NBA Commish: Anti-Gambling Stance May Be Outdated
The NBA has long been in line with the NFL when it comes to publicly opposing betting on their games — especially since one of their refs got so deep into it with shady non-legal sports-betting types that it may or may not have jeopardized the purity of his calls.
However, it turns out that busting bad guy Tim Donaghy has had the NBA taking a closer look at sports betting and seeing some new realities … perhaps.
While the league’s seemingly softening stance gets Las Vegas excited about the possibility of having its own franchise some day (the NFL still says no way, not never!) the discussion has now been opened up in the sports betting world for the possibility of “nationally legalized gambling” on the NBA.
I don’t even need to waste your time pointing out how obviously connected this is to anti-UIGEA efforts, right? Good to see the big-league sports media embracing PPA talking points … and at least one big-league honcho open to changing a long-held anti-gambling position.
Click here to read SI’s discussion with David Stern on where fully legal gambling may or may not fit in the future.
Brandon says:
December 15th, 2009 at 11:08pm
“especially since one of their refs got so deep into it that he started intentionally blowing calls”
Actually, as pointed out in Donaghy’s 60 Minutes interview, the FBI and NBA both did investigations and found that there was no relation between the bets he was placing and the calls he was making. The reason he made bets (and was successful at it) was because he had insider information regarding players and certain referees’ biases towards certain players.
DanM says:
December 15th, 2009 at 11:15pm
fair enough. and good point. I read the SI article closer and indeed you seem right. (or at least righter than I). Slight edit to the line you quote forthcoming.
Losty says:
December 16th, 2009 at 10:17pm
Yet the CNBC Special mentioned something about Donaghy’s games “getting more heavy” or something like that.
Terrible special, the “we lost our home” basics. Todd Witteles was good, and McDermott did OK, but The Rep who co-wrote UIEGA, God he was bad..
Nathan Pearce says:
December 30th, 2009 at 4:51am
I’m not too well up on Donaghy but is it not obvious, from the state of sport in Europe, that gambling has only a positive effect on sport (mainly through added income)? Soccer matches here seem more likely to be fixed for reasons of pride and success (see the Italian Serie A scandal) and the teams from countries barred from recieving sponsorship from the industry tend to suffer (http://www.right2bet.net/community/blog/2009/12/polish-football-set-to-suffer-as-egaming-sponsorship-could-be-banned.php)