Ever since the Gilbert Arenas bust I’ve considered this to be not uncommon. Just from the circles these athletes run in and the type of fun people tend to have with that amount of money available. Even without that amount of money plenty of people gamble informally on most anything.
Really bad look for the NBA picking up a second major scandal this year, illegal Balmer payments to Kawhi Leonard being the first.
Knowing nothing about the case, I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is reality tv distraction porn that's going to end up in shakedowns and pardons being tied up in a nice little bow in the final episode.
The pro sports leagues made a Faustian bargain when they partnered with sports books like FanDuel and BetMGM. Those deals brought in licensing revenue and drove up short term fan engagement because the punters betting on games watch the whole thing without switching channels. But long term I think it's going to burn their business model. The temptation for players to take a bribe is huge and now every time fans see something happen on the field that seems unexpected they start to doubt whether it's real. If the leagues don't get a handle on this then in a few decades they'll be seen as jokes: anyone still watching will be doing it for campy or ironic entertainment like professional wrestling.
What’s going on with the formatting in this article? Why is every other paragraph broken by another authors byline? Is this some anti-ai posturing by NYT? They’ve made the article harder to read for no reason.
Do they have proof Chauncey conspired in and profited from the rigging? Seems like he got appearance fees in under ground games? Interesting if the prosecution can tie him to the fraud itself. Announcing it in connection with actual game rigging interesting for a case that has nothing really to do with basketball.
>Mr. Nocella said the technology also included “specially designed contact lenses and sunglasses to read the backs of playing cards, which ensured that the victims would lose big.”
This technology (in a fictionalized eyepatch form) was the setup of the "I also like to live dangerously" joke.
For anyone interested in the Poker part of this news, two years ago I read an article in Wired magazine about a security consultant that was able to "hack" the automatic card shuffle machines. These machines are commonly used throughout the world in casinos and private games. He got the machines to send the cards dealt to each player to his phone. This showed all hands dealt and the eventual seat with the winning hand BEFORE the players even looked at their cards! At the time, I knew where there is enough money, this will surely become a problem. It was the first thing I thought about reading this news today.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 39.1 ms ] threadReally bad look for the NBA picking up a second major scandal this year, illegal Balmer payments to Kawhi Leonard being the first.
Can anyone take a guess at what this means?
Oh come on Chauncey Billus didn’t do his betting in Crypto like Dogecoin we just gonna let everybody skate like George Sorry-Ass Santos I guess?
Damn answered my own question.
>Mr. Nocella said the technology also included “specially designed contact lenses and sunglasses to read the backs of playing cards, which ensured that the victims would lose big.”
This technology (in a fictionalized eyepatch form) was the setup of the "I also like to live dangerously" joke.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkzMA1jrm00
Wired did a follow up article today in relation to this news: https://www.wired.com/story/how-hacked-card-shufflers-allege...
The video from 2023 explaining it all and demonstrating it is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ20ilE5DtA