The NBA Itself Is A Bigger Threat To Integrity Than Sports Betting
The pro basketball league is not that serious about holding its teams to any kind of standards
The NBA doesn’t actually care that much about integrity, even though it once claimed legalized sports betting would bring about the end of professional sports.
That came into clear focus recently when the Dallas Mavericks basically said they would try to lose games, miss the playoffs, and get into the draft lottery. Sounds like a lack of integrity, to me.
The backstory
The idea that the major North American leagues were wholeheartedly opposed to sports betting gets forgotten pretty quickly, even though it was only five years ago that they were actively trying to stop it from happening.
This also gets lost in translation: In the early push for legalization across the US, several leagues said they needed “integrity fees” because of the expansion of sports betting. The NBA, Major League Baseball and the PGA Tour argued to state legislatures circa 2018 and 2019 they needed to be compensated because sports betting would impact their integrity. (NBA Commissioner Adam Silver famously came out as a proponent of sports betting before the fall of the federal ban in 2018, but let’s be honest: his league was still fighting it in court, and he was a fan of sports betting happening more on his terms.)
Betting clearly impacts leagues, teams and players, but compensating leagues for it was idiotic; betting had been going on all of these leagues in Nevada, offshore, and with legal bookies for decades.
The lobbying effort on integrity fees was one of the funniest things we got out of the expansion of sports betting because it was so ham-handed, and the leagues had to abandon it quickly as they got laughed out of state capitols.
The integrity of NBA games under a microscope
We pick events up at the end of the 2022-2023 NBA regular season, when we have a real integrity issue in front of the NBA.
With a chance to make the NBA play-in tournament, the Mavericks gave up with their words and actions. Star Kyrie Irving sat out a game against the Chicago Bulls that would play a big role in the Mavericks’ postseason chances, while Luka Doncic played the first quarter before being pulled out. Several other players who likely should have played also sat on the bench, and the Mavs went on to lose.
Coach Jason Kidd said the quiet part out loud instead of just putting people on an injury list or out for “load management.” More from ESPN:
"We were fighting for our lives, and understanding this is a situation we're in, but the organization has made the decision to change," Mavs coach Jason Kidd said during his pregame media availability. "So, you know, we have to go by that and that's something that happens. So the guys that are playing, we got to go out there and put our best foot forward, and we talked about that this afternoon.
The NBA commenced an “investigation,” even though it was explicitly clear that the Mavericks were trying to lose the Bulls game. The outcome of that? It was a fine of $750,000, which is basically pocket change for Mavs owner Mark Cuban.
Tanking is embedded into the NBA
The NBA, despite efforts to curb it, incentivizes teams to “tank,” or manage their teams in a way that they try to improve their odds of getting into the draft lottery. The play-in tournament was supposed to help alleviate that by giving more teams a chance at the postseason, but the Mavs became the first team to scoff at that openly.
Teams have been using this strategy in some form for years, more or less perfected by the “Trust the Process” Philadelphia 76ers in the 2010s. They actively tried to put awful teams on the court, and they parlayed their bad records into good draft picks.
But the Sixers were doing it at least with a wink and a nod, and many teams have emulated that strategy since. You may say there’s not a huge difference between the Sixers and Mavs, and you’d have a point. And at least the Mavs were transparent about it, I guess.
But at a minimum, there’s a big line between not trying very hard to win basketball games by front office management, and what the Mavericks did, which was sit uninjured players in an attempt to lose.
Confronted with this direct affront to integrity, the NBA withered. They took away no draft picks, and made no other sanctions. Cuban and the Mavs were perfectly happy to trade a piddling amount of money for improved draft status.
The NBA doesn’t often get on its soapbox about the impact of sports betting anymore. But it’s worth remembering that the NBA spent a lot of time crying about integrity issues, when it has plenty of issues in front of it that have nothing to do with gambling.
