Rumors

We know gambling has become more intertwined with the NBA and other professional sports through sponsorships and partnerships. What protocols are in place to make sure players abide by league rules, and how does the organization go about encouraging overall financial literacy with players? Trajan Langdon: Both topics are obviously very important to us, and the NBA is constantly educating players and all employees on gambling and the no-tolerance policies that come with that. In terms of financial literacy, we have to be careful with the information we do give them, because it is their money once we give it to them. If you steer them down one path like investing, you do take risks, so we can’t give them insight into how they invest their money.

New York Times

A spokesperson for the NBPA said the union would be open to creating more limitations around prop betting if it helped diminish the amount of abuse that NBA players receive related to betting. “NBA players compete at the highest level with the utmost integrity and are concerned that prop bets have become an increasingly alarming source of player harassment, both online and in person,” an NBPA spokesperson said. “If tighter regulations can help minimize that abuse, then we support taking a closer look at them.”

New York Times

The National Basketball Players Association views the Porter case as an outlier and has seen no evidence other performance manipulation in the league, according to a spokesperson. The NBPA is, however, concerned about the abuse athletes face from disgruntled bettors.

ESPN

With three players involved in a federal gambling investigation, the NBA and its players' association said this week that they support further limitations on certain types of bets to reduce the risk of manipulation and combat athlete abuse by gamblers. "Protecting the integrity of our game is paramount, and we believe reasonable limitations on certain prop bets should be given due consideration," an NBA spokesperson said in a statement to ESPN. "Any approach should aim to reduce the risk of performance manipulation while ensuring that fans who wish to place prop bets can continue to do so via legal, regulated markets."

ESPN

Fullcourtpass: Michael Porter Jr. on sports betting “Think about it if you can get all your homies rich by telling yo bet 10K on my under..this one game imma act like I got an injury and they all get a lil bag… some people come from nothing & they think like that.” (Via @onenightsteiny )

x.com

A professional bettor placed 30 wagers in 46 minutes, all involving Terry Rozier in a 2023 NBA game, according to documents obtained by ESPN that reveal new details about the suspicious betting under scrutiny by federal investigators. On the morning of March 23, 2023, a bettor at a sportsbook in Biloxi, Mississippi, placed $13,759 in bets on the unders on Rozier's statistics in a game that night between the Charlotte Hornets and New Orleans Pelicans, according to the documents, which ESPN acquired through an open records request. All 30 bets won, after Rozier, an eight-year veteran with the Hornets at the time, exited 10 minutes into the game, citing a foot issue.

ESPN

Sources told ESPN that multiple sportsbooks in New Orleans also received heavier-than-expected action on the under on Rozier props, starting in the morning and lasting until midafternoon. At 2:24 p.m. the day of the game, U.S. Integrity sent a nationwide alert about "Suspicious Wagering Terry Rozier NBA Player Props," according to documents ESPN obtained through another open records request.

ESPN

Rozier's attorney, Jim Trusty, said while the federal probe remains ongoing, his client is not a target of the investigation. A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York said in an email that they could not confirm or deny Rozier's status in the investigation and declined further comment. Trusty said Rozier met with NBA and FBI officials multiple times in 2023 and that the initial investigation determined that Rozier had done nothing wrong.

ESPN

Pablo Torre: One source I spoke to who was close to several of Malik Beasley's current and former NBA teammates immediately told me when I asked if he had heard anything about the gambling issues, quote, "He's a dumbass. I believe everything." End quote. So that's not enough. We had to keep digging.

YouTube

And what I'm told is contrary to Shams Charania’s reporting, is that Terry Rozier has not been cleared of any wrongdoing, only that his name came up in the existing federal investigation. And this relates directly to why Moose is this character that we're focusing on, because Freemoose_NBA speaks to the federal investigation, which clearly is also still ongoing. Right. On that day, the same day that Terry Rosier News drops, this guy, Freemoose_NBA, tweeted something that was even more provocative because on that day, he posted, quote, "First was Jontay, then was Rosier, next you'll hear about capital M, four asterisks, capital B, and then six asterisks." The symmetry of the rule of three. Jontay, Rozier, M****** B*****. This guy, Freemoose_NBA, posted another tweet right after that one and said there's another current player who's going to have a report come out about them next. Won't say the name, but they play on the Pistons right now. This is the first documented mention by anyone anywhere that Malik Beasley was going to come up as part of this investigation.

YouTube

At which point it became clear that Moose_NBA, Twitter's Malik Beasley Profit was more than just Facebook friends with alleged Jontay Porter co-conspirator Ammar Awawdeh. Moose was his relative, his cousin. This is where it takes us back now to the legal documents as we try to connect all the dots here. Right. So, generally observing the following in the Jontay Porter legal documents, quote, "A relative of the defendant, Ammar Awawdeh, whose identity is known to me, placed a $10,000 parlay bet through betting company one on the under for player 1's three-pointers, assists, and steals." It goes on to talk about how the relative won $85,000, netting a profit of $75,000. And so just saying that Ammar Awawdeh in terms of the information he was sharing, who he was bringing in to the thing he was already caught up in. We don't know which family member it is. They're anonymous according to federal prosecutors, but family is literally mentioned in the federal investigation a number of times.

YouTube

I had to follow up with Mustafa to make sure he had his story straight on this. So I asked him again. You did not get information on Malik Beasley from Ammar Awawdeh who was part of the Jontay Porter case? No. Like I said, I got it off of Reddit. Do you have that Reddit forum that you got it from that you could show me? I could probably find it. Yeah. Would you be fine with me searching it and then getting it to you on Twitter? Yeah. Yeah, that'd be great. All right, we'll do that one. Despite the evidence from his own posts and his own brags to having a connection to someone in this he claims zero knowledge and that he got it from he got it from Reddit. Yeah, he said he got it from Reddit. Uh, and it was public. And after I hung up with Mustafa Omar, who promised me to hit me back on Twitter and send that Reddit post that would clear him of all of this and just say, "Hey, they had it. It wasn't me." What happened next was I logged back into my Twitter account and I DM'd him back a reminder being like, "Hey, uh, yeah, if you can just grab that Reddit post and send it back to me." Bloop. I got an error message and that error message said message not sent. Sending direct message failed. I thought my internet was down or that he turned off his DMs, but nope. Nope, guys. He had shut down his account at 1237474849 lowercase a.

YouTube

Malik Beasley, an NBA player under investigation in a federal gambling probe, had "financial issues" and struggled to pay back a $650,000 advance this year, according to a lawsuit filed by his former marketing agency. The suit, filed in April by New York-based Hazan Sports Management Group, seeks $2.25 million in damages and legal fees from Beasley for breach of contract.

ESPN

An attorney for Hazan Sports wrote that the firm "elected to take a chance and make a substantial investment of time, effort, and resources in a player with known issues (including and especially financial issues)" when it took Beasley on as a client in November 2023. Beasley terminated the deal two years later on Feb. 27, according to the suit. Hazan Sports tried to recoup a $650,000 marketing advance "but received little more than drips and drabs of sporadic payments and vague promises to repay the balance over time," the suit alleges.

ESPN