The NBA hasn’t had a real (or uncovered) gambling scandal since booking games in more than select locations became legal. Unless you count Scott Foster’s streak of holding down playoff teams that are busy ChrisPaul – that’s currently at 14 games after The Suns’ loss to New Orleans in Game 2 on Tuesday night – As a controversy, there has never been an open case like it has in the NFL Calvin Ridley was caught throwing the Falcons into a couple of parlays while sitting at home for most of the season.
Cue ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowskiwho blames terrible, retaliatory behavior by Boston fans towards Kyrie Irving not at Kyrie’s controversial history with the franchise or the history of Celtics fans with black players, but at the rise of legalized gambling.
I’m not a pro gambling guy. I don’t bet on sports because I don’t have the money, but also because I get my roots the old-fashioned way through long-held but changing prejudices. However, to defend the many degenerates I know, they were playing long before it was regulated.
The guy who gets drunk and yells an obscenity or two at Bogdan Bogdanović for scoring less than 19 points, and thereby sinks his parlay in the same game, would get drunk and tell a player to fuck himself anyway. Assholes are assholes, and the world doesn’t suddenly become inundated with an influx of them, it’s just easier to catch them assholes on camera than it has been in the past.
Irving turning fans off isn’t a new occurrence. Then-Bronco QB Jake Plummer In 2004, he gave the bird to fans of his own team. (The athletes of Colorado are reserved and reckless. They booed Paxton Lynch for simply attending a preseason game and The entire Buffs student body was kicked out football games for throwing debris on the field.) And long ago there was Jack McDowell, who in 1994 gave Yankee fans the finger for booing him as he walked off the hill, earning him the nickname: The Yankee Pinball.
I understand where Woj came from because it’s a player’s perspective, that’s the only point of view he values because he’s so able to have the relationships with players that he has. It’s brave to take on the League, your employer, and their business partners, even if it’s easier when you have them job security That comes with the signing of a five-year, $7 million-a-year deal with ESPN.
There are plenty of people who agree or disagree with the insider’s opinion, and of course the anti-gambling crowd has chimed in. When I was writing an article Sports leagues warn of the risks of doing business with gambling sitesI was thinking more of Ridley or the disgraced referee Tim Donaghy. Not a bunch of Southie lads who are genetically inclined to get pissed off when an overs bet goes wrong in the second half.
The outlets, which chided Woj and called him a “dummy” for failing to take into account that sports betting isn’t yet legal in Massachusetts, also need to calm down. As mentioned earlier, just because it’s illegal doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Do you think the guy listed as “Tony P” on your phone won’t take a texted Vegas set in-game bet because it’s not legal in Masshole State? Bringing in your $20 bet is like #5 on the list of illegal shit he’s done in the last 24 hours, and it’s probably the least harmful of them all.
Could comments and harassment from the stands contain heightened anger with money at stake? Absolutely. However, the line of what’s acceptable is being pushed by all sorts of fans, and how far it’s pushed is only as important as people’s outrage says it is.
Whether they’re racist fans, drunk fans, or “morally corrupt” gambling addicts isn’t the issue. They are all different degrees of assholes who should be banned from games if the line is crossed. In order to improve the fan experience, the fans as a whole need to be improved, and I don’t think that curbing societal decay is Adam Silver’s responsibility. (Making a win for the league does, however.)
The logic that the NBA is responsible for despicable fan behavior because they let the sinners into the chapel doesn’t work when the clergy already included the damned.
