[Smith] I get that tanking is seen as really bad. I get that the league is going to do what they can to fix it.
Saying tanking is worse that gambling scandals is about 20 bridges too far. Waving away gambling scandals like that is insanity.
I mean we have an entire franchise that LITERALLY CHEATED, by circumventing the cap and we hardly even mention it. Especially since there has been no discussion or punishment. So, the league isn’t doing a great job at prioritizing the real problems to be honest
ETA: TL; DR - If you think no one is taking about the Clippers scandal you’re either not paying attention or you’re reading/listening to the wrong fucking things.
Original: Silver acknowledged it at his press conference, and said it’s still under investigation. Multiple pundits speculated that Ant got the All-Star MVP over Kawhi because Silver didn’t want to be pictured handing a trophy to him, and Amick reported today in The Athletic that word is starting to build around the league that the hammer will come down hard, also speculating that Silver didn’t want to issue any punishments before the All-Star game at the Intuit Dome for many obvious reasons.
There was already a Reddit post about that last one..
Silver and the league have lots of faults, and it’s possibly their law firm, Watchell, is botching the investigation, but let’s not pretend that they’re not taking this seriously. If you think they’re not, then you’re not paying attention.
Don’t bother, i think people are legit morons with this thing, they’re expecting them to rush it and fuck up when how NBA works they never do it
It’s just stupid, the Clippers will 100% get punished and deservedly so but they gotta make sure first and then there’s levels to it
Right, like this is the most serious NBA related allegation you can make about a team. You don’t rush that shit, you investigate.
There are concerns that NBA/Watchell might fuck it up, I believe there was an article last week where someone was questioned by the Watchell and they found questions to be too narrow, when that person had much more to say.
But yeah, you’re right, people are acting like morons about this, and have since the beginning. Especially those that take Pablo’s reporting as absolute truth. Even Pablo will admit he doesn’t have the whole story. And there’s a lot of stuff the league and Watchell can find out directly due to the CBA and franchise agreements, that Pablo has to wait until someone leaks it to him. Pablo’s reporting sure as hell shows shady shit. But the league needs to find enough to bring to arbitration board to show that serious punishment is merited.
If they mess up the investigation, it will have a ripple affect across the league. They need to get this absolutely right and by the book or the league will never be the same ever again.
Either the Clippers get severely punished for the Aspiration contract with Kawhi or the salary cap doesn’t mean shit. And it’s game on for side deals for stars. There is no middle ground for Silver.
Exactly this. If the Clippers near future isn’t absolutely obliterated by the punishment, the other owners will start rubbing their hands before opening their fat wallets and start making some calls. Before you know it, we’ll have an under the table Ohtani contract.
i’m with you but the all star MVP thing is silly. Ant fully deserved it as the best player on the winning team.
I didn’t say I believed it, doesn’t mean it’s not out there in the air as having been a possibility. Kawhi did score 31 pts in 12 minutes, after all. I don’t generally believe in NBA conspiracies, generally. You have to admit there’s a strong chance Silver was grateful that Ant’s team won and he didn’t have to go out and give it to Kawhi.
if he was worried about something like that he wouldn’t have named kawhi to the all star team in the first place.
Oh, interesting. Haven’t been on Reddit too much the last couple days so while scrolling I didn’t see that post from earlier.
Sorry, I may have gotten a little testy there. There’s a lot of people who just seem to believe nothing is happening. Read the Amick piece if you haven’t. Because of the possible severity of this, the investigation takes time.
I think your frustration is completely valid - people want to be outraged more than they want justice in fairness. Once they appointed a law firm to the investigation, anyone that understands legal proceedings should have know this was going to be a 6+ month process. No news doesn’t mean nothing is happening, it means they aren’t feeding the drama and content machine because they shouldn’t… this is a serious issue
Torre even did a follow up episode where he discussed the process of him being contacted and asked to come in and speak to the investigation team. Obviously he can’t share everything but I thought it was interesting what they wanted from him.
It’s frustrating that people just seem to think that justice must happen instantly. We should want an air tight set of facts and findings that can’t be meaningfully challenged rather than a rushed and potentially botched investigation that misses details and leaves room for doubt.
People also forget who they are investigating. Balmer(spelling?) is one of the richest men in the world. It isn’t a perfect fit, but the saying still applies. “If you’re gonna take a shot at the king, better not miss”. Because you do not want to get into a legal pissing contest with someone who has the resources to do basically anything.
You forgot to mention the report that the law firm isn’t even asking questions about Balmers involvement in this. There is plenty of reason to believe the softest commissioner of all time won’t bring the hammer down
Oh no, not the All-Star MVP! To even mention that shows how pathetic the response has been.
What response? To the Clippers cheating or to the All-Star game? I didn’t say I believed it, said it’s been speculated.
You have to admit though, when punishment comes down, something they don’t want is a recent picture of Silver smiling and handing Kawhi a trophy to run along side the articles about it. The league care a lot about how things look.
Now that I think about it…the tanking discussion is almost a favor to Silver. He has an easy distraction from that and the bad press from gambling/whatever the fuck we’re calling Kalshi
Because they don’t seem gambling as a problem, that’s why. It’s just a natural part of the business for them. Gambling brings in more eyes and money, tanking does not. So guess which one they think is the problem.
They’re both “real” problems. 🤷🏻♂️
They dont care
What do you want them to do? “Well, the investigation isn’t over, but we know you all really like that podcast host, so we’ll take a few wins away from the Clippers until we find out more”?
You don’t know “an entire franchise” “literally cheated” - you know what a podcaster laid out in a series that has made him money and given him exposure. You don’t know what evidence he ignored. You haven’t heard the Clippers/Kawhi side of things.
I mean both the Clippers and Kawhi have made public comments about it and did nothing to actually disprove any of the reporting, which is based on an extensive paper trail. So we have heard their side, it just wasn’t persuasive. But I agree that it’s ok that the league hasn’t punished them yet as the official investigation hasn’t finished.
They are culpable for what they say, the first thing a legal professional will tell you to say in moments like this is “I don’t recall” because you will be held to what you say regardless. A non-answer isn’t an admission of guilt, it’s just the bare minimum to not torpedo your legal team’s defense. I know that answer won’t sit well with people but my agency had someone give a whole ass presentation on this because it’s a very real thing your representation wants you to do no matter serious the issue is
Ok, but that’s not the route they went. Balmer publicly commented and gave explanations
Sounds like you’re a clippers fan coping
These people are acting like billionaires don’t cheat the rules lmao
Do they cheat, yes.
Does the whole league cheat, hell no. The entire point of the salary cap is to let owners be cheap
No, these people are acting like there’s a lot more involved with a court case than going “well the podcaster said…” over and over and over again.
One, it’s not a court case. Second, it’s not what a “podcaster said”. It’s a paper trail that a podcaster shown. It’s hardly just spoken, unsubstantiated waffling.
The second they said tanking was messing with gambling profits was the second was just fine with tanking.
We don’t need to change anything
gambling is crazy because the straw that broke the camels back was a 10:30et Jazz/Wizards game like it was serious money on that random game
You’re laughing? GoonGod69 lost a $50 overs prediction on Kalshi because of tanking and you’re laughing?
Is that a self-bestowed title, Goon God? Or do you think he compared with his friends?
Definitely the dude with the hentai wrapped Honda civic
Honda indicates intelligence. It’s a leased sr Sentra
He is not the Master of his Domain.
I told you my username in confidence!
Who would use prediction markets for a regular overs bet?
The kind of person who would bet on a Jazz-Wizards game in February when both teams are tanking
The words “betting” and “gambling” have negative connotations.
But if you mention “prediction markets” people’s eyes glaze over and at worst they’ll think you’re a bit nerdy.
Sitting down the guys mid game like that must have really fucked with their live betting spreads
There was a pretty massive matchfixing scandal around the national betting pool in Italy in the 1980s that went down to the fourth tier. That’d be the equivalent of, like, Single-A baseball in America. In the even-more-ridiculous, Asian betting syndicates used to do hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars of business on Counterstrike matches between teams of bots.
betting on bot games might be the cleanest gambling that has ever happened on this planet
There was an executive on one of the Bill Simmons podcasts. He stated the NBA would be profitable if it ran games in studios without audiences. The way the sports betting sponsorships are setup, the kick back from just making sure the games are played so people can gamble, is all the league needs to maintain a steady profit.
Asians bet on anything. During summers there’s very little sports on so they even bet on 6th division football games here in Finland, complete amateur teams, and when there are upsets, the team instagrams are full of death threats.
It’s a huge scandal here right now when few years ago some brasilians started appearing in those 6th division teams. They were brought to the country to fix the matches (I guess it’s more efficient when they can win big or lose big at will?). They’ve been kept in awful conditions in small apartments with very little pay and food so it’s basically human trafficking.
There’s also one local team that’s notorious for obvious match fixing in the 5th division and the people behind that team have lately been mixed with few other teams on that level too. The lower level sports here in Europe are just rife with match fixing and weird connections to those asian betting markets.
If you’re betting on games involving the Jazz or Wizards you have an addiction and truly need help.
The people betting on those teams probably know the unders are hitting and cleaned up on the books a few too many times that they had to cry to Adam Silver to crack down on those teams.
Gamblers don’t have a stake in the NBA to get the ear of the commish the gambling companies though were probably the ones who raised a stink about how many unders are hitting night to night and how sharps are probably cleaning them out. TV partners as well probably see a decline in viewership when people literally see stars on the bench not coming back in the game or a bunch of DNPs.
You don’t think fans paying to see certain talents and then franchises doing their bullshit to make those games unwatchable is a problem outside of gambling?
Fans of these franchises want their team to tank because it’s the quickest path back to relevance
They want their team to tank because that’s the existing system, not because there is some natural law that says throwing games = improving your team
They just want their team to improve, give them other avenues and we can leave tanking behind
Can anyone actually think of a halfway decent alternative though? The responsibility of a star NBA player can influence the outcome of a game and season much more than an ace pitcher for the MLB, winger for the NHL, or any position in the NFL that’s not QB. The value of getting that top player is much more important to the NBA than those sports. Additionally, there’s always almost only 2 guys at the top of every draft that everyone believes can change the trajectory of a franchise. It’s much easier to find a deep round star in other sports than the NBA. Teams are always looking for that Wemby, Lebron, Flagg, Davis, Shaq, or whoever because that player holds so much value in turning a franchise around. Any suggestion that’s been voiced has had some glaring problems and is just begging to get loopholed on by teams. Which speaks volumes to the state of the NBA. It’s just orgs, and even down to players, abusing loopholes to circumvent rules.
I feel like the solution would be deemphasizing the draft by giving teams more power in free agency in a way that distrubutes talent. That way teams could have an avenue to attract stars without having to tank for a top pick.
Give every team a supermax slot that doesn’t count against the cap. Any non supermax player can break contract to fill a supermax slot, even rookies. Basically forcefully distributes the top players to every teams who equally. Tanking would be dumb because every team can basically throw offers at any star who isn’t franchise tagged by the supermax.
That’s a very fair point!
And the reason why is the existing system is because the draft is inversely tied to season performance. Separate the two, and there’d be no incentive to.
Thank you.
There is nothing special about reverse order draft/odds. And nothing will change until the incentive to lose is removed. Yes there’s side effects in any change but they’re more manageable than when the alternative is for a bunch of teams most of the season is unwatchable.
It is a problem. I just couldn’t care less about the gambling aspect of it. If you’re betting on Jazz games you need help
Literally the dumbest narrative ever with no proof. Some random “insider” speculated it and redditors have been treating it like gospel ever since.
The league are not looking at tanking because of gambling companies. Every sport deals with non triers. This is part and parcel of gambling for the last 140 years.
The world’s oldest betting sport is horse racing. Where your encouraged not to try for long stretches!
They literally changed tanking years ago by altering the lottery system and kicked Hinkie out in 2017. Long before gambling was legalised in the US.
This is a case of main character syndrome by NBA fans. This isn’t the first sport to suffer from teams not doing their utmost best to win every game/race/competition, and it won’t be the last.
If anything this would be good for gambling companies. Somebody who’s not factoring in expected minutes on bad teams are poor gamblers. Who the hell is not betting because of tanking? Such a redditor point of view, likely from people who’ve never had a bet.
That’s crazy you’re getting downvoted for this, nobody from the league ever said anything about gambling and tanking. It was some dude with a podcast I’ve never even heard of before.
I feel like the NFL rarely throws games though. Gms tank in the NFL usually
Same here. If tanking is negatively impacting gambling then I’m turning a blind eye to it. There will still be competitive teams anyway.
It also pisses off TV partners. What’s the point of airing a game if they’re not trying to win?
The Jazz have four national games. Two are NBA TV games. One was a Peacock exclusive. One was on NBC; Markkanen played and the Jazz won the fourth quarter but got blown out in the third. I’m not sure TV partners are driving the outrage aimed at the Jazz.
It’s not just Utah, plenty of teams are looking for ways to tank. And I’m 100% sure the TV partners aren’t driving the public outrage – that’s the kind of thing that gets conveyed in private meetings and phone calls. But it’s definitely the kind of thing that gets Adam Silver’s attention.
Same thing for fans too.
Some are fine with the hope of a shiny draft pick, others don’t want to want to watch g league basketball for more than half a season
Nah, it needs to change
there’s nothing wrong with gambling. its legalized in Europe and you can bet as soon as you’re 18. most Europeans I know placed bets younger than that
America needs to adopt more classy European culture cause Europe gets it right
That’s a good point about high culture u/BackshotsOnUrDaughtr
I never heard anywhere that gambling is acceptable. It’s constant topic that it destroys families
STRONGLY agree, but most of the major outlets/reporters can’t say shit about it because they’re actively sponsored by sportsbooks. this is one of those things where we really need legislative intervention— the league isn’t going to address that on its own, the money’s too good
^(so, like, don’t expect any of that shit to be fixed anytime soon)
Everyone in the ecosystem of it makes too much money from it
Legislative intervention in this country lol
States sure worked at lightening speed getting us into this mess
it’s crazy how prevalent sportsbook sponsorship is. random instagram meme pages have gambling ads plastered on the screenshots they post
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Sports betting was federally outlawed until 2018. So it was legislative intervention that opened the floodgates in the first place
What gambling scandals did the league not say anything about?
Didn’t Billups literally lose his job? Am I going crazy?
You’d also think an NBA subreddit full of people aged 18-30 would know the first thing about betting or sports gambling. Isn’t this literally a popular thing over in America now.
I would also honestly put officiating as a more important issue than tanking.
Its been so bad since the pandemic.
Botching calls even with video review.
Complete ineptitude.
Gambling and refs is what matters the most.
Teams that win grumbling about not getting top picks doesnt even register.
[removed]
I mena keith smith is a real one
Why not?
Younger version of hide-the-pain Harold
Lol, probably true.
The discourse certainly does remind one of a certain world leader’s playbook of “wait let me use this to distract from the other heinous shit i have hanging over me.”
Moon bears.
I think the idea is that there is similarity between throwing games for tanking and throwing games for gambling.
Non American here: I always saw tanking as a vile thing, much before online gambling and whatnot. From my perspective, it just directly defies the very concept of competition and sportsmanship.
Just make a league system where relegation and promotion are possible, and you’ll never have tanking again.
You will never see relegation in the NBA, these owners paid billions to be in the League so there is no way they are making a change that would remove the guarantee of being an NBA franchise. Getting relegated would cut the value of their investment in half instantly and even thats being generous. Even without getting relegated the proces of teams would plummet because the guarantee isnt there.
Relegation and promotion are possible in Europe because of geography and population density. The states are too big for that; the population density isn’t there and the sheer variety of sports we consume hinders as well. We’d need to break the NBA in regional leagues and then have the current NBA as a “Champions League” thing.
Our second division leagues in most sports don’t actually make money to stay alive. They are subsidized by whatever major league team they are affiliated with. Baseball is the exception but baseball is the closest sport to having “two leagues”. The G-League is entirely owned by the NBA to the point where G-League salaries are paid by the actual NBA team. You’d have to double the amount of teams in professional basketball, completely break the G-League ownership structure, find owners for these newly created teams that will need stadia and organizational structures, and redistribute talent to the new teams if you want a promoted team to ever stay up. Itd be chaos.
The widest broadcasted “minor” league in the US is the EFL Championship. CBS carries it in the US. No minor league actually in the US has a national broadcasting deal. There simply isn’t a market for second division sports. The US is 3.8M sq miles. England is 50k. Taking a minor league team from Nashville to Atlanta for example requires hotels in all likelihood for the team, and no fan is traveling from Nashville to Atlanta on a Tuesday night to watch second division basketball. We don’t have rail connecting vast swaths of our country and it’s fucking gigantic. Europe and the US face different sporting realities.
If you think about it tanking is kind of like a gambling scandal, except instead of throwing games for money teams are throwing games for ping pong balls lol
I think the distinction is that a gambling scandal hypothetically involves individuals within the organization acting against the interests of the organization for personal gain.
“Tanking,” however you define it, is the organization choosing to act in it’s own long term interests.
Both cause perverse incentives to throw or otherwise fix a game; only difference is whether the pressure is intrinsic or extrinsic to the system.
I don’t see how it matters whether the reason is coming from within the NBA framework or outside it, when the result is the same: shitty games where you can’t trust the teams are actually competing with one another.
It’s also a season long thing. You can point shave 1 game a month and make tons of money. Tanking is happening every single game for some of these teams. If it was only happening 1 game a month or for the last week of the season, people wouldn’t give a shit.
Who said that?
Mat Ishbia, Suns owner
+1 lol classic social media post to get people mad about a viewpoint that nobody is really voicing
Mat Ishbia said it
Isn’t it obvious by now? Adam Silver is a feckless little bitch who is owned by the Sports Books and Billionaires.
He is THE problem.
Once you understand that the NBA commissioner is literally selected and appointed by the team owners and serves at their pleasure (he has no fixed term, the owners decide when they are done with him and are the only ones who can remove him) then everything about how he operates will make sense to you.
He is not their boss. He is their AGENT. He works for them.
The league has gone all in on gambling. Tanking hurts the betting market. The league gives no shits about the game, they care about profit.
Just bet the over and move on with your lives people
Might as well punish the bad FO. Kings and Pelicans were not trying to tank, they are just bad at managing the team.
One is institutional corruption, the others individual. Generally the former is more frowned upon. Both are incentive based, but one is within the “rules”.
god forbid we take both seriously
I don’t remember ever saying I backed either of those!
This
Ahhh but they go hand in hand. The league is upset about tanking because the gambling sponsors are upset :). The Jazz sitting there starters in the fourth quarter is messing with the projected scores.
The league can’t do anything about the gambling, it’s too entwined with the companies. Hell, tanking’s been a thing for 40 years, they’re only now trying to make drastic changes to fix it because the gambling companies want them to
Seems like they are trying to deflect the Aspiration and Gambling stories
Utah throws a few games - and the league immediately jumps on it.
Ballmer cheats for literally years - and the league sweeps it under the rug.
I think the worst part about tanking is the other teams don’t even have to field a real lineup.
Tanking IS essentially a gambling scandal now that sports betting is legal. It’s a gambling scandal that also screws over your season ticket holders + fans in general.
Ishbia is a crook.
And they’re probably linked too. I wouldn’t know how to back it up but you can’t tell me that losing on purpose and gambling don’t go hand in hand lol.
waiving away tanking scandals is doubly insane. Orgs throwing games is worse than a player or 2 fucking themselves over. At least the players can be held accountable if found, meanwhile tanking is CELEBRATED. Absolutely pathetic that losing is seen as a goal for a team.
Teams will just find other ways to tank
Tanking can be gambling in progress. It isn’t hard to connect the dots.
It’s funny because the only real reason the “league” doesn’t like tanking is because it messes up gambling.
It’s worse if the team as a whole doesn’t want to win vs an individual player or a coach in a gambling scandal.
Both are detrimental.
Tanking IS a gambling scandal
Dude, what??? Lmao
If i put on my conspiracy hat for a moment…maybe this sudden obsession with tanking is to take attention off Aspiration as well as gambling.
I’ll stand by my opinion that tanking is worse.
Gambling is super annoying because of all of the ads.
My only issue with tanking is how it impacts the careers of those players on teams who could benefit from All NBA selection contracts.
You mean like SGA when the Thunder sat him during their tanking years?
Yes..
Fair point but I think they’ll be ok
They usually are. It usually happens more in the NFL but it sucks when teams refuse to.. or just suck at developing potential to the detriment of a career.
How is gambling scandal by a couple of players WORSE than entire teams literally match fixing and losing on purpose?
Seriously how?
Tanking is bad, but the end goal of tanking is to win the championship.
The end goal of match fixing is to enrich criminals.
Championship like 3+ seasons later though. So on a game to game or season to season basis it’s still pretty shitty imo
Why does the end goal fucking matter lmao, it’s literally rigging games and losing on purpose
What in the flying fuck is this logic bro, absolutely insane the lengths people go to defend tanking
IT’S FUCKING LOSING ON PURPOSE BY ENTIRE FUCKING TEAMS
It’s not losing on purpose by the entire team though is it, the whole thing with tanking is resting the players who are good enough to win, for the huge majority of the time you can’t put it on the players
So? Let me do this with the players then, only two players and a coach did the gambling thing, 53040340 others didn’t
Bro what kind of braindead logic is this? A team is LOSING ON PUPORSE, they are benching their best players, they’re trading assets, they don’t play them
How is this even a debate right now lmao
You said ‘by entire teams’ I was correcting you
Because what you said was wrong
It’s very obvious what i meant lmao, when a coach makes a decision with GMs/FO to tank it’s obviously an entire team, players are not a part of that and if u let players play it would be way different players are basically forced to sit
lol it’s a debate for really obvious reasons that have all been presented to you just relax.
Absolutely correct you are not insane, NBA fans are just so heavily indoctrinated.
Records aren’t real. Teams are artificially extending players careers & inflating their stats by shutting them down for half a season. The fans are paying money to watch at time G leaguers and 10 day contract guys close games.
Somehow we’ve got away from winning if it isn’t first place when it comes to NBA basketball. Fans are happy just worshiping whatever star player their market has and worrying if they’ll leave or not, or if they’ll ever get lucky through the draft. No pride for winning games, having streaks over a certain team. Rivalry. Legacy(which for as lucrative as the league is, more players shouldn’t be looking for paydays unless they are struggling for a roster spot) is not vyed for or respected. Instead it’s downplayed.