A sports fan needs to know three things: his wife is faithful, his priest is devout, and his point guard is honest.
I would not know the Bulls’ Josh Giddey if he held the door open for me, but I have a stake in his ability (or his inability) to shoot 3-pointers, a wager I made by pointing and clicking.
If Giddey shoots (not makes, just shoots) five 3s against the Hawks Monday night, I win. If not, bye-bye bitcoin.
I confess I really don’t know how to bet on basketball, I don’t understand the jargon. Point spreads are easy. March Madness brackets are a sacred spring rite.
Same with other games. Hockey? Please. I have enough trouble explaining the red and blue lines, never mind the puck line.
I wonder if bettors don’t just humor all of baseball’s betting gimcracks until football season starts when winning and losing still seem to matter.
But I was tempted to make this little flutter because of the burp in the news cycle that included nonbasketball words like “FBI” and “mafia.”
Hey, I know a column when I see one.
It seems that an NBA coach, an NBA player and a former player were arrested by the FBI for something or other having to do with gambling. How the mafia figures in, I am not sure.
Yet, surprise is not my first reaction to any of it. It was going to happen, and it has. One former NBA referee, Tim Donaghy, went to jail for betting on games he worked. Jontay Porter, a Toronto player, was given a lifetime ban for gambling.
The NBA has clear rules prohibiting players from gambling on NBA games or tipping off or encouraging others, although betting on baseball and football is OK, showing that the NBA is not a bunch of foghats who don’t understand how the real world works.
Blame the Supreme Court for allowing the spread of sports betting but also the eagerness of sports leagues and teams to see profit where they used to see evil.
See it in the signage, in the TV ads, in the ease of simple sports conversation, not of who will win or lose but by how much and how many minutes the small forward plays.
Suspicion replaces trust, disappointment depends on the point spread.
One of the things in the indictment of Chauncy Billups, the Portland coach who also is charged with something to do with rigged card games, was a game against the Bulls a couple of years ago when he sat four of his players and the Bulls won by 28.
The active player indicted, Miami’s Terry Rozier, known irregularly as “Scary Terry,” is accused of removing himself from games so that associates might win one of those prop bets, you know, like the one I just made on good ol’ Josh.
Basketball is the marriage bed of game tinkering, usually having to do with point spreads, going back to the middle of the last century, but here in the age of the smartphone and the Prop Bet, that is as antiquated as the butter churn.
I am neither for nor against sports gambling. Gambling is like the wind. It is going to blow. But my instinct, and my experience, tells me not to trust any of it.
Gambling and sports have been dating forever, though only recently have they been given permission to share the same building. I’m going to have to try the FanDuel Sports Lounge the next time I’m at the UC.
Professional sports’ position on gambling had been the same as Captain Renault’s in “Casablanca.” Shocked to find gambling taking place. Shocked. Until now. When there is money to be made.
As long as professional sports agrees there is money to be made from what used to be Sin No. 1, and those who make it happen are protected partners, it is going to take more than this to change anything.
As Rick tells Capt. Renault at the end of “Casablanca,” slightly altered for my purposes here, “Louie, I think this is the beginning of a shameful friendship.”
