regulator” in Ontario?6
Action, or inaction, reveals true feelings. You can take that to the hoop.
So with this Jontay Porter gambling story, what should pro teams do when athletes bet on their stats?
— T.T., Westbrook, Ont.
Whelp, any good regimen of radical honesty would demand that the teams never, ever, mealy-mouth niceties about, “the integrity of the game” or some such. As explained in the preamble above, MLSE and the Raptors showed their hand when they entered the gambling business.
And most people have some peace with that. Enough people may have moved to where they accept the major leagues will never bust open corruption since that is Bad For Business. One would hope that is not the case, but I know better than to hold out for an honest reckoning.
It will be re-affirmed if it comes out no one sat down Jontay Porter and his lawyer on the next business day after, per ESPN again, “the under hit on all of (his) props … and DraftKings Sportsbook reported that the under on Porter's 3-pointers was the biggest money winner for bettors of any NBA player props from games (on Jan. 26).” He continued to play, never mind that thousands of Raptors fans might well have paid hundreds of dollars to watch a cooked game. And then it allegedly happened again.
The point is, it falls on any team if they got involved with an athlete willing, allegedly again, to try to bet against himself. Casting the player out and clutching pearls probably won’t stop it. An effective deterrent would be taking civil action against players and the agents.
I am pro-labour, but shoddy work done in bad faith can be actionable.
I will still be a Raptors fan. Check out what Will Leitch wrote last week regarding how “being a sports fan is an inherently irrational activity.” I have agreed to highly malleable moral boundaries, but there better be boundaries with gambling by the jocks pretty damn quick.
If these allegations are true, how could Jontay Porter have better covered his tracks?
— O.M., Brampton, Ont.
First rule: if you are doing crimes in your games, (a) do not bet on your stats and (b) see rule 1, and do not take the Under.
As an NBA player, Porter would have a veritable mental dossier of inside info about his teammates. Who is having distractions from family or business, or a fight with his fiancée? Let it ride on him missing a bunch of three-pointers!
Porter was not on my radar much since he was a marginal player on a team that has been checked out (checks notes) since all season. The Raptors hired him after the Detroit Pistons, the worst team in the NBA, cut him loose in October. And his entire basketball life reads as half charmed and half so pathetically transactional — why yes, he is a Crypto Bro! — you should get a charity tax credit just for reading his Wikipedia page.
He and his better-baller brother, Michael Porter Jr., the small forward on the reigning champion Denver Nuggets, were a package deal while they scaled the ranks of age-group hoops. They won a high school state title in Missouri. Then, in their mid-teens, they moved to Washington state, since the then-coach of the Washington Huskies hired their daddy as an assistant coach as a recruiting sweetener. That coach was fired, so the coach of the Missouri Tigers hired their father, and the brothers went there instead. What is this “stability” and “structure” you speak of?
In 2018, Jontay Porter declared for the NBA Draft. He reconsidered even though, he assured the media, he was “sure” he would have been a first-round choice. One season, and one knee injury later, he was not drafted at all and then began a journey through the G League and the Summer League.
The Raptors were his fourth NBA stop, and he had played only 37 games. That sounds like the profile of a player who might not worry about being caught, since his ceiling is low.
Overall, one should remember it is early days with above-board sports betting. The Gen-Z crowd does not seem to mind the intrusion of kudzu-like gambling ads as much as older generations. Perhaps the market manipulation should be out in the open. Let the jocks gamble, as long as they post their plays publicly 30 minutes before the competition begins. You will see teammates fighting each other for the ball. Oh, she thinks she is going for OVER 19.5 POINTS tonight? Not on my watch!
How grateful do you think the Blue Jays are not to be dealing with the Shohei Ohtani / Ippei Mizuhara gambling scandal?
— C.S., Marathon, Ont.
They are 63 percent happy it is the Los Angeles Dodgers’ problem. And 37 percent ruing that, ‘Why didn’t we just tell his interpreter you can bet on your phone here instead of going to a bookie?!”
Since MLB golden child Shohei Ohtani and “gambling activity” are in the same sentence, when does Pete Rose get reinstated into Major League Baseball?
— D.B., Nipigon, Ont.
Around the same time that convicted criminals are released, since someone is accused of a similar offence. Pete Rose bet on baseball while he was uniformed personnel. You could look it up.
What is the least-quoted “Simpsons Predicted It” moment?
— E.H., Hannon, Ont.,
It is probably from “Lisa’s Wedding.” Kent Brockman, who by the year 2010 is a newsreader for CNNBCBS — A Division of ABC, reminds the audience, “Remember, if you see any celebrities, consider them dangerous.”
Sidebar: with all of the allegations against Diddy, the “Making The Band” parody that Chapelle’s Show created 20 years ago is extra-sharp, and extra-necessary.
What should happen with the Arizona Coyotes?
— E.L., Rivière-du-Loup, Que.
The NHL’s most KHL Franchise™ needs another hard restart. It will not come through continuing to play in the college arena. A proper arena is years away. The Montréal Canadiens will not let a team enter their territory in Québec without a whopping indemnification.
So, the Coyotes just called up Josh Doan, the progeny of former captain Shane Doan. That prompted a suggestion on the bird app that is impossible to resist. Stock the Arizona roster with naught but players suspected of being mostly good at having what the purveyors of prospect porn call an “NHL bloodline” and send them out as a travel team for all 82 games. Revenues for all 32 teams will increase without having 41 games played in the college arena. Employment for the nepo babies — play-by-play man, Jac Collinsworth! — and entertainment as you remember how good someone’s dad is, and yet, hockey talent is not hereditary.
The Coyotes should accept this arrangement. They have nothing to lose except their grip on 28th overall in a 32-team league.
What is the most incredible thing to happen in Canadian politics in the last week?
— D.A., Erin, Ont.
When Ontario Premier Doug Ford spoke about housing and infrastructure without mentioning “apartments,” “affordable housing,” or “transit” without being aggressively called on it. He put some rotting lower-hanging fruit out there about stopping four-plexes that ignored his task force. Everyone who is at a breaking point over Ontario’s self-escalated crises in housing shortages, affordability, healthcare, and education went for it. As one of my parents has said, we are all inmates now in Fordville, ONTerrible.
That is not a knock on the low-info premier or a party who treats What’s The Worse That Can Happen? like a catechism. Ford does not know any better, and his party cares even less than that. We have to be more persistent about putting one and one together, and not lazily letting the government of the day, or government-in-waiting, drive the discussion.
On this front, per The Walrus’ Arno Kopecky, “Climate and housing are vitally connected, and acknowledging this turns a pair of calamities into one huge opportunity.” That is the quality of life before party lines; if you do not believe climate change is upon us, then look at what the insurance industry refuses to cover any longer. That same report extreme weather has cost (Canadians) over $3 billion in insured housing damages for the past two years in a row,” and about 1.5 million Canadians can’t get flood insurance anymore.7
Somewhere that needs to be communicated. It is not going to come straight from politicians. Post-COVID, it is hard for any retail politician to mention anything that suggests even a hint of individual sacrifice for some greater good. And thus the door is open for a charlatan.
Meantime, Ontario will have fewer, and less collectively experienced firefighter crews, trying to contain climate change-magnified wildfires this spring and summer. The province is treating it the same way it has treated every labour issue since 2018, and the way disinterested rich people handle everything. They slap some money into individuals’ hands — one-time incentive payments — and hope that masks the lack of any long-term plan.
Spending wildly always gets results, yo.
What was the most heartwarming part of the Idaho band cheering on Yale during an NCAA Tournament game last week?
— M.S., Goderich, Ont.
The fact Fanatics did not ship the T-shirts to the band, since then they would have been cheering on Zale University.
Oh, you say Zale is not a real school, and I just did that for jokes?
The Zale Zbiotics’ campus and the entire university syllabus might be a multi-level marketing scheme in an office park, but they are real. They just came up from Division II. They will be tournament-eligible in 2028. They were 13-17 this season, but their band has already created a great fight song, “Come Zale Away,” which is pretty much the second half of Styx’s “Come Sail Away,” but with more brass. And there are some lyrics …
A gathering of Power 5 transfers
appeared on the court
Saying we can exceed
the sum of our weird parts.Come Zale Away
Come Zale Away
Come take a corrrrrrnner three!!!
I know, I know. Styx with your day job, Sager.8
That is more than enough for now. Please stay safe, and be kind — especially to yourself.
March 25-26, 2024
Hamilton, Ont.
The Canadian Press, April 11, 2022.
The Ontario government plays that off as, sportswriter Scott Stinson says, “at least your terrible bets go to fund highways and schools.” As long as it’s not going to healthcare or affordable housing.
Lucy Saddleton, “White Collar Crime Is A Growing Concern For Canadian Companies,” Canadian Lawyer Mag, Sept. 21, 2020.
Source: Basketball-Reference.com.
David Purdum, Brian Windhorst, and Adrian Wojnarowski, “Sources: NBA eyes Raptors' Jontay Porter for betting issues,” ESPN.com, March 25, 2024.
Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario press release, July 5, 2022.
Arno Kopecky, “Want to Fight Climate Change? Fix Housing,” The Walrus, March 20, 2024.
Joke is on you. I do not have one of those.