Among the few certainties in life aside from death and taxes is the inevitability that when there’s gambling there will always be the Mob. Don’t take my word for it: Just ask NBA commissioner Adam Silver, (and maybe soon NFL chief Roger Goodell) who might have a starring role in the next Scorsese Mafia epic all because they decided to embrace one of the world’s oldest and most dangerous vices.
Indeed, a duo of federal indictments filed last week will make Scorsese’s job a lot easier. Basketball star Terry Rozier and Hall of Famer–turned-coach Chauncey Billups were caught up in high-roller card games rigged with x-ray tables, hidden cameras, and loaded decks. Celebrities used as bait. Information passed to a “quarterback,” a mob-connected player who never lost. And when the high-rollers couldn’t pay, the threats came. Violence, blackmail, and worse.
In a separate indictment, players were involved in passing confidential information about injuries, etc., so insiders could win lucrative “prop bets,” a popular sports gambling innovation where you wage on how many yards a running back makes in a game, or how many free throws are completed by LeBron.
These so-called “victims” lost tens of thousands, sometimes millions, through these scams, the Feds say. But the real damage runs much deeper. The leagues’ unholy marriage to gambling—and by extension, to organized crime—exposes how the moral rot that has infected every level of American sport because some of the most woke executives in America saw green instead of danger when they went there.
Sport gambling’s scope is indeed staggering. Globally, it’s a $100 billion business–and growing. It used to be confined to back alleys, bookie shops and of course in Vegas. The leagues forbade their players from engaging; Pete Rose famously denied a Hall of Fame entry because he went there.
That all changed in 2018, when the Supreme Court ruled that states could legalize, and now it’s ubiquitous. Sports books advertise before and after games. Sponsored content commingled with analysts touting betting lines. Stadiums proudly display the logos of the various sports book companies so fans can wager bets on their i-Phones while they’re swigging a beer or enjoying a hot dog.
Even players can indulge as long as they don’t bet on their games. The leagues believe it’s a healthy outlet for their aggressive personalities.
Silver, Goodell and the rest moralize about “equity” all day long, but their social conscience stops at the cash register. And that register keeps ringing thanks to their lucrative alliances with gambling operators, advertising partners, and the fan engagement numbers that follow.
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Sounds like a lot of fun until you understand the downside. Players are restricted from betting on their own games, but that doesn’t stop them because it’s so easy to evade; leagues test for steroids, not where players are placing their bets.
Then there’s the Mob. I grew up in a gambling family. My father and grandfather were near degenerates. They gambled on everything, football, horse races and more. Fortunately, my family didn’t go without food or heating during my dad’s gambling binges, but I know of people who did.
Financing it all: Organized crime, which knows more about the business of gambling than any sports book or league official because it’s specialized in this stuff for decades.
Which brings me back to Silver and Goodell and the idiocy behind their embrace of this abhorrent lifestyle. I’m not saying the Five Families are regularly consulting with the leagues, or have infiltrated the sports book companies, but the Mob knows its clientele.
Neighborhood guys like my pops, high rollers who don’t want to follow Vegas rules, and also sports figures. The reason sports figures make such enticing targets is pretty simple: The same addictive personality that fuels their drive on the gridiron or basketball court carries over to their recreational activities like gambling.
Normalize gambling, as has been done, and it’s no surprise here that NBAers found themselves in the middle of those sprawling federal indictments last week. Members of the Cosa Nostra and so-called “betfluencers” supplied the so-called “faces” or professional athletes who allegedly took part in the rigged card games and the money-good “prop bets” based on inside information on injuries etc.
Yet they were just “Shocked! Shocked!” to find that gambling is going on under their collective nose.
There are, of course, no bigger social justice warriors in America than the people who run professional sports. The NFL, NBA, and MLB have spent the past decade competing to out-woke one another, funding DEI bureaucracies, cutting checks to Black Lives Matter. They’ve even imposed gender quotas in hiring, requiring teams to interview women for coaching positions.
They pose as enlightened visionaries reshaping American culture for the better. The dirty secret is that those same do-gooders have been feeding one of the most destructive habits in American life, and unwittingly, organized crime.
True, no NFL players have been named, but my sources say it’s only a matter of time for all of the reasons I cited earlier.
Yes, only the willfully ignorant would be shocked by any of this, which is why I got a good laugh from the reactions of Silver or Goodell. Both men are among the highest paid executives in corporate America, Silver earns $10 million a year. Goodell six times that much.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
