Every company has an idea of what they consider the worst thing that can happen. And it’s usually way worse than what you’d think. Like talk to an someone who works in crisis PR for an airline, and there are disasters I would have never imagined in my worst fevered dream. That’s what they prepare for, working on the assuming it won’t ever happen. But at least they’re ready, and certainly ready for any crisis that’s not nearly as bad.
That said, I’d like to think the NBA is ready for the current crisis they’re facing. Because in many regards, it’s at least some small version of their worst nightmare. In case you hadn’t heard, last week the FBI arrested one current coach and player and one former player in connection to two indictments related to rigged card games tied to the mafia and, oddly worse, illegal gambling on NBA games. The later included providing insider information about player injuries and lineups and even pulling themself from a game to change the outcome. This idea – that somehow the games are even marginally fixed and that some people know about it, is the nuclear option for pretty much every sport other than professional wrestling.
The good news seems to be that a) the NBA seemed to know this was coming and had some time to prepare, and b) no major stars seem implicated in the scandal. In all honesty, it seems more bizarre than shocking, given that athletes and a coach with incredibly high earning potential were selling information for basically thousands of dollars. It’s kind of the definition of high risk/low reward. It’s also why you still wouldn’t expect to see players at the top of the NBA income bracket getting involved in something as silly as this, when the legal money is far better than anything a life of crime can offer.
There’s probably three questions to answer here with varying levels of depth. First, how deep does this scandal go? Despite the flashy headlines and the inclusion of Chauncy Billups, a current NBA coach and one-time star player, this is probably more isolated than endemic. At least that’s what they hope. Second, and this is important, how much do fans care? There was a point in the not too distant past where a gambling scandal like this might have shaken a sports league to its core. You’d have a series of permanent bans and 24/7 coverage and it would all end up in some kind of documentary. Forget Shoeless Joe Jackson and Pete Rose – even the Boston College basketball point shaving incident of the late 70s was a fairly seminal moment. But even with this happening at the tip of the NBA season, people seemed far more interested in how the Knicks look or whether Cooper Flagg is as advertised than what feels like a real threat to the integrity of the game. Perhaps it’s the pace of the news cycle, or maybe there weren’t enough high profile names, but it hasn’t had the resonance I would have guessed.
Or, and this is the third question, but is the fact that gambling has become not just normalized but increasingly a central feature of sports change our entire perspective on any kind of gambling fraud? You go back a decade, or even less, and gambling was still at arms lengths from professional sports in America, including leagues like the NBA. They might have even considered it a cancer that would kill the sport from within. But increasingly, the NBA and others like haven’t just accepted sports gaming – they’ve made it a central feature of the operation, building partnerships with companies like FanDuel and DraftKings, where the game and betting on the game – and subsets thereof – are one and the same. This is a big part of the strategy to keep eyeballs (and dollars) on sports when the elusive sports fan and their fleeting attention span might otherwise change the channel, if that’s even still a phrase. So, when you make gambling a full part of the operation, an exciting part of the game instead of a smoky back room deviance, perhaps it’s not so surprising that the sports public doesn’t flinch when there’s a gambling infraction. Instead of a nuclear explosion, it’s more like a hiccup. And that, perhaps more than anything, is why I think that sports fans seem less outraged by what would have once felt outrageous. And why the NBA doesn’t need to worry as much about this kind of disaster.
Keith Strudler is the Dean of the College of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. You can follow him at @KeithStrudler.
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