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Boston Celtics forward Jaylen Brown said the NBA isn't doing enough to protect players from issues surrounding sports betting, speaking about the issue a day after a prominent player and coach were arrested for their alleged roles in a nationwide gambling scandal.

"They're like, 'You make X amount of money or X, Y and Z, you should be able to deal with all the extra negativity, the people approaching you about the parlays,'" Brown said Friday at Madison Square Garden before the Celtics face the New York Knicks. "It creates a negative discourse around the game and players when people have money involved. ... It's leading to situations that we can avoid if more conversations were had right now."

Who knows if this will go anywhere but good on Jalen for calling out how the league really needs to take more responsibility for helping the players avoid screwing themselves. They have absolutely let the fox into the henhouse (with an assist from the Supreme Court natch) and since I don't think sports gambling is getting significantly more regulated anytime soon, if they want to avoid scandals like this becoming more prevalent they need to have a firmer hand. I remember when salaries were first starting to really balloon 15-20 years ago, the league did a lot of PR about their rookie boot camps and other player supports to teach them how to manage their wealth and avoid getting too taken advantage of. They need to significantly revamp and reinvest in that stuff.

Kevin Garnett Played in Alleged Rigged Poker Games; Not a Suspect | PokerNews https://share.google/W0uwBlpWkrfVscBal

Some interesting stuff in there

so it is alleged that billups knew about the poker cheating and some anecdotal evidence suggests that he engaged in it himself, guess he played some pretty suspicious hands according to people at the table drawing to an inside straight etc, now kg and ty lue played in the game so were they in on it was billups ripping them off were billups and his associates protecting them from the scam

kgs people are saying he only played in the game once and didnt even stay that long but who knows

getting this all from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhp4XgK5Gk4

high stakes private games are wild find the right one and you could get rich but theres such a high chance of getting ripped off one way or another

some anecdotal evidence suggests that he engaged in it himself

i was unclear on this back when it was announced so i went and read the release that came w/ the indictment, and it's a bit hard to parse because it refers to billups as a member of "the cheating teams" but doesn't explicitly state whether his participation in the cheating went beyond just being a "face card," though that seems implied to me. however if you go and read the actual indictment itself there is at least one explicit allegation stating that billups "participated" in the rigged games. i.e.

"40. For example, in furtherance of the Rigged Poker Scheme, in or around April 2019, several of the defendants participated in Rigged Games in Las Vegas, Nevada, at which they defrauded Victims of at least $50,000. The defendants CHAUNCEY BILLUPS, ERIC EARNEST, JAMIE GILET, ROBERT STROUD, and SOPHIA WEI organized and participated in these Rigged Games using a Rigged Shuffling Machine supplied by STROUD."

i guess you could really drill down on what the word "participation" means in this context but i think a fair reading of this would be that chauncey was at the table in a game he (allegedly) knew was using a rigged shuffler

also to carry over our conversation on why an NBA player might get involved in point shaving, the IRS is said to have placed an $8 million lien on rozier the same year that he took himself out of the game

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/46760404/heat-terry-rozier-faced-8-million-tax-lien-irs-2023

“Ty Lue is a recurring character in this story…”

cant believe this shit with billups what a scumbag

the profile of the career criminal who masterminded the shceme in the pablo torre vid is pretty sweet, classic crime doer

so it is alleged that billups knew about the poker cheating and some anecdotal evidence suggests that he engaged in it himself, guess he played some pretty suspicious hands according to people at the table drawing to an inside straight etc, now kg and ty lue played in the game so were they in on it was billups ripping them off were billups and his associates protecting them from the scam

― lag∞n, Thursday, October 30, 2025 10:50 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

curious what the obsessives on the 2+2 forums think, they cracked the Mike Postle thing pretty thoroughly and these folks only accuse others of cheating as a last resort. I don't think one hand or even a few hands can be evidence of anything, if you've played in wild home games there are some real degenerate gamblers who also tend to drink a lot and misread their hand, but yeah at a certain point you can be pretty certain something is going on

yeah i dont think we have the hands but apparently some pros who played in the game were very suspicious

wonder if the feds have the hands via the various devices these guys were using

is the allegation that they knew what cards were coming, or that certain players knew what was in everyone's hand?

both

unclear if it was at the same time theyve detailed a bunch of different tech a card scanning table like they use on tv, a hacked shuffling machine, and glasses that can read marked cards

does make sense to involve billups in the actual cheating since he has more plausible deniability for playing crazy as a rich athlete throwing around cash than some guy who seems like hes in the mafia

From last week's NY Times (free link):

When the dealer ran decks of cards through a shuffling machine, the trap was set.

This was no ordinary shuffling machine, according to the indictment. It contained hidden technology that read the cards in the deck and instantly predicted which player would be dealt the best hand, prosecutors said.

That information was transmitted outside the building to someone known as the operator. The operator, in turn, alerted a player at the table who was in on the scheme — “the quarterback” or “the driver.” Finally, that player told his comrades what was about to happen, prosecutors said, through a system of secret signals. The signals included touching certain poker chips to communicate different outcomes while appearing to be harmlessly fidgeting.

The players at the table could essentially see the future and know who would win a poker game before a hand had even been dealt.

John Doe #1 had no way of knowing that he was doomed by split-second bursts of electronic data, enmeshed in a cross-country criminal enterprise. No way of knowing how many John Does would line up behind him.

that shuffling machine apprently is just one thats commonly used in vegas to track cards in order i guess to review if they need to investigate anything, describing it as a hack is prob inaccurate it was working as intended the criminals were just using the data nefariously

the hoop collective pod with the former federal prosecutor is by far the best content i've come across on the indictments--she is very good at explaining stuff and and makes some interesting points about how different the two cases are and how the betting one might be on shakier ground than the poker one.

I enjoyed nate duncan and nate silver on duncan’s pod yesterday too

doug polk says in his new video that he personally knows people who have lost a cumulative $10m in these celebrity athlete poker games, video is pretty rambling and goes over a lot of stuff we already know but thought that ten mil number just from people he knows was interesting as it implies these guys stole a shitload of money

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzd9QGyifjc

I've no doubt the poker game(s) were rigged and it all went down more or less as described by the prosecution. But I don't trust the Trump DOJ to play a clean game either. The phrasing of the indictments are full of ambiguities when it comes to whether Billups knew about the elaborate cheating apparatus. He is described a "participant", who helped to "organize" the game, and he almost certainly knew that his presence at the table was designed to lure in some big money players, but the extent of his knowledge regarding the fraud is merely a floating implication. I'm going to wait to see the result of the trial.

yea one thing about poker players is they are always degens first even the insanely talented ones like Ivey, I'd imagine a lot of them get into a game like this and suffer misfortune upon misfortune but they can't quit

still think about the UltimateBet/Potripper scandal and how many well known poker players were just dumping nonstop to that guy. looking at his results it was clear something was up but none of them could take a step back. nobody wants to think they're dumb enough to get scammed

at the very least its a failure of the poker whisper network that so many pros got taken

wonder how skilled they were at the fleecing you could do it in such a way that it would be hard to notice if you werent too greedy just one or two coolers a night, dont invite the victims bask too many times, but scammers arent know for not being too greedy

it’s a pretty good system because even if someone realizes you were cheating their options are a. rat on the mafia to the cops b. confront the mafia yourself

as someone who still plays online that worries me very much, nobody would've suspected anything with the superuser accounts if not for these guys winning like 10 standard deviations above the 2nd best player. I think it would be pretty easy to be subtle about it and still wind up with a winrate above anyone who isn't cheating. a couple well-timed bluffs and 1 or 2 hero calls a session is all it would take.

this john hamm gambling ad where he describes the country bar the protagonists end up at as having a tv "showing a football game that no one wanted to change, ever" is driving me insane theyre watching the game of course they dont want to change it this is an extremely normal bar activity have you ever been to a bar before

wtf are you even trying to change the tv to are your stories on

gotta put on the deal or no deal marathon

.....and another one
https://www.si.com/nba/nba-wants-cell-phones-multiple-teams-gambling-probe-widens

I frankly hope the whole league goes down over this.

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/48904034/terry-rozier-100k-bribe-betting-scheme-federal-prosecutors-nba

crazy

doesn't sound like something Terry would do

committing a felony for less money than you make in one game good plan terry

Your honor my leg really hurt

Nine-year NBA veteran Malik Beasley has been indicted on federal charges for gambling related to a sports betting scheme, such as point shaving and prop bets, his attorney Steve Haney tells ESPN. The government is coordinating a voluntary surrender of Beasley this week.

— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) June 29, 2026

i feel like you have to think anyone in usa is anti-gambling in sports for this to matter.

as a non-gambler (not for moral reasons but practical ones including that it’s dumb as hell) i’m just like— there’s a lost generation, they are fucked and likely will fuck over all of us, because no sport any of us care about will ever be reasonably free of it. “reasonably” is an important word there because there has ALWAYS been gambling in sport.

there should be a “betting tifosi/tifosi” ratiometer which could tell me everything i need to know to understand the uh, “shit-about-to-happen.”

that ratio is the basis of every film noir plot ever, right?

well it matters in terms of its fed charges so realistically he's completely fucked

ever day people are out there working hard to find new ways to lose their damn minds

I like to blame the looming apocalypse for that. The US has fallen into a negative feedback loop, where the widespread belief in an apocalyptic near future creates widespread social recklessness, which in turn hastens our apocalyptic near future.

brb, I have to ask Claude about where to place my life savings on some surefire trifecta bets in pro pickleball.

https://awfulannouncing.com/news/jeff-pearlman-rips-pat-mcafee-lebron-james-bet.html

god I fuckin hate that guy

The fact that Pat Mcafee is going to be paid $60M/year is proof there is no god.

that is completely outrageous

should be huge scandal but no one cares about anything anymore

Stephen A Smith I at least understand because the dude is legitimately a great entertainer, McAfee on the other hand just seems like a boring podcast bro and I suspect the only reason he's getting pushed so hard is because he appeals directly to college aged men who are about to develop major gambling issues

also a product of every media entity deciding it was time to go right wing when trump won

^^^

if i was any kind of writer/journalist on espn’s payroll i feel like i’d be pretty broken by this

espn got into the mcafee business pretty immediately after their attempts to get into the barstool business blew up in their faces, he's basically just a more palatable version of dave portnoy, however the idea that mcafee is being pushed onto an unsuspecting public or whatever doesn't pass the smell test to me, he's the exact kinda person that a lot of ppl in america want to be listening to

But your motivations are pure, right? https://t.co/Fr7kYC3Kgt pic.twitter.com/cocEALV5uX

— Governor Hochul Press Office (@NYGovPress) July 31, 2026

man, if the state could find a way to crack down on these freaks…

Kyle isn't nearly as smart as he thinks, but he is aligning himself with the executive suite, not the pigeons. If he does it right he'll be more like the CEO of Goldman Sachs in during the 2008 Financial Crisis than like the day traders and house flippers.

https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/1wlmy4g/lebron_james_continues_to_promote_gambling_on_his/

I honestly have zero respect for people shilling for this shit, let alone those who have so much money they won’t even notice the direct deposit from one of these companies enter their account. Meanwhile the house always wins.

Suicide Risk

The stress, pain, and isolation of a gambling problem may cause some individuals to feel that there is no way out, leading to thoughts of suicide. Up to half of individuals in treatment for gambling disorder have suicidal ideation, and about 17% have attempted suicide.

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/50078401/spurs-victor-wembanyama-not-interested-promoting-betting-sites

good for wemby

hell yeah

love it

love this dude

salute wemb

im sure theres more players that feel the same way but for someone of his stature to just say it out loud and m/l call out the big dogs in the league is really refreshing.

he should dunk on lebron and yell prop bet number of dunks on lebron one or more in his face

"I honestly have zero respect for people shilling for this shit, let alone those who have so much money they won’t even notice the direct deposit from one of these companies enter their account."

i have a hard time comprehending what possesses rich/famous people to appear in ads at all, but i guess that's why i'm not rich/famous. are they just doing favors for their ceo buddies or something?

the paychecks gotta be hard to turn down

yeah... sounds so soul crushing to me.

haunted by charles barkley saying "doritos chips"

one thing with celebrities doing commercials is they employ people whos job it is to get them commercials and if they dont take them their employees who are often also their buddies will be sad and poorer than they wouldve been without the commercials, celebrities are businesses unto themselves with a ton of people interested in growing that celebrity

its like how terry rozier did a felony for less than he made for one game, turned out he did it cause his friend brought him the deal and was excited to get his cut

saw the LeBron/Jeter commercial yesterday and it made me depressed. its one thing to see these guys do ads for shoes or Sprite or McDonalds or whatever but this stuff is actively preying on their fans and sending a bunch of your biggest fans into bankruptcy. more than that I just hate how this stuff has gotten its hooks in every corner of the sports ecosystem. half the morning shows on ESPN devote tons of time to analyzing the lines, during every NFL pregame show you have to hear about Gronk's parlay of the week, even playoff MLB is showing these graphs charting the movement of the odds in real time, reducing everything to a random number generator you can make money on (but probably won't)...how can this possibly be good for the long term health of the league? I've noticed myself caring less and less about sports these last few years and I think this is the main reason why, along with the fact that so many local games are just unwatchable now. screw all of these assholes.